New Product Spotlight: April 21, 2004

KANA has announced the release of its service resolution management (SRM) solutions, targeted to help reduce the costs associated with resolving customer issues through assisted and self-service applications. KANA SRM includes KANA Self-Service applications (to provide customers with multichannel tools and a service portal to help manage their relationship with the enterprise); KANA Assisted Service (to provide service agents with current and consistent knowledge); and KANA Proactive Service (for planning, automating, scheduling, and the delivery of outbound customer-service messages). Astute Solutions announced a partnership with BenchmarkPortal that enables Astute to offer call center benchmarking and to perform audits that lead to Call Center of Excellence certification. BenchmarkPortal specializes in benchmarking, certification, and satisfaction measurement for contact centers, and is affiliated with Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality. (Once the call center defines the improvements required to move it into the upper-right quadrant through the audit process, it becomes eligible for Center of Excellence Certification.) NetIQ Corporation launched WebTrends 7, a Web-analytics solution available both as software and as a hosted Web-analysis service. A visual analytics feature provides high-powered graphics as an alternative to tables and charts, using graphical diagrams to illustrate routes to identify common drop-off points and paths that lead to conversion. In addition WebTrends SmartView allows users to evaluate page real estate as they browse the Web site. The product line is available in three editions--WebTrends 7 Enterprise, WebTrends 7 Professional, and WebTrends 7 Small Business. Empirix has launched Empirix Baseline, a new service to help companies benchmark the performance of automated systems in their contact centers. Using the Voice Watch hosted monitoring service, which dials into a voice application as a customer would, Empirix Baseline navigates prompts and menus, and measures each step of a customer transaction. Every two weeks Empirix consultants analyze the transaction data and present a summary report with customized metrics like time-to-connect, time-to-greet, menu response times, speech recognition rates, transaction lengths, transaction failure rates, and call quality. BlueRoads Corporation introduced BlueRoads 5, a channel management solution to assist marketing and sales processes through indirect channels. BlueRoads 5 offers a suite of closed-loop processes that help companies measure, model, and tune aspects of channel marketing, sales, and operations in real-time. Process modules include dynamic partner profiling, campaign management, lead and opportunity management, and guided selling. The solution features a new-account registration manager, market development funded and coop manager, and contract renewal manager. Databeacon announced its support for Microsoft Analysis Services. This release enables midmarket enterprises to leverage their existing investments in Microsoft Analysis Services to gain insight from corporate data reports and to make decisions with Databeacon's interactive data publishing tools and Insight viewer. Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services is a complete, end-to-end platform for analysis, including online analytical process features and data mining. eAssist Global Solutions released the eAssist NetAgent Contact Center 6.5, an application for multichannel customer interaction management that delivers out-of-the-box integration with eAssist Service Desk. This newest version of the solution provides call center supervisors with a view into agent activity to ensure they are meeting service levels. It incorporates two new security features into its NetAgent Email, includes updated routing rules for its NetAgent Chat (to ensure the most appropriate agent is fed the next chat session), and enhanced routing rules and switch reporting for its NetAgent CTI.