InformationWeek

To succeed in customer-focused efforts, most businesses have in place many or all the following technologies: CRM software, sales-force automation tools, marketing-automation products, business-intelligence software, and data warehouses. Online golf retailer Chipshot.com is just getting started, but it has implemented Kana Communications Inc.'s Kana Response for E-mail response management and Synchrony Inc.'s customer-service software; it's in process with BroadVision for E-commerce customer interactions. "There's a lot of work that's going to go into merging these systems," says Doug Smith, customer-service manager at the Sunnyvale, Calif., company.

Fortunately for businesses, vendors have started to do that work for them. For example, Synchrony is tying together CRM and call-center functions so that Chipshot.com doesn't have to integrate the packages itself. That means both customer-service and returns employees can see all the customer's interactions with its call centers.

The prime example of the consolidation trend is CRM market leader Siebel Systems Inc., which began as a sales-force automation vendor but has expanded its reach to customer-service and marketing in an effort to handle all customer interactions. Siebel 99 includes a data mart for customer analysis, as well as campaign-management tools. Siebel 2000, due later this month, will move beyond traditional CRM capabilities to encompass online sales and service--functions that once would have been handled only by E-commerce and Web service vendors such as BroadVision or Kana.

CRM and campaign-management tools are also incorporating data analysis capabilities. In recent months, Epiphany Inc., a customer analysis software vendor, bought Web personalization company RightPoint Inc. and CRM vendor Octane Software Inc., while analytic vendor Broadbase Inc. acquired marketing-automation vendor Rubric Inc. The goal of those acquisitions is to connect analysis to subsequent action, in real time. With one tool, a business can determine what it has to do for its customers--then go ahead and do it.