The most interesting information I heard was the one related to the Market Space ASPECT wants to occupy:
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP SOLUTIONS INSTEAD OF A CALL CENTER CO.
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What is CRS?
- Integrates with any existing backoffice and frontoffice Enterprise application that end-users may have in place. (ie.SAP, BAAN,ORACLE,SIEBEL, etc.)
- Takes advantage of all new and old means of communications. (voice, web,fax, e-mail, analog and most importantly digital data)and is an open standards suite of solutions that works with any type of hardware: LU, CSCO, NT, SIEMENS, ALCATEL, etc.
- It is designed to improve users bottom line in a big way:
1)Reduce services costs
2)Reduce selling and administrative costs (e-commerce)
- Improve revenues
1) Repeated sales due to positive user experiences, by providing users the information they want in real time (back/frontoffice integration)
2)E-Commerce: up-sales and X-sales with a more efficient use of sales/marketing information
Who occupies this space of CRS nowdays?
Nobody really.
A) On one hand: CSCO, LU, NT, Siemens, Alcatel don't have any products/expertise in Enterprise Software or even expertise on back/frontoffice software integration with call centers, nor have shown any interest in the past in doing anything about it.
B) On the other hand: Oracle, SAP, SIEBEL don't have any expertise/products on network routing software,voice recognition, VoIP, multimedia data integration sofware or company telecommunications.
ASPT's new space is at the intersection of both technological spaces
I believe that companies in either group A & B will find it difficult to make up for their shortcomings, unless they pay top dollars like CSCO did for Geotel.
Now, does the new CRS space have a future?.You bet!Let me explain:
-Customers want a company that can offer the whole integrated solution, rapid implementation, and one that is compatible with existing systems and hardware.
-All companies are looking to new technology that effectively reduces costs an increases revenues
-ASPT new CRS space makes it a "pure play". This is a business model with a brighter future and that analists and market tend to value higher, reasons are:
- You can partner with all the ERP companies
- You can partner with all the telco equipment suppliers
- Higher margin industry (only software)
Which results in a higher revenue growth and is a lower cost/ higher margin business model.
Interesting the comment that Isabel Infante made on ASPT technology being complementary to Geotel: Geotel is in the network routing space, ASPT is in the CRS space.
JAPG |
