PeopleSoft Expands Product Line

At PeopleSoft Connect EMEA 2003, being held this week in Barcelona, the company announced the expansion of its Customer Loyalty and Retention (CLR) program with IBM into the European telecommunications service provider market, as well as a new release of its Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solution. The PeopleSoft-IBM Customer Loyalty and Retention solution aims to tightly integrate revenue management data with CRM processes. As a result, telecommunications companies should be able to better identify, acquire, and retain profitable customers, the company says. The announcement comes just as the Local Number Portability Act takes effect, which will allow wireless users to retain their number even if they switch wireless providers. IBM is providing the technology and integration services for the Customer Loyalty and Retention solution, including the IBM Service Provider Delivery Environment, an open standards-based framework designed to give wireline and wireless telecommunications service providers the flexibility to introduce new, revenue generating voice, text, and internet services to their customers faster, easier, and at a lower cost. PeopleSoft says it is providing preintegrated CRM for Communications and Customer Behavior Modeling applications. The combined offering provides customer-facing agents with real-time access to tightly integrated financial and CRM data. Critical customer profitability information is presented to the agent within the context of the service interaction allowing them to more effectively identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities and strengthen their customer relationships, according to PeopleSoft. The Yankee Group ranked customer and product profitability analysis as a leading business intelligence spending initiative for communications firms in 2003. "Customer service providers need solutions that will integrate information from traditionally siloed business process and enable a true view of customer profitability," Sanjay Mewada, a research director with Yankee Group, said in a PeopleSoft statement. "The PeopleSoft-IBM solution is designed to meet this market need." PeopleSoft's latest version of its SRM solution is designed to allow companies to track "one hundred percent of company spend," according to PeopleSoft. New features include several procurement and e-procurement additions, rate comparison capabilities, collaborative sourcing capabilities, and overall enhanced usability. "PeopleSoft has made substantial investments in its supply chain management offerings," Barry Wilderman, senior vice president and director of analyst firm META Group, writes in a recent report, "Deriving Value from 21st Century ERP Applications." "By integrating enterprise analytics, combined with new capabilities in supplier relationship management and services procurement, this vendor is continuing to invest in expanding its product footprint."