HP-led partnership helps businesses see the CRM light

Hewlett-Packard SA and customer relationship management (CRM) software vendor E.piphany are extending their global agreement to SA in a bid to establish a dominant position in what they see as a high-growth area for the local market.

The agreement will see HP and local CRM implementer Epi-Use delivering complete implementation and integration services for E.piphany`s entire suite of CRM software.

Epi-Use has already seen a successful installation at a local financial services company and the partnership has "several more deals in the pipeline," says Leon Erasmus, CRM Practice Manager for HP SA.

The E.piphany solution is an integrated suite of software modules that combines Web-based analytic and operational CRM to unify all marketing, sales and service interactions with customers. Supported by powerful analytics, E.piphany enables companies with the insight they need to better understand and proactively serve customers in real-time.

The company was last month named as a leader in marketing applications by global research house Gartner, based on its ability to execute and complete its vision.

"We`re focused on leveraging strong business relationships that deliver intelligent CRM in global, high-growth markets," said James Eiloart of E.piphany.

"We`ve experienced tremendous momentum working with HP to address the need for a customer intelligence platform that helps leading companies drive insight into marketing, sales and service. The result is a single enterprise-wide view of each customer, enabling insight and personalised action across all points of interaction - from the Internet to the contact centre and beyond." HP and E.piphany have already successfully implemented the solution across multiple vertical industries ranging from financial services to manufacturing sectors.

Erasmus said that changing perceptions of CRM in the local marketplace are resulting in an increasing demand. "The local market has a clearer view of the importance of CRM as it becomes harder to sustain operational advantages, " said Erasmus. "Our approach is not to sell technology, but the business value thereof. Effective CRM should enable companies to turn the total customer experience into a more sustainable competitive advantage than offered by their products and services."

Greig Smith, director of CRM at Epi-Use, cites Gartner research showing that enterprises leveraging e-marketing data into collective customer repositories will be 40% more effective in targeting profitable customers and quality prospects than competitors that do not take advantage of data from their electronic channels.

"E.piphany is a proven solution that we have already implemented at more 30 customers worldwide. It has enabled those companies to can gain new customers and avoided high churn by better understanding their existing customer base. These are very real-world challenges that business faces every day. With this alliance, we have great services to offer the local market," said Smith.

A key selling point of the suite is likely to be its Web architecture.

"E.piphany`s suite is not a client-server application that has been Web-enabled. Rather it is Web architected from the ground up. Among other benefits, this architecture makes the solution much faster and easier to deploy across an enterprise - there are simply no client side software installation headaches to worry about. This helps reduce cost of deployment and in turn improves return on investment," said Eiloart.