ClarifyCRM Gives 360 Degree Customer View

Companies want a 360 degree view of their customers, and Amdocs' release yesterday of its ClarifyCRM solution is designed to do just that. Amdocs, an industry leader in billing and order management systems, saw an opportunity to better service its customers by adding CRM to its application suite. So the company purchased Clarify from Nortel Networks at the end of 2001. Yesterday, at this year's Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's (CTIA) annual trade show, Amdocs released its first Clarify offering: ClarifyCRM. The software integrates Clarify's sales, marketing, service expertise with Amdocs' analytics, churn predictors, and campaign tracking abilities. The result is an end-to-end solution that meshes the CRM front end with the billing back end. Amdocs' pitch is that having one solution to handle all of these tasks could lower a companies cost of ownership by having one vendor instead of multiple vendors, could ease integration, and would create a 360 degree view of its customers. Additionally, customers would benefit by being afforded better access to their account information and other relevant data. "CRM is becoming a mission-critical application, therefore the integration of CRM into company processes is vital," says Peter Hurst, vice president of marketing and alliances at Amdocs' ClarifyCRM division. "Amdocs is looking to deliver on the promise of CRM." With the release of ClarifyCRM, Amdocs is the first vendor to offer integrated CRM and billing applications. This will give the firm an advantage as it seeks to cross-sell the new ClarifyCRM to current Amdocs and Clarify customers, as well as sell to new customers. One benefit the company sees in introducing the product is its sales model. ClarifyCRM will adopt the approach used by Amdocs to foster long-term customer relationships. "Amdocs is focused a solutions model and on long-term relationships, which is really appropriate to the CRM market," Hurst says. In fact, "building loyalty through service excellence," is not only Amdocs' credo, but what it aims to help its customers offer through ClarifyCRM.