German enterprise software giant SAP AG and Nortel Networks Tuesday forged a strategic
alliance.
SAP has embedded customer interaction applications from the Nortels Clarify
eBusiness Applications unit within its mySAP.com.
mySAP.com provides an open collaborative business environment enabling
companies to fully engage their employees, customers, and partners to
capitalize on the new Internet economy.
The companies intend to develop and integrate industry-specific customer
interaction solutions to enhance collaborative customer relationship
management (CRM).
According to SAP, current CRM solutions focus on bilateral scenarios between
one company and its customers, but enterprises increasingly demand a
cross-enterprise, Internet-based approach to E-C that enables communities of
vendors to collaboratively meet the needs of their joint customers.
Today, when a problem arises, customers must often navigate between multiple
vendors and experience accountability finger-pointing among partners,
resulting in long series of inquiries, self-service dead-ends, and a
frustrating overall experience.
The new virtual communities of vendors will help ensure that customer issues
can be addressed immediately by a single point of contact, regardless of
where the problem resides.
Enhancing mySAP.com with Nortels Clarify eFrontOffice, is expected to
enable communities of partners and suppliers within a specific industry to
collaborate with one another to serve their joint customers through a single
point of contact.