Headline Feeds
Like a bevy of CRM software providers that have come before it, Kana this week pushed out the first phase of its hosted onDemand initiative for its iCARE suite of Service Resolution Management (SRM) solutions. The company's onDemand project initially supports Kana's Response Live application, is available as either a hosted or in-house product, and offers both perpetual and subscription licensing.
H.A. Schade, vice president of products at Kana, said in an interview with CRM Buyer that SRM fits under the broad umbrella of CRM but is specifically targeted toward the increasingly complex customer-service problems facing enterprises today. Rather than focusing on getting a customer off the phone as fast as possible, as traditional call-center offerings do, SRM works to find answers for complicated problems, such as product failures or how to fill out difficult forms, then helps call-center agents assist customers in getting to the source of the problem.
Help as Needed
The company's first hosted application, Response Live, offers a comprehensive solution for managing high volumes of inbound e-mail and Web-form inquiries, especially complex ones. An example of a customer scenario involving a knotty problem is a home buyer who begins by browsing a banking Web site and generally interacting with the Web in a self-help manner -- clicking around, looking for mortgage rates, using the mortgage calculator to determine down payments and terms.
But when the time comes to complete the online mortgage form, things can get confusing fast. If the customer needs help, Kana's Response Live rescues him or her with a "help button." When the customer has a question, clicking this button launches a text chat window that lets the customer interact with an agent in a call center. The agent can help the customer fill out the mortgage form, co-browse the Web site, highlight things the customer needs to know and even fill out the form if the customer wants him or her to do so.
More Modules Soon
Schade said that through arrangements with its partners, Kana plans to extend its hosted onDemand offering across its iCARE product line in the near future. iCARE can be used by customers as either an external-facing or internal-facing product, he added, and is built on Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) .NET architecture.
Pricing for the hosted version of iCARE will be based on a per-module menu and may vary depending on product functionality and sales channel.
How About Those CRM Giants?
However, Kana is not the biggest fish in the CRM pond to be working with .NET, and it may see increased competition as a result of SAP and Microsoft's recently announced partnership.
Steve Trotta, a software analyst with Technology Business Research, told CRM Buyer that to extend its reach into the growing CRM market, SAP needed to improve its interoperability with Microsoft Windows platforms. Through the agreement with Microsoft, SAP has enabled more than 3 million Visual Basic developers to build on the NetWeaver platform instead of limiting itself to a much smaller pool of J2EE developers, who are predominantly found in the enterprise market.
Still, the CRM giant's announcement doesn't faze Kana's Schade. "We see it as an endorsement of the Web-services approach," he said. "Essentially, they're working for a tighter integration of their own environments."
Limited Short-Term Impact
Aberdeen Group's vice president of supply-side research, Chris Selland, concurred that both SAP's NetWeaver and Microsoft's .NET are highly strategic platforms that need each other to be successful. However, he noted that in the short term, the impact of the recent partnership announcement is likely to be limited.
So, while the two software giants figure out how to work together, Kana
and other niche CRM players can rest easy -- for now, at least.
