ACCPAC launches integrated eCRM in SA

ACCPAC Africa recently held its "Invasion of Privacy" breakfast seminars in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, where the company showcased the latest tools available on the customer relationship management (CRM) front.

Those attending the seminars were able to evaluate ACCPAC's eCRM - a flexible, Web based CRM solution that provides enterprise-wide access - ensuring key personnel have access to vital customer, partner and prospect information, anywhere and at anytime.

"The attendance register reflected the high volumes of interest from business in Web-based and wireless-capable CRM solutions for the mid-market. Countrywide we had more than 400 people attend our eCRM launches. In particular, it emerged that tighter back-office integration, enhanced PDA support and improved reporting and analysis are all on the wish-list," says Jeremy Waterman, MD of ACCPAC Africa.

According to Waterman, ACCPAC eCRM meets all these requirements. "Businesses looking to increase profitability are realising that they must focus on increasing customer satisfaction and retention while reducing unnecessary expenses. It's a technology that the market has been in dire need of for quite some time.

"Truly customer-centric organisations attempt to ensure that customers have a consistent, satisfying, and personalised experience when interacting with the organisation," he says. "Regardless of whether they are dealing with representatives from sales, customer care, support, or how they choose to interact with you- face-to-face, by phone, or online through the Web or e-mail."

Further complicating this business practice is that the tremendous information gathered by modern organisations is scattered across multiple databases in different internal functional organisations such as marketing, customer support, sales, accounting and operations.

As a result, most organisations have large quantities of information gathered, but its value is only minimally realised because employees don't have access to all the information needed to provide superior service.

ACCPAC eCRM, part of the ACCPAC suite of end-to-end e-business management solutions, provides small and medium-sized businesses a single portal to all customer information in a single place, while making the information easily accessible to everyone who requires access from the desktop, the Internet, or wireless device.

As a browser-based application, eCRM is built on thin technology, providing rapid deployment, efficiency, speed and cost-effectiveness. It is installed on a single server, eliminating the need for unpredictable and costly client installations, configurations, upgrades, customisations and the costs associated with them.

"Thin network-designed eCRM Web pages and graphics are considerably smaller in size than standard Web pages, allowing faster downloads even over slow connections," says Waterman. "With eCRM, a Web browser and Internet access is all that you need to access the entire solution, anywhere, anytime. "The result is increased customer satisfaction, loyalty and dramatic increases in organisational efficiency, resulting in higher revenues and lower costs," he concludes.