Johannesburg, 10 Sep 2004
Avaya gives SMBs ability to use service and support applications to manage, improve their customer contact functions
Global business communications giant Avaya has announced that it has signed an agreement which enables it to license Microsoft Business Solutions CRM (Microsoft CRM) and develop an "all in one" application suite by embedding it with the new Avaya IP Office family.
The agreement also includes co-marketing and lead generation to enable Microsoft Partners and Avaya BusinessPartners to sell this solution.
Avaya IP Office is an "all-in-one" office communication solution that brings together voice, data and communications applications for small and mid-size businesses. The integrated solution is the result of the Avaya vision to deliver packaged applications and hardware solutions for small and medium businesses.
Several small and medium businesses are improving customer service and reducing operational costs using IP Office with Microsoft CRM, based on a relationship that has been built between the companies over the last year. Avaya is providing an integrated solution, which combines telephony data with information from customer databases and enables smaller firms to deliver service levels that rival those of much larger enterprises.
Traditionally, CRM (customer relationship management) refers to formal call centres used by enterprises that rely heavily on telephone transactions to conduct business. The Avaya solution combines telephony data with CRM data, enabling a whole new set of applications to manage the entire customer experience.
Says Alain Schram, managing director of sub-Saharan Africa at Avaya: "This new solution is ideally tailored to meet the needs of the SMB, which in turn makes it ideal for the South African market of which the SMB makes up a major part of our private sector. Not only are we able to keep the total cost of ownership of this product low, but we are also able to provide impressive speed of deployment all with an affordable price tag.
"Customer service is after all the main differentiator for SMBs. We believe this offering will enable the smaller customer to deliver superior service, which is absolutely critical to their profitability and growth. And we`re enabling companies to better manage their business, by gaining new functions, such as tracking the time and cost required for specific transactions."
Avaya is a global market leader in contact centre solutions, with more than 20 000 customer care centre customers and 500 multi-channel contact centre customers worldwide.
In an international statement Microsoft was quoted saying: "Avaya has significant experience and history in IP telephony, and their vision for what Avaya IP Office can provide has the potential to change the productivity of many small and medium-size organisations. The combination of Microsoft CRM and Avaya IP Office can help companies to manage their sales and services in a way that gives them a competitive advantage and contributes to the way they manage their bottom line."
IS Partners, a Microsoft Gold certified partner and first South African partner certified on Microsoft CRM, believes that tightly integrated call centre and customer relationship management functionality was previously only affordable to larger organisations.
"Microsoft turned this thinking on its head with the introduction of a CRM solution that is affordable to smaller companies, integrates with Microsoft Office applications, offers a simple, user-friendly interface and can scale to meet the growing needs of the mid-market," says Caron Mooney, director of IS Partners.
"Avaya is further making flexible, out-of-the-box call centre functionality and integration possible with IP Office. Smaller organisations will now be able to easily justify the cost of a full-service CRM solution that will also meet their requirements as they grow."
The integrated Avaya/Microsoft CRM application includes: * Avaya IP Office, which serves as the hardware platform for the integrated Avaya-Microsoft solution for small and medium businesses. Part of the industry-leading Avaya IP telephony portfolio, Avaya IP Office supports up to 360 extensions and offers a choice of communication protocols that help small to mid-sized firms move to IP telephony at the pace they choose.
It combines comprehensive voice and data applications normally reserved for large enterprises with easy-to-use tools that allow even the smallest businesses to deliver cutting-edge customer service.
* Avaya Compact Contact Centre for IP Office, which is a comprehensive customer contact application for up to 75 agents that supports voice calls, e-mail, Web chat and Web callback. It includes a full set of customisable capabilities for routing incoming calls and comprehensive management and reporting tools that managers can use to control costs, enhance the customer experience and get the most out of their contact centre investment.
* Microsoft CRM, which helps businesses develop profitable customer relationships through lead and opportunity management, incident management, a searchable knowledgebase, and reporting tools with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM modules. Built using Microsoft .NET-connected technologies, Microsoft CRM is easy to deploy, integrate and customise.
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