E.piphany Releases Version 6.5

E.piphany today released the latest version of its CRM suite, version 6.5. This new release focuses on optimizing sales, marketing, and service for the enterprise, and also includes the company's new "customer relationship backbone," which it says allows for better unification of customer data. One of the benefits of the suite is that it is modular and can be deployed incrementally over time, according to Phil Fernandez, president and COO of E.piphany. This approach can minimize total cost of system ownership, while allowing users to see positive results quickly, the company claims. Known for its deep analytics capabilities, E.piphany is fueling its CRM suite with the customer relationship backbone, a set of J2EE services that is designed to enable organizations to solve critical data and process integration issues across all CRM applications, and to combine the real-time customer intelligence capabilities of E.piphany software products to optimize every customer interaction, the company says. "Service-oriented architectures are enabling companies to break down traditional information silos, infuse the organization with real-time intelligence, and optimize customer interactions," said Kim Collins, a research director at Gartner. "The flexibility of modular applications and J2EE-based platforms enable companies to incrementally extend solutions over time with quick deployments that can return substantial ROI." In addition, E.piphany says the new version is more scalable than ever. The company performed high-volume scalability benchmarks through IBM, including a 5,000-seat test of E.piphany Sales and Service software products. Bill Hughes, marketing systems manager at Mazda North America, says the auto manufacturer will be using 6.5 to better link its services division to the CRM system. "We are intending to link the call center module to our marketing department," he says. "One database with all the information about how a customer behaves will allow us to react to their needs more effectively." General availability of the E.piphany 6.5 software suite is scheduled for November 14, 2003. The E.piphany E.6 software products are sold as a perpetual license with pricing typically starting at $250,000. Pricing is based on the number of user seats and the size of the customer base.