All of these companies belong to an emerging marketplace of software
applications which are known as Customer Interaction Systems. The
concept underlying these applications is that with customer service
increasing in importance as a differentiator between competing businesses
the front-office processes of interacting with customers are also
increasing in importance. This new class of applications has emerged
as a means of satisfying the need for increasing effectiveness and
efficiency in the administration of these processes. Customer
Interaction processes include; Customer Support, Sales, Marketing,
Field Service, Quality Assurance, Product Configuration, etc. Also,
Internal Help Desk Support is classified as a Customer Interaction
process as the customers of this support operation are a company's
internal employees.
This marketplace can be split into sub-markets based on the
processes automated. The primary sub-markets are;
- Internal Help Desk: Help Desk Support of IT infrastructure
- Customer Support: External Customer Support processes this
includes the Quality Assurance process
- Field Service: When products require Field Service Reps
- Sales Force Automation: Sales & Marketing automation
In general, each of these sub-markets emerged with separate,
independent players to serve each niche. As these niches have
matured and the leaders in each of them has begun to emerge, a
second level of competition has been ignited. That is, these
sub-markets are similar and related enough that there is a
tremendous amount of leverage to be gained from owning more than
one niche. There is technology leverage as the same base technology
platform can be used to serve all of these niches. There is also
market leverage because there is a lot of value added when all of
these processes work together as a whole to ensure a satisfying
experience for a customer. Accordingly, there is competitive
selection for vendors who can satisfy more than one of these related
needs in an integrated manner and the leaders of each sub-market are
crossing sub-market boundaries to fill out an integrated suite of
applications for this larger, emerging CIS market. The leaders in
each segment are;
- Internal Help Desk: Remedy & Software Artistry
- Customer Support: Clarify, Vantive & Scopus
- Field Service: Astea, Marcam, Metrix, PDSC
- Sales Force Automation: Brock Control Systems, Aurum,
Saratoga Systems, Siebel Systems
In addition, there are companies which produce enabling technology
for this market which deserve mention. In all of the Support
processes one of the primary goals is to resolve customer
problems. There is a class of software called Problem Resolution
Systems which is often OEMed into the major support products to
provide the capability of automating this sub-process. Companies
providing this technology include Inference Corporation, Fulcrum
Technologies and the Verity Corporation.
There is tremendous growth ahead for those who dominate this new
market space.
Hope this helps.
Anthony Wooten |
