If businesses are going to succeed in business-to-business e-commerce, they're going to have to find a way to bring the customer relationship skills they've spent years developing to the online world.
That's according to at least a half-dozen software developers, each of which is readying tools to help bridge the gap between e-commerce products and CRM (customer relationship management) applications.
Among these are BroadVision, and Siebel Systems, which this week will announce plans to sell a packaged integration tool that links BroadVision's e-commerce products with CRM applications from Siebel. The tool was developed by Software Technologies.
Using the BroadVision to Siebel Integration System from STC, based on STC's eGate Integrator platform, businesses can tap into BroadVision's One-to-One applications as well as Siebel's call centre applications. This will enable them to manage sales orders and quotes, maintain order status, and synchronise product and customer information from one location.
The technology is available now and will be co-branded and sold by both STC and BroadVision. Pricing starts at US$150,000.
Also this week, PeopleSoft will unveil its CRM applications for PeopleSoft 8, the company's Web-enabled suite of enterprise resource planning products.
PeopleSoft, which will make the announcement at its annual user conference in Los Angeles, got into the CRM arena last year when it bought Vantive.
Features of the new CRM offerings will include sales force automation on Wireless Application Protocol cell phones; analytics; enhancements to call centre applications, such as purchase order routing throughout the enterprise; and customer portals.
Other new features include CRM connectors to the PeopleSoft integration framework that will connect CRM customers to enterprise applications developed by other companies, such as SAP.
Last month, PeopleSoft and IBM announced an alliance to offer Internet-based CRM capabilities from PeopleSoft to run on IBM's DB2 Universal Database for the System/390 server.
Canadian Pacific Railways currently uses Version 8.5 of PeopleSoft CRM, and Brock Winter, vice president of the railway's customer service team, said he is "anxiously awaiting" the version for PeopleSoft 8.
Canadian Pacific, uses the CRM applications at each of its three call centres to address customers' orders and concerns. The company will soon expand deployment to its marketing and sales forces.
"As long as there's been buying and selling, CRM has been in place," Winter said. "It's the sophistication of the tools that's different."
Separately, Ironside Technologies and Nortel Networks, last week unveiled a partnership in which they will jointly develop software that acts like adapters linking the respective companies' e-commerce and CRM applications.
Through Ironside's e-commerce suite, suppliers will be able to access multiple e-marketplaces through a single sign-on. Through the same sign-on, they'll have access to Nortel's CRM applications, such as the Clarify eFrontOffice and eOrder products, allowing buyers to get data about inventory, pricing and order status, officials from both companies said.
The adapters should be available by year's end. Pricing has not been set.
Dave Handley, manager of support systems at US-based Rockwell Automation, said customer satisfaction has increased since the company installed Nortel Clarify products in more than 30 of its call centres over the past four years.
"We can tell if somebody is calling, where they're calling from, if they need help, where they need help," said Hand ley, whose company sells industrial and automated control systems. "We can get a better idea of our customers' needs."
"The real underlying objective of CRM is to increase revenues, despite the fact that so many people think it's to make friends or feel all warm and fuzzy," said Sharon Ward, an analyst at Hurwitz Group. "CRM tools can be a real differentiator. So, in that way, they are absolutely, incredibly important."
