E.piphany Inc. and Onyx Software Corp. are broadening their respective CRM software suites by integrating capabilities gained through recent acquisitions and partnerships.
E.piphany took a major step in its evolution from being a provider of only analytical customer relationship management software to becoming a complete operational and analytical CRM vendor with the release last week of an SFA (sales force automation) component of its E.5 suite.
The E.piphany Sales application is an updated and rebranded version of Moss Software Inc.s ActiveSales SFA. E.piphany, based in San Mateo, Calif., acquired Moss in February.
The sales application will allow E.piphany to compete head-to-head with such well-heeled rivals as Siebel Systems Inc. and PeopleSoft Inc., which often sell their sales applications to customers before CRM applications. Company officials said E.piphanys differentiator is its integrated analytics, which is also the strong suit of the E.5 suite.
Kevin Grant, senior vice president and CIO of Transamerica Capital Inc., an insurance and financial services company in Denver, said he hopes E.piphany lives up to its claims. Grant has used ActiveSales for more than three years.
“Were waiting to see what benefits E.piphany brings us,” Grant said.
Transamericas corporate parent, holding company Aegon NV, of The Hague, Netherlands, hopes to build a cross-division company database using E.piphany technology to better coordinate the marketing activities of its various divisions, Grant said. Transamerica said it hopes to build better analytics for its sales applications. The company now has just a basic executive information system.
“E.piphany boasts some significant analytical capabilities. Thats certainly a plus for us,” Grant said.
But there may be challenges. Transamerica was used to working directly with Moss on its implementation of the software and ongoing support. E.piphany now outsources nearly all its services.
“E.piphany does their business a little differently,” Grant said. “Well have to wait and see how its going to work out. Itll be a change for us, but well keep going.”
Separately, Onyx earlier this month announced the addition of e-Service applications, thanks to a partnership with Firepond Inc. Onyx, of Bellevue, Wash., will rebrand Fireponds eService- Performer online customer service applications as Onyx e-Service and integrate them into Onyx Customer and Employee Portal applications of Onyxs Enterprise 2001 CRM portal suite.
The Firepond technology, which the Waltham, Mass., company acquired when it bought Brightware Inc. in February, will add automatic and assisted e-mail response, live chat and instant messaging, and online self-service tools to Onyxs software. Onyx e-Service is available now.