PeopleSoft Touts CRM and Product Developments

During its Connect conference held in Anaheim, CA, this week PeopleSoft cataloged its CRM advancements over the past several weeks, and outlined some product changes that will effect all PeopleSoft applications. In addition to its CRM analytics and integration upgrades the company noted added functionality across marketing, sales, and service to improve business effectiveness. More than a dozen new features were released, including a Quick Customer Create feature that enables call center agents to create a new customer record when opening an email inquiry. PeopleSoft also created an enhanced customer preference-tracking feature, making it easier for companies to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call legislation. The company also pointed out that it has released PeopleSoft Infosync Server, designed to deliver automatic, server-side synchronization between PeopleSoft CRM and Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes servers, eliminating the need to load synchronization software on the client. Les Wyatt, vice president and general manager of PeopleSoft's new EnterpriseOne product line, aimed at the mid-market, says that integration of the PeopleSoft CRM product with J.D. Edwards' CRM suite will make the product very attractive to mid-market companies. "We are going to be taking certain functionalities like PeopleSoft's call center solutions and build that out on the EnterpriseOne line," he says. "There will be a lot of deep integration between the EnterpriseOne and Enterprise (PeopleSoft's enterprise-level suite) platforms." PeopleSoft announced at Connect that it is also adding better overall implementation and integration tools to its whole suite of products, not just CRM. These will be available in December, according to the company. On the usability front PeopleSoft is introducing a new task-oriented user interface for all PeopleSoft applications. The interface will make it intuitive to navigate between applications by incorporating a full page of task-oriented icons that appear before and after each task, according to the company. PeopleSoft said it will also deliver new usability improvements to reduce the time needed to complete common application tasks. The improvements include reduced steps for general ledger entries, time and expense self-service, and procurement approval processing. The usability upgrades will also become available in December.