SAP and Alcatel to Create New Breed of Applications To
Drive Customer Relationships
WALLDORF, GERMANY and PARIS, FRANCE--FEBRUARY 6, 2001 - 07:23 EST
Companies to More Tightly Integrate Current CRM Offerings,
Announce Plans to Create Knowledge-Driven, Enterprisewide
Solutions for Intelligent Marketing, Sales, Service Activity
SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), Alcatel (NYSE:ALA), and Genesys
Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of
Alcatel, today announced a strategic alliance aimed at improving
the effectiveness of how businesses link their customers with
contact center agents, knowledge workers and related front- and
back-office processes for more efficient, personalized customer
relationships.
SAP is the world's leading provider of e-business software
solutions, and Genesys is the leading provider of universal queue
contact center solutions for complete customer relationship
management.
The alliance builds on an existing connection between
mySAP.com(TM) from SAP and Genesys' call center capabilities,
which have received positive market acceptance.
"In early December, ECI went live with an implementation of an
integrated Genesys and SAP(TM) solution, operating in an inbound
and outbound call center environment," said Marc van Gerwen,
senior telematic consultant, ECI voor boeken en platen BV, a
division of Bertelsmann. "With an interface between those two
applications, we are able to share customer data between Genesys
and SAP to make more intelligent customer routing decisions in the
contact center. As a result, our customers are experiencing much
more efficient and consistent customer service."
The near-term integration plans will expand to include an SAP
connection to all the interaction types supported by Genesys' G6
solutions (i.e., voice, e-mail, fax, Web) with availability
expected in the third quarter of 2001. Starting in early 2002, the
two companies will introduce integrated work-force management,
combining the SAP mySAP Human Resources (HR) solution with the
Genesys WorkForce Management solution for managing contact center
employees.
Further in 2002, the alliance will deliver a new breed of CRM
solutions, jointly developed and marketed by both partners. The
new solutions will, for the first time, provide mySAP Workplace
users with access to all types of communication channels and
interaction technology.
Traditionally, those capabilities have been available only to
front-line contact center agents, leaving employees from other
parts of a company disconnected from relevant customer
interaction.
The SAP partnership is one of the most far-reaching agreements
within Alcatel's enterprise activities, where Alcatel has been
establishing partnerships with e-business software leaders both on
its own and through Genesys. The company is re-engineering its
enterprise voice and data communications business to focus on
e-business and is linking up with leaders like SAP to offer
customers state-of-the-art CRM solutions that enable businesses to
work more effectively.
Increasing CRM Benefits
Over the near term, SAP and Genesys will build out their current
integration between mySAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
and Genesys' leading routing and CTI solutions for contact
centers. Genesys and SAP plan to add the full range of integrated,
multimedia interaction management capabilities currently offered
by Genesys into mySAP CRM, including universal queue customer
routing, e-mail management, advanced Web chat capabilities,
Internet services, voice-over-IP, and dynamic content sharing for
more powerful agent-customer Web collaboration. The outbound
telemarketing campaign capabilities of Genesys will also be
available within mySAP.com, to allow any SAP application to be a
source of information for outbound dialing campaigns.
SAP and Genesys also plan to integrate the mySAP HR solution with
Genesys' Workforce Management solution to deliver a solution for
managing contact center agents. That application maximizes
employee productivity, while factoring in scheduling, training and
payroll needs to help retain and build on current contact center
resources. The integrated offering will be available in early
2002.
Software Will Set New Standard for Customer-to-Enterprise
Relationship
Today, mySAP CRM enables businesses to focus on individual
customers and provides the information and resources needed to
manage those relationships more efficiently and profitably.
Through the alliance, SAP and Genesys will take the concept a step
further by jointly developing and marketing products that combine
advanced customer and interaction routing with the intimate
customer knowledge from multiple enterprise applications and
business processes -- from contact center and front office through
to the back office. With a built-in capability to interact with
customers and leveraging a constantly informed view of each
individual customer, across the enterprise, businesses will have
the power to more effectively communicate and deliver on customer
engagement, transaction, fulfillment and service activity through
any interaction type.
"SAP is pleased to be teaming up with the industry technology
leader Genesys," said Rainer Zinow, vice president of the Customer
Interaction Center Solution at SAP AG. "By integrating Genesys'
software via open interfaces into mySAP CRM and the mySAP
Workplace, we will be offering the market the leading solution
that enables customers to touch all business processes in their
interactions with their customers regardless of the means of point
of contact."
"The combination of technology from SAP and Genesys closes the
knowledge and interaction gap between the customer and key
personnel in a company," said Max Raphalen, senior vice president
of OEM relationships for Genesys. "Customer knowledge and customer
interactions, which were once isolated in different departments,
will be made consistently available throughout a company to
deliver increased customer satisfaction and improved reactivity."
About Alcatel
Alcatel builds next-generation networks, delivering integrated
end-to-end voice and data networking solutions to established and
new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With
130,000 employees and sales of EURO 31 billion in 2000, Alcatel
operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit
Alcatel on the Internet at alcatel.com.
About Genesys
Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an independent wholly
owned subsidiary of Alcatel (NYSE:ALA) (Paris:CGEP.PA), is the
leading provider of universal queue contact center solutions for
complete customer relationship management. Genesys offers an
integrated suite of open, infrastructure-independent applications
that manage interactions across all media types, networks and
applications. Headquartered in San Francisco, Genesys has served
Global 2000 enterprises and major telecommunications carriers and
service providers for more than for 10 years. Today, Genesys has
offices around the world and maintains a global network of
partners, including BroadVision, IBM Global Services, Alcatel,
Siebel and Siemens. Visit genesyslab.com or call
1-888-GENESYS (in the United States) for more information.
About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of e-business software
solutions. Through the mySAP.com e-business platform, people in
businesses around the globe are improving relationships with
customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving
significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains. Today,
more than 13,000 companies in over 100 countries run more than
30,000 installations of SAP software. With subsidiaries in over 50
countries, the company is listed on several exchanges including
the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP."
(Additional information at sap.com.)
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