Other Services Related to CRM
In the following section you will find definitions of many of the services that are related, whether directly or indirectly, to CRM.
eCommerce
eCommerce is the electronic exchange of data for the purposes of conducting business. It involves the use of the Internet to facilitate the actual sales of goods and services.
Sites offering eCommerce services to SMEs include the following:
Microsoft bCentral
http://www.bcentral.com/products/cm/default.asp
This Small Business Solutions site from Microsoft offers eCommerce solutions software, which allow you to put your product catalog online, accept payment through a link to PayPal Merchant Services, and run some basic reports of sales orders per buyer and sales histories.
PayPal
PayPal offers a free set up of services for your Web site, which enables you to accept secure payments from anyone with a credit card or checking account. The service charges transaction fees for the processing, and has a global presence, handling multiple currencies and offering integration to your small business Web site.
Oracle Small Business Suite
http://www.netledger.com/portal/products_1.jsp?product=osbs
For a more extensive solution, see the Oracle Small Business Suite of tools. This product suite was awarded the PC Magazine Editor's Choice award in 2002. Oracle's order processing functionality enables you to accept credit-card payments and also offers more sophisticated ordering features, such as automatically applying special and promotional pricing, customer invoicing and estimates, and more complex billing scenarios.
Campaign Management
Campaign management enables you to plan and manage every aspect of your marketing campaigns from your desktop. This type of marketing automation enables you to
Measure the return on each campaign, learn from the results, and improve the next one.
Target your communications at either individuals or households, and apply intelligent rules to identify the right person in each household to receive your offer.
Schedule key campaign activities and automatically initiate regular communications at the frequency of your choice.
Coordinate and optimize inbound and outbound communications over multiple channels including traditional and digital media.
Build predictive models and combine them with other database criteria for more accurate results.
Automatically update models for any changes to customer records, ensuring that predicted outcomes always reflect the latest information.
Run all your analysis, predictive modeling, and customer communication activity from a single environment.
Sites dedicated to this kind of marketing automation include the following:
YellowBrick Solutions
http://www.yellowbricksolutions.com/
YellowBrick's Campaign Studio is a product that supports campaign management activities such as customer segmentation, defining campaign steps, and selecting communications channels. The company also offers consulting services to help you get the most out of your marketing campaigns.
Overture Software
http://www.overturesoftware.com/index.html
Offering a more high-end solution, targeted to the mid-size market, Overture Software's integrated solution starts at $4,000 a quarter. The company's founders were all senior marketing, sales, and development managers in Silicon Valley, who got together and designed a product they themselves would want to use.
Pop Art
http://www.popart.com/solutions/campaign-management.html
Pop Art, a Portland, Oregon based company provides both campaign management and e-commerce services to clients including nonprofit organizations, emerging business, major regional enterprises, and Fortune 500 companies. Their products support campaign tracking, ROI measurement on marketing investments, and site traffic analysis.
Helping Customers Help Themselves
Customer self-service portals enable customers to help themselves through the use of knowledge-based articles, FAQs, and other customer-friendly approaches.
Of course, Microsoft plans to add customer portal services to the Microsoft CRM product set in a future release, but in the meantime, you might check out the following resources:
Onyx
http://www.onyx.com/products/ocp.asp
Onyx Customer Portal 4.0 and Onyx Partner Portal 4.0 are two of the three integrated portal solutions offered as part of Onyx Enterprise CRM. Version 4.0 of the Onyx Customer Portal offers more direct customer interactions. New features are aimed at increasing marketing effectiveness and online service efficiency.
Oracle's Collaboration Suite and Portal
This is the same as the preceding listing under eCommerce.
http://www.netledger.com/portal/products_1.jsp?product=osbs
Oracle includes a Web site offering with forms, a store, and the online Customer Center. It also provides a powerful sales and service tool, where your prospects or customers can log in to a secure area and easily get information about their accounts such as order history, order status, and payment history, make payments online, and submit questions or cases to Customer Support, and check case status.
Web Content Management ASP Vendors
Web Content Management ASP vendors are an interesting subcategory of portal services. These vendors combine workflow, rights management, and high-end management capabilities for a sophisticated Web portal solution. Some examples include the following:
CrownPeak
Web content management offered as an online service.
Atomz
Focuses on content management, search capabilities, and promotional support.
Clickability
This product specializes in publishing, making your Web site more interactive, and improving navigation.
Customer Contact
Customer contact software helps small and mid-sized businesses reach their visitors and customers easily and affordably with targeted, relevant email communications based on their interests.
Customer Care International's Xtend Commerce
http://www.customercareintl.com/index.html
Helps the small or medium-sized business enhance or replace traditional marketing methods by increasing their visibility via the Internet, reaching more people, providing new channels for sales, and reducing overall traditional marketing costs. Provides an advanced integration link to GoldMine, which is a real-time interactive link between Xtend Commerce and GoldMine Sales and Marketing.
Siemens' HiPath ProCenter Office
http://www.siemensenterprise.com/
Enables the small to mid-sized business to seamlessly add email and fax-handling capability to traditional voice routing allowing SMEs to service their customers with the same flexibility as today's most sophisticated enterprise contact centers.
Field Service Automation
Many companies have some form of support systems for their field service force, but often these applications are developed for the desktop and not tailored to the mobile nature of field service operations. With a mobile extension to your enterprise systems information customer profiles, best practice handbooks, and site descriptions are right at the fingertips of the field service force.
Field service systems provide best practices leading to less ad hoc solutions and adding to the efficiency of your service operations. The increased service level and better information feedback gives your company a better understanding of the customer's needs enabling increased service revenue and sales.
Some examples of field-force automation products include the following:
IBM Start Now Wireless Solutions for Small and Medium Business
http://www-1.ibm.com/industries/wireless/doc/jsp/solution/index.jsp
IBM's field force automation solution focuses on wirelessly connecting mobile employees through wireless products. The Web site has a nice demo of a handheld device performing field force automation.
ServiceHub
http://www.servicehub.net/index.html
Web-based dispatch management service for small to medium-sized businesses. Through the ServiceHub subscription service, companies can easily link dispatchers with mobile workers through wireless devices.
Sales Force Automation
Sales Force Automation applications enable you to boost the profitability of your organization by increasing revenues and reducing operational costs. They can help you to
Forecast revenues accurately.
Track every lead.
Follow each deal through the pipeline.
Understand where bottlenecks occur—and why.
Stay on top of key sales metrics that determine your organization's success—such as sales pipeline, forecasting, and performance over competitors.
For sales force automation products, see the following:
salesforce.com Inc.
One of the fastest growing CRM companies, salesforce.com combines low start-up cost, quick time to benefit, and a comprehensive feature set.
SalesLogix2000
A mid-tier solution, SalesLogix2000 is produced by the same company, Interact Commerce Corp., as Act!, which is the more low-end product. The two products have a similar look and feel, whereas SalesLogix2000 delivers a much more robust solution.