In the early 90's, paralleling the publication of Hammer and Champy's Reengineering the Corporation, there were three Northern California companies that each had similar visions of incorporating BPR (Business Process Reengineering) concepts into Front Office applications. They were set to break down departmental barriers, focus on the customer, and enable corporate workers to serve their customers in new, streamlined, and friendly ways. Those three companies were Clarify, Vantive, and Scopus.
Clarify and Scopus started work in the customer support arena, planning to branch out once they gained a customer base and some momentum, while Vantive, with a much broader initial vision that, in retrospect, may have been ten years ahead of its time, focused on a customer-centric database at the core, ringed by all divisions of the company, each having their own "views" into the data they needed. Data was entered one time, existed in one place, and was viewable by all. Very BPR.
My, but we have come a long way. First off, none of those three original companies stand alone any more. The first to go was Scopus, purchased by Siebel in the mid to late 90's to shore up its customer support offering. As an aside, inside information has it that what Siebel bought didn't quite live up to expectations, and they ended up re-building many of the customer support pieces to create the Siebel product you see today.
In 1999, Clarify was purchased by Nortel Networks (see Tech Note Nortel and Clarify: Was There Ever Enough Synergy to Support this Marriage?). Enough said here.
And finally, Vantive was bought by Peoplesoft, the HRMS (Human Resource Management System) plus SCM (Supply Chain Management) software company. At first blush it struck many as an odd pairing of two companies desperate for some good corporate vision. But Peoplesoft (with Vantive) seems to have renewed vigor. If execution and focus are a part of the culture now at Peoplesoft, it all may pay off in the end (see PeopleSoft 8 Launched - Anything to Write Home About?).
All the while, in the late 90's dot-com craze, when "money was free" and intellectual capital and software functionality were key, you had smaller niche players developing ideas about how to do everything from improving customers' online experiences, to establishing vertical and horizontal portals, to analyzing employee performance, to using data to target qualified leads. And other, larger companies, were quietly adding the three letters C.R.M. to their websites, and eating smaller vendors for lunch, for fear of being lost in the Back Office-cum-ERP/SCM, Front Office-cum-CRM world. And wave after wave of multi-million if not multi-billion dollar buy outs and consolidations (for one example, see the Kana reference in the Tech Note sited above) lapped the corporate shores.
As the technology development and consolidation continues unphased, if not stoked, by the economic downturn today, analysts, busy re-defining CRM as "a software space" and "an ecosystem," - very fuzzy - have given rise to the notion of sub areas of CRM; namely, Operational CRM, Analytical CRM and Collaborative CRM. We've got wireless customer service, customer self-service, marketing analytics, collaborative e-commerce, employee portals, operational data stores, data warehouses, data marts, data about data (metadata), business intelligence, OLTP and OLAP, and enterprise value management we can't call all that, simply, CRM, now could we?
Analysts like to compartmentalize in an effort to simplify and understand, and forecast winners and losers, and prognosticate on the future. Sometimes we over-compartmentalize, and over-define, to the point of confusion. And sometimes, we almost make sense of it all, and help buyers of technology know both what's available, and what's right for them. So, let's try if we may.
Clarify and Scopus started work in the customer support arena, planning to branch out once they gained a customer base and some momentum, while Vantive, with a much broader initial vision that, in retrospect, may have been ten years ahead of its time, focused on a customer-centric database at the core, ringed by all divisions of the company, each having their own "views" into the data they needed. Data was entered one time, existed in one place, and was viewable by all. Very BPR.
My, but we have come a long way. First off, none of those three original companies stand alone any more. The first to go was Scopus, purchased by Siebel in the mid to late 90's to shore up its customer support offering. As an aside, inside information has it that what Siebel bought didn't quite live up to expectations, and they ended up re-building many of the customer support pieces to create the Siebel product you see today.
In 1999, Clarify was purchased by Nortel Networks (see Tech Note Nortel and Clarify: Was There Ever Enough Synergy to Support this Marriage?). Enough said here.
And finally, Vantive was bought by Peoplesoft, the HRMS (Human Resource Management System) plus SCM (Supply Chain Management) software company. At first blush it struck many as an odd pairing of two companies desperate for some good corporate vision. But Peoplesoft (with Vantive) seems to have renewed vigor. If execution and focus are a part of the culture now at Peoplesoft, it all may pay off in the end (see PeopleSoft 8 Launched - Anything to Write Home About?).
All the while, in the late 90's dot-com craze, when "money was free" and intellectual capital and software functionality were key, you had smaller niche players developing ideas about how to do everything from improving customers' online experiences, to establishing vertical and horizontal portals, to analyzing employee performance, to using data to target qualified leads. And other, larger companies, were quietly adding the three letters C.R.M. to their websites, and eating smaller vendors for lunch, for fear of being lost in the Back Office-cum-ERP/SCM, Front Office-cum-CRM world. And wave after wave of multi-million if not multi-billion dollar buy outs and consolidations (for one example, see the Kana reference in the Tech Note sited above) lapped the corporate shores.
As the technology development and consolidation continues unphased, if not stoked, by the economic downturn today, analysts, busy re-defining CRM as "a software space" and "an ecosystem," - very fuzzy - have given rise to the notion of sub areas of CRM; namely, Operational CRM, Analytical CRM and Collaborative CRM. We've got wireless customer service, customer self-service, marketing analytics, collaborative e-commerce, employee portals, operational data stores, data warehouses, data marts, data about data (metadata), business intelligence, OLTP and OLAP, and enterprise value management we can't call all that, simply, CRM, now could we?
Analysts like to compartmentalize in an effort to simplify and understand, and forecast winners and losers, and prognosticate on the future. Sometimes we over-compartmentalize, and over-define, to the point of confusion. And sometimes, we almost make sense of it all, and help buyers of technology know both what's available, and what's right for them. So, let's try if we may.
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