Summer heats up with five new CRM solutions. (Technology Highlights).

Collaborative CRM Through ePeople Teamwork 4.0

Unless one is exceptionally brilliant, collected wisdom is both broader and more concise than that of the individual. According to Chris Derossi, founder and CEO of ePeople, the idea behind ePeople 4.0 is to provide a means for assembling a team to collaborate and resolve complex problems by extending tools to various team members through both synchronous and asynchronous communications methods. The common workplace created by ePeople 4.0 provides for the ability to capture information and identify who contributed to the solution and how it was arrived at. The permissions structure of ePeople 4.0 also allows for the inclusion of outside vendors and partners in the collaborative team. Jointly delivered service and support offerings to common customers, powered by ePeople's solution, allow the partners to better service the customers, provide both the company and partners with a complete view of the customer account and lets both close service requests faster and more accurately.

ePeople Teamwork 4.0 (formerly ePeople Service Network 3.1) is designed to allow companies to improve customer satisfaction by delivering fast, accurate answers to complex issues and offering targeted service and support programs to their key customers in high-technology, heavy engineering and institutional financial services markets. New features of ePeople Teamwork 4.0 include: advances in expertise location and sourcing to better profile, identify and acquire the best team to resolve each complex issue; an open framework for integrating third-party diagnostic and productivity tools into the team collaboration workspace; a data warehouse for enhanced analytics and reporting; and a flexible problem solving workflow for more efficient issue resolution.

ePeople Teamwork 4.0 is available as an installed license model as well as an ASP model. www.epeople.com/650-694-6400

Clientele Customer Support On .NET Platform

Delivering flexible and effective products to the small to medium enterprise (SME) market has been a difficult feat, as obviously those SMEs want the functionality of the products that are developed for large enterprises but often do not have the personnel or budgets for the integration mammoth CRM implementations require. Responding to these requirements, Epicor Software Corporation has announced Clientele Customer Support 8.0 (part of the Clientele CRM.NET Suite), which is completely architected on the Microsoft .NET platform. Greg Horton, director of marketing of Clientele Group at Epicor, said customers wanted functionality and a rich Windows client, and the .NET platform will allow Clientele to deliver it to them. Horton added that Epicor is taking the functionality of Clientele and bringing it to .NET in phases.

In addition to the new architecture, the Customer Self-Service Portal, a companion to Clientele Customer Support 8.0, will provide customers access to account information via the Web. Customers can access a wide variety of account information including call logs, service agreements and account balances at any time of day. Used as an additional channel for customer support, the Self-Service Portal is designed to provide customers the ability to get the information they need, when they need it. The Customer Self-Service Portal is built on a .NET-based portal framework that is fully integrated with Clientele Customer Support 8.0.

Using native Web services and XML throughout, Clientele Customer Support 8.0 makes integration to external applications such as accounting or manufacturing easier and faster than ever. XML, the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web, acts as a link, allowing companies better interaction with partners, customers and vendors. Clientele Customer Support 8.0 also provides a "hands free" deployment model allowing the application to be distributed from a single Web site. In addition, product updates, enhancements and new releases can be automatically deployed to the client, Customization is done using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

www.epicor.com/503-612-2600

J.D. Edwards 5 For The Collaborative Enterprise

With a history of providing customer support products that goes back more than 25 years, J.D. Edwards has released its latest family of collaborative enterprise software products and services for customers and business parrners, J.D. Edwards 5, J.D. Edwards 5 features modular, integrated. Web-enabled applications designed to assist large and medium-sized businesses in improving business performance and includes modules for Enterprise Resource Planning; Supply Chain Management; Customer Relationship Management; Supplier Relationship Management; Business Intelligence; Collaboration and Integration; and Tools and Technology.

The company also introduced the next version of its implementation methodology, "OneMethodology," which provides customers an integrated set of consulting and education services based on their specific business and implementation needs.

Karl Johnson, vice president of CRM Strategy at J.D. Edwards, said J.D. Edwards solutions have been know for their integration into customer lifecycle management, flexibility in that the software molds to the user's business process instead of making the business fit the software, and for its ability to be deployed rapidly. J.D. Edwards 5 provides the enabling technology for Web services, a standards-based paradigm that is designed to enable businesses to share data, applications and business processes across the Internet. J.D. Edwards 5 features software developed as reusable components that interoperate well with current and legacy technology, enabling companies to match specific software components to specific business requirements while maintaining IT investments.

www.jdedwards.com/800-727-5333

Data-Tel Info Solutions Releases xSELLerator 6.0

Time was, when you bought a predictive dialer, all that it did was dial (and it would cost you an arm and a leg, or at least a good part of your budget). Well, time has moved on and dialers have evolved, especially at Data-Tel Info Solutions, which recently released version 6.0 of its xSELLerator Contact Center Suite, which beyond just dialing, can provide inbound call routing, blended calling, IVR capabilities, call scripting, transfer and Web communications among others, to the small to mid-sized enterprise at a reasonable price.

The improved inbound IVR and skills-based routing features allow calls to be touted to an auto-attendant, or transferred to an inbound agent defined by agent-assigned skills. The Web-enabled services now provided by xSELLerator 6.0 include Web chat, page pushing and Web callback. Scripting is now available in Logical Branch Scripting and HTML Scripting (through the HTML-Data Dictionary).

The business-to-business package offers the ability to load duplicate leads and lead browsing. B-2-B Browse allows the agent to speak with everyone within the associated phone number without making an additional return call, increasing agent productivity. The dialer will nor allow these duplicate listings to be called at the same time, Duplicate interval settings are created within the system and can be changed as an administrator sees fir.

Scott Murray, president and CEO of DataTel, said many clients are now using Data-Tel solutions from multiple offices, For example, the dialer or data can be resident in the U.S. and the voice and data can be sent over International Private Leased Circuits to agents in India or other offshore locations, adding flexibility to operations as well as providing the ability to tap into lower-cost labor supplies.

www.datatel-info.com/614-895-8852

According to Rafael Gomez, vice president, Americas Operation at Point Information Systems (an 51 Corporation Company), some of the challenges companies face that they are looking to CRM solutions to solve are: how to consolidate across all channels, how to increase customers' satisfaction, how to maintain service levels, how to grow revenue and how to maintain a competitive advantage. Gomez said the latest release from Point, e-point 6, has three keys that will help companies address these problems: it provides a doorway to CRM functionality in an incremental model; it is designed to maximize productivity and efficiency; and it can measure service effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Designed to work with most existing systems, e-point 6 features a CRM Center that integrates key marketing, sales and support operations to ensure customer process efficiencies, This delivers zero boundary customer relationship management, allowing for reduced cost of ownership, increased sales conversion and customer retention.

e-point's architecture allows the three core CRM processes of marketing, sales and support to operate as dedicated specialist solutions (Marketing Center, Sales Center and Support Center) while remaining fully integrated, The Marketing Center helps companies run multiphase, multichannel campaigns. The Sales Center provides sales staffs with lead/account management, calendars and cross-selling/upselling opportunities. The Support Center provides features for logging issues, case management and a knowledge base.

New features of e-point 6 also include: a Relationship Manager facility, which provides the motive force for upselling, cross-selling, renewals and direct marketing support across multiple channels; the e-point Research Center, which facilitates the collection and interpretation of customer needs, reactions and moods; and the Customer Dialog Suite, which contains tools for defining and disseminating an organization's best practices, and for surveying and reporting on customer satisfaction issues.

www.pointinfo.com/[phone]

For information and subscriptions, visit www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.