Today, CRM is being defined as ranking customers profitably. Here too, the trend has been in integrating CRM solutions with the Internet as well as the back-end systems of the organizational structure. For instance, using mySAP, Villeroy & Boch sales representatives can access as well as upgrade current customer and product data, orders, customer service records and information on showrooms anytime and anywhere on their laptop computers. Other products from Peoplesoft, Onyx, Oracle, Pivotal and Siebel also support browser-based clients.

One of the most important aspects of CRM strategy lies in answering customer queries promptly and correctly. This is usually done by providing automated responses using keyword matching or else in person—the most effective but expensive option. The California-based YY Software provides answers to text-based queries using what it calls knowledge-based linguistic processing, or KBLB. KBLB combines patented linguistic processing with industry-specific knowledge bases. The solution’s linguistic processing engine deals with language much the way it is processed by humans—it understands sentence structure and phrasing. Instead of charging a traditional software license fee, YY charges by the correct answer at a rate that is below the typical cost-per-answer in a CSR-based service situation.

However, a good CRM strategy lies in integrating voice, fax, Web as well as face-to-face interaction—not just point solutions. For instance, PeopleSoft’s CRM ‘Mobile Sales’ for wireless access protocol is designed to let field sales representatives access customer service databases from a cellular phone.

Voice, fax and hand-held devices

As with PeopleSoft’s CRM 8, a pure Internet solution is now seen as a shortcoming that needs to be upgraded instantly to integrate with mobile connectivity. "Once software is Web-enabled, it is just a question of transformation and does not involve cumbersome technology. A PDA or a mobile is treated like yet another thin client," explains Oracle’s Bhagat. In February 2001, Onset introduced Metamessage, a wireless service that displays Web pages and more than 25 different file types on wireless e-mail devices by converting Web pages, faxes and attachments into textual e-mails.

There are similar offerings by Equinox and Astata, and PDA software applications such as ‘Documents To Go’ from DataViz, which let you view and edit attachments on a Palm. These, however, have shortcomings like garbled text.

Office software

A 51% growth in PC sales has cascaded on to the office software segment. Not surprisingly, the Microsoft office suite continues to occupy over 80% of the market. The obvious reason for this is Microsoft’s business acumen. But for a user, comfortable with any suite, switching to anything else just seems too much of a bother. This is despite the fact that Corel’s WordPerfect, Lotus’ SmartSuite, and Sun’s StarOffice all offer some features that Office lacks. For instance, Corel WordPerfect Office 2002 is a terrific word processor, especially for long and complex documents, but import filters for Microsoft file formats end up removing fancy formatting. As against this, Sun StarOffice 5.2 handles MS Office files well. And even more important, it can be downloaded free.