Moving forward with its YOUcentric application integration, J.D. Edwards & Co. announced Tuesday the availability of two new applications, OneWorld Customer Self-Service and Supplier Self-Service. The Denver company also announced an upgrade to its current portal offering.
The new Web-based self-service applications enable customers and suppliers to help themselves to specific information stored in JDEs OneWorld applications.
OneWorld is JDEs suite of applications that was preceded by World, the companys original suite of enterprise resource planning applications.
With the new Customer Self-Service application, customers can modify forecasts, review sales orders and invoices, track shipments, manage user profiles, review account balances and payment history and obtain customer alerts.
The supplier Self-Service application allows partners along the supply chain to access such information as account information, purchase orders, release schedules, responses and supplier performance analyses.
Customers and suppliers, for their part, need not have OneWorld apps installed in-house, rather they can access information through a Web interface. Likewise, companies do not need any specific IT tools to install the self-service applications, according to officials.
JDE also released a new version of the OneWorld Portal that enables users to access JDE applications – including the two new self service offerings – as well as other applications and content from a laptop computer or Pocket PC, via a Web browser.
The new applications and portal upgrade signal further integration of customer relationship management technology JDE acquired last year.
JDE purchased CRM software maker YOUcentric Inc. last fall, and in doing so acquired the YOUrelate suite of applications that includes sales force automation, contact center, customer service and marketing campaign management.
JDE has been working to integrate YOUcentric with its existing CRM system, which includes customer self service, inbound call management, sales order configuration, among others.
“Integration of YOUcentric is going to be key,” said Robert Dutkoswky, in a previous interview with eWeek. “Its a brilliant move for the company. We have 6,000 customers that can use CRM and now we have a product to roll out.”
Dutkoswky said only about six percent of JDEs install base currently have a CRM system installed.
“Who are they going to look to? The company that helped them build their infrastructure,” he said. “That market is ours to lose and we dont intend to.”