New Offering from PwC Division Touts Consistent CRM
PwC ConsultingTM, a division of financial services organization PricewaterhouseCoopers,has released CRM ACCEL — a complete CRM program designed to help companies reduce the cost of serving customers while increasing revenue.
“With economic conditions tighter than they've been in decades and customers becoming more demanding than ever, our clients are facing enormous pressure to maximize the returns and overall effectiveness of CRM programs,” said Adam Klaber, a partner and the global CRM leader for PwC Consulting. “Our CRM ACCEL offering is the most complete solution available to deliver a consistent, personalized real-time experience. We're able to get to the heart of what CRM is all about — improving customer loyalty while maintaining profitability.”
Using real-time integration of front and back office operations and advanced customer analytics, the live, end-to-end cross-channel solution was developed to provide the strategy, industry business processes and pre-integrated technology architecture that's needed in today's business market. CRM ACCEL's goal is to integrate new and traditional marketing, sales and service channels, resulting in consistent experiences for multi-channel customers.
The release of CRM ACCEL is supported by research findings that will be published and released by PwC Consulting in November 2001. The global CRM survey of international consumers and corporations, conducted by META Group Consulting, reveals critical challenges faced by businesses and customers:
- Multi-channel communication was ranked most important by nearly a third of the respondents. However, companies often overlook channel variety, ranking it third on a list of customer interaction features. Sixty percent of customers are unlikely to do business with a company that does not offer their preferred channel.
- Lack of integration seems to be the biggest problem in CRM.
- Increasing customer loyalty is the biggest concern to companies when implementing CRM strategies. Respondents believe that loyalty would increase by 40 percent if they could deliver consistent customer service across channels. They also ranked retaining existing customers as more important than acquiring new customers.
- “Integrating technology efforts company-wide,” and “presenting a consistent face to the customer across channels,” were cited by companies as the two most difficult CRM activities to achieve.
Some help along the way…
CRM ACCEL represents a number of collaborative efforts. Specific technology components include a SunTM hardware platform, Siebel Systems applications for the front-end interaction management layer, CrossWorlds Software business integration solutions, BEA Systems' applications server and portal framework, and Avaya's multi-channel communications solutions and services. Additionally, CRM ACCEL will be delivered to clients through technology leaders Sun Microsystems, Siebel Systems, CrossWorlds Software, BEA Systems, Avaya, Inc., and others.
“CRM ACCEL represents a combination of our broad CRM and industry experience in the field, coupled with our extensive process and technology testing,” said Dan Hirschbuehler, lead PwC Consulting partner for the CRM ACCEL initiative. “We've taken the experimentation and guess work out of the equation and are providing our clients with a CRM solution that has been tested, works and is ready to help drive value within their organization.”
Pricing for CRM ACCEL is client-specific and PwC Consulting is currently demonstrating the solution to new and existing clients at the organization's global solution delivery facilities.
PwC Consulting, employs more than 38,000 consultants with offices in 60+ countries and is a leading global business transformation solutions provider. PwC Consulting refers to the management consulting services businesses of the member firms of the worldwide PricewaterhouseCoopers organization.
Robyn Greenspan, an independent researcher and speaker, is interested in innovation, market trends and information technology. She was a participant in the AI Summit and also took part in the IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing, International SOA Symposium series and the International Cloud Symposium series. She graduated from Temple University. She was previously the communications and research manager for the AMS, an internationally recognized professional association that advances knowledge in the IT and business management areas.
