CRM moving up to center stage
IBM’s DecisionEdge for relationship marketing enables organizations to identify, acquire, develop and retain profitable customers. The business intelligence software is designed for specific industries to identify which prospects would make the best customers, which customers are good prospects for additional products and services, and which customers may be at risk for leaving. It also features a campaign management capability to manage and track highly targeted marketing campaigns and ongoing interactions with large volumes of customers and prospects.
DecisionEdge employs analysis and predictive modeling techniques that allow customer segmentation, analysis and scoring valuable data derived from transaction systems, Web sites, operational systems and external sources. That enables you to analyze events and predict customer behavior with a much greater level of accuracy, injecting the results of the analysis into the marketing relationship you establish with individual customers in near real-time.
Meanwhile, Oracle and front-office vendor Clarify this week will extend customer relationship management to the Web when they unveil application modules that focus on online support and sales.
Clarify will introduce its second version of Clarify eFrontOffice, a suite that handles electronic interactions such as customer service, online marketing and guided e-commerce selling. The new applications include Clarify Customer Portal (designed for B2C communication), eOrder (for online shopping) and eConfigurator, which helps determine customer needs.
Oracle will offer new applications to be included in Oracle Applications Release 11i that are designed to round out its e-commerce offerings. Oracle iSupport is a portal that lets customers access data such as order status, billing and service contracts over the Net. It will also let them initiate service calls, schedule field service and get authorization for returns. Oracle eMail Center handles both inbound and outgoing messages and can analyze the content, generate an automatic response and let representatives approve or change those responses.