Chordiant and Eontec Announce Partnership

Chordiant Software and Eontec Ltd. recently announced a partnership agreement aimed at making strides in providing financial institutions with new marketing and banking solutions. According to Chordiant and Eontec, the alliance will combine Chordiant's process-centric sales and marketing solutions with Eontec's Java-based banking solutions. Focused on the retail financial-services market, the companies expect to be able to help banks improve customer service and increase the speed in which various products are delivered, while also reducing the total costs of call-center operation. Eontec executive chairman Patrick Brazel says that this alliance combines enterprise-banking functionality with customer management. "By tying together the best of the customer management and banking technology worlds, this alliance will deliver competitive advantage to our mutual clients and will do so faster and more effectively than ever before," Brazel says. Even though the partnership was only recently announced, Chordiant's senior vice president of marketing, Paul Burrin, is optimistic about the potential the partnership offers. According to Burrin, this new Java-based enterprise solution offers a capability based on open, distributed computing standards and should be of interest to any financial services organization that is thinking about branch transformation or end-to-end process-based customer management solutions in retail finance. In addition, Chordiant president and CEO Stephen Kelly says that retail banks can expect a return on investment within six to 12 months. "The majority of the cost base in a retail bank lies within the branch network and contact centers," Kelly says. "Chordiant and Eontec anticipate that we will help retail banks increase the cost efficiency of their branch and contact center operations by 20 to 30 percent." According to Kelly the partnership could help user companies differentiate their brands, improve customer retention, and maximize cross-selling opportunities. As part of these joint solutions Eontec financial components will be available to Chordiant customers, while Chordiant functionality will be available to Eontec's banking clients.