Who’s Powering Whom?
Here are some recent customer wins by notable CRM vendors:
ZAMBA and Volkswagen
ZAMBA Solutions will drive Volkswagen of America's Web site, providing a CRM Blueprint, or execution roadmap, that will allow an industry “best-in-class” customer-centric environment. ZAMBA's business consulting services will help Volkswagen develop an enterprise-level methodology for identifying business requirements and provide consistent customer experiences on its Web site and at its customer support centers. ZAMBA's alignment methodology allows Volkswagen to align its customer interaction processes with an overall CRM strategy.
“Volkswagen has identified the importance of creating a holistic, customer-centric vision for their CRM processes and technology,” said Doug Holden, CEO and president of ZAMBA. “By collaborating on this vision and customizing our end-to-end CRM Blueprint to their needs, we are confident that we will help Volkswagen deliver top notch customer service and increase customer loyalty as they continue to grow.”
Volkswagen joins the more than 300 clients that deploy ZAMBA's customer-centric solutions including ADC, Aether Systems, Best Buy, Canon ITS, GE Medical Systems, Enbridge Services, Hertz, General Mills, Microsoft Great Plains, Northrup Grumman, Symbol Technologies, and Towers Perrin.
Ross Systems and Triangle Brick
North Carolina manufacturer, Triangle Brick Company, will utilize the iRenaissance Customer Portal application from Ross Systems, Inc. for its Web store and Virtual Showroom.
With over 1,500 active accounts, Triangle Brick operates in a complex, multi-tier supply chain that includes distributors, dealers, builders and consumers. The company implemented the iRenaissance Customer Portal from Ross to provide robust, yet simple-to-use sales tools for their sales channels, and help them work as effectively as possible with their customers.
“We created the Virtual Showroom to provide easy access to our product catalog and project database online,” said Scott Mollenkopf, vice president and chief financial officer for Triangle Brick. “Once a customer selects a brick, they can learn where the brick is installed in their vicinity and see what a house looks like with their exact choice. We've found this new approach to be much more effective for customers than viewing small samples in physical showrooms. In addition to the Virtual Showroom, we've also created the Web Store that enables our sales channels to check product availability, place new orders, and check on the status of current orders. The system eliminates guesswork in the field and greatly improves customer satisfaction with up-to-date, accurate information.”
Atlanta-based Ross is a global supplier of business software solutions designed specifically for food and beverage, life sciences, chemicals, metals, natural products and other process manufacturers.
Fort Point Partners and Restoration Hardware
Fort Point Partners Inc. will build an e-commerce platform for Restoration Hardware, Inc., re-launching the site with improved and scalable functionality, including catalog browsing, search, order processing, registration, administration, reporting, CRM, merchandising, and personalization tools.
“The successful re-launch of restorationhardware.com is a critical component of our new merchandising strategy,” said Tom Bazzone, chief operating officer of Restoration Hardware. “We chose Fort Point Partners because of their technical, business, and operational expertise in building technology solutions. Their expertise has already resulted in significant development time and cost savings.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, Fort Point Partners has been engaged by more than 50 businesses, including Barclays Global Investors, Kmart (BlueLight.com), J. Crew, and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Pivotal and Kronos
Kronos, The Optimal Health Company, will receive enterprise-wide support from Pivotal Corporation solutions, including Pivotal Contact Center. The integrated healthcare delivery organization comprised of four divisions — Kronos Optimal Health Centre, Kronos Science Laboratory, Kronos Compounding Pharmacy and Kronos Connect — will be able to deliver multi-channel customer support to its vast client base and healthcare network of physicians, pharmacists and lab technicians.
Phoenix-based Kronos will use Pivotal's advanced CRM capabilities in the Kronos Connect call center to provide a custom-tailored, fully functionally outsourced contact center. Using the solution, call center agents will easily resolve requests, deliver consistent service, minimize service costs and up-sell and cross-sell using intuitive, personalized service portals. The solution will empower Kronos' highly skilled call center agents with the latest technology to efficiently capture, track, manage, escalate and resolve client service or support requests.
“Optimal health is a priority for our clients, but they have hectic lives — so our strategy is to adapt our business to make access to our services easier and more convenient for them,” said Geoff Duke, vice president of knowledge systems, Kronos. “Pivotal will enable us to do business in a flexible way that offers our clients personalized healthcare advice, products and services by phone, over the Internet and in-person. Pivotal provides us with advanced CRM functionality for a sensible cost — it was clearly the right technical and business fit for our needs.”
More than 1,400 global companies use Pivotal including: Hewlett Packard, CIBC, HarperCollins Publishers, Hitachi Telecom Inc., Intrawest Corporation, Vivendi, Royal Bank of Canada, Southern Company, and Ziff Davis Media Inc.
Blue Pumpkin and Thomas Cook
Wordwide travel company, Thomas Cook Direct, hopes to improve customer service and increase loyalty through solutions from Blue Pumpkin Software, UK Ltd.
With more than 80,000 calls per week, UK-based Thomas Cook needed quick ROI technology that could support and simplify the process of managing and optimizing a complex and busy workforce. By using Blue Pumpkin Director with Web-Enabled Self-Service, agents are able to manage their own schedules through a self-service browser-based interface.
Before choosing Blue Pumpkin, other CRM vendors were considered. Simon Priestley, head of capacity and yield at Thomas Cook Direct, comments, “The key differentiators in Blue Pumpkin's favour were its ability to schedule staff according to their skill sets, and the easy-to-use graphical user interface. Contact centre managers can now monitor all four centres from their desktop, enabling them to instantly compare resource levels, overlap and identify where staffing and skill levels can be improved for the next day. Blue Pumpkin9s solution is infinitely better than our previous combination of spreadsheets and TCS. We also expect to see a quick return-on-investment (ROI), a 25 percent drop in call abandon rates and other significant gains.”
Blue Pumpkin is headquartered in the Silicon Valley and provides solutions to more than 750 customers including Apple, AT&T, Yorkshire Building Society, Going Places, Nationwide Building Society, PPP Healthcare & Sykes.
