Metastorm Adds ICCM to the Pod

Business process management vendor Metastorm on Wednesday announced the availability of e-Service Desk Process Pod, a packaged application that enables Metastorm BPM customers to easily deploy e-Service Desk, a helpdesk management solution built by partner ICCM. The new e-Service Desk Process Pod is part of Metastorm's Process Pod offerings, which include frameworks for both vertical and horizontal business processes as well as more technical offerings that help companies integrate their BPM initiatives into existing IT infrastructures. All Metastorm Process Pods are designed to run on the Metastorm BPM software suite. ICCM's e-Service Desk is a flexible and configurable service management solution that can be implemented with minimal disruption to an organization's working practices, according to Metastorm. Built with Metastorm BPM as its foundation, it provides the practical functionality of service management while aligning the technology with critical business processes. Customers can integrate existing Metastorm BPM implementations with ICCM's e-Service Desk application to take advantage of enterprise-wide service management and gain greater agility and control in developing customer-centric service processes, the company says. The e-Service desk couples an automated email system with a survey management module to help organizations gain greater visibility into the status of requests, incidents, and customer changes so they can react quickly and efficiently to any potential issues. By deploying the e-Service Desk Process Pod on top of the Metastorm BPM platform, organizations can increase service levels both within the business and as delivered to external customers. "By streamlining and automating customer service processes, the system allows organizations to recognize significant reductions in the time spent on admin intensive tasks such as call logging and change requests, freeing up time and resources which can be redeployed to more strategic activities, " said Greg Carter, CTO and vice president of development for Metastorm, in a written statement. "Furthermore, automation removes manual intervention which ensures the quality and reliability of information, leading to improved reporting and ultimately true customer-oriented performance management." No industry analysts could be reached for comment as of press time. However, most believe that BPM is an important adjunct to CRM technologies and techniques. In a research article from April 2007, Gartner analysts Jim Davies and Marc Kerremans stated that organizational collaboration and valued customer experience are two key building blocks of CRM, and BPM answers both needs. "By aligning your company's CRM strategy and BPM initiative with an emphasis on end-to-end customer processes, you can deliver better customer value," they wrote. "The adoption of a BPM approach will change the nature and content of the requirements, as well as impact tool selection, and the following implementation will fit closer to the organization and its processes." Davies and Kerremans recommended that prospective buyers "look beyond traditional CRM applications to find the processes that are not covered in CRM systems that are still important to customers, such as an end-to-end client intervention," and "plan to build BPM expertise in customer-centric process design to allow execution against a customer strategy and delivery of the intended customer experience." Related articles: The Big Picture How to connect the dots to reveal a complete image of new corporate performance management software solutions. BPM's Evolution The CRM Intersection

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