Amdocs Dials Up Telecommunication Integration

Amdocs today made what executives at the company are calling the company's largest, most significant launch, unveiling a three-prong announcement about its latest CRM products, implementation, and strategy. The CRM telecommunications specialist launched Amdocs 6, an integrated portfolio of billing, CRM, self-service, order management, and content-revenue management software. In conjunction with Amdocs 6, the company announced Amdocs Consulting Services, an expanded consulting capability targeted for communication service providers (CSPs). Last, Amdocs and SAS announced the formation of a global strategic alliance to deliver advanced marketing automation and BI solutions to CSPs. The company's goal with Amdocs 6 was to design a consolidated package to ease and accelerate the adoption and implementation of a CRM solution. Everything within the upgraded portfolio is preintegrated to remove as many process barriers, and is designed to help telecommunications companies adopt and implement a customer management strategy. "The biggest difference between Amdocs 6 and what we've announced in the past is that this is a consolidation of a number of different factors," says Scott Kolman, director of product marketing for the Amdocs CRM 6 division. "This is multiple product lines coming together in a consistent manner. Everything is preintegrated, versus having to stare at multiple product groups having to do their own thing." Amdocs 6 includes a fully convergent billing product designed for a telecommunications service provider's prepaid, postpaid, voice, and data billing operations. The latest version of Amdocs CRM has introduced a new self-service component, enabling customers to handle their own billing, ordering, support issues, and other general account information. Service management was also addressed, with enhancements to service level agreements. Agents will have access to increased amounts of customer information to help with prioritizing and escalating customer issues. Other products within Amdocs 6 include order management, content revenue management, and mediation. Also, common enhancements have been added across all the products included in the portfolio--a common product catalog has been added so companies have a single depository for offers, whether they're from billing or order management. Amdocs Consulting Services was implemented to reduce execution risk and help companies see where they stack up against their competition to build an effective CRM plan. Among the new consulting services is the ICM Benchmark Service, part of ICM Blueprint Framework. Designed to assess current state versus industry benchmarks and best practices, it will facilitate creation of an integrated customer-management strategy based on a customer's situation. The services are designed to take into account investments, goals, and competitive environment, among other areas. "With customer management, it's obviously more then just products, so the company also announced a number of programs and services to make that successful for people," Kolman says. "Customers can see where they are today; what are their goals; what are their customer strategies, and then see where they want to go and set up a road map to get there." Amdocs and SAS also announced a global alliance to deliver advanced marketing automation and BI solutions to CSPs. According to the companies the alliance will enable CSPs to track and analyze customer data and present resulting intelligence via operational systems, such as billing, call center, and ordering. The first offering from Amdocs and SAS is the Customer Profitability and Segmentation solution. The solution will let telecommunication companies understand the costs associated with doing business with their customers. "This alliance is about CSPs placing their customer at the core of their business," says Eli Gelman, executive vice president at Amdocs. "The synergy between our two companies allows service providers to align resources to better understand customers, act on that insight in a timely and relevant way, and execute an effective integrated customer management strategy." Related articles: Keeping Pace With the Evolution of CRM SBC Says "We Will" and Strikes a $16 Billion Purchase Agreement With AT&T

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