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Leading Contact Center Services Company to Run Business on Oracle(R) Software and ServicesAFFINA Selects Oracle to Help Increase Efficiencies, Reduce Costs and Offer New Services to CustomersREDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ( http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?1452368 ) Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL - News), the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced that AFFINA, a leading CRM contact center solutions company, has selected a variety of products and services from Oracle to help it streamline processes, eliminate inefficiencies and stay ahead of its competition. Using the Oracle® E-Business Suite and Oracle9i Application Server, AFFINA will replace the more than 15 legacy systems the company currently utilizes, and in the process expects to decrease information technology (IT) costs, increase employee efficiency and allow AFFINA to provide valuable insights to its clients on customer trends. Additionally, AFFINA will utilize Oracle Services -- including Oracle Consulting, Oracle University, Oracle Support Services, and Oracle Outsourcing -- to ease implementation and accelerate adoption among its employees.AFFINA, which handled nearly 25 million contacts last year for its more than 100 customers, including Acura, Energizer, Hewlett Packard, the Internal Revenue Service, Kellogg and Panasonic, has been at the forefront of technological innovation throughout its 30-year history. AFFINA turned to Oracle to help the company foster growth while delivering a strong return on investment for each customer interaction. The Oracle E-Business Suite will allow AFFINA to provide real-time analytics to its clients. In keeping with its corporate philosophy that every customer interaction is an opportunity to influence a sale, using the Oracle E-Business Suite, AFFINA will provide its clients with an in-depth analysis of customer interactions -- what AFFINA is learning about the clients customers, and what AFFINA is learning about opportunities for generating revenue. These analytics will enable AFFINA and its clients to make faster, more informed decisions on how best to improve customer satisfaction while capitalizing on up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. "To maintain our edge in the contact center space, we need to stay focused on delivering a complete suite of customer interaction services to our customers," said Victor Burgess, vice president and general manager of alliances, AFFINA. "After a thorough evaluation of products, it became clear that only Oracle could offer us the technology, applications and services we needed to stay ahead in our ultra-competitive market." AFFINA is in the process of implementing the portal technology in Oracle9i Application Server to provide an integrated view of its applications. Using Oracle9i Application Server, AFFINA expects to provide its clients with single-sign on access to real-time data, reports and services regarding interactions with their customers, thereby greatly enhancing AFFINA's ability to work with its clients to proactively identify and act upon trends in its clients' customer bases. By using the portal technology to automate the delivery of information to clients, AFFINA's employees can be freed from the administrative task of creating reports, allowing them to focus on analyzing customer data and providing valuable insights into customer trends. With the help of Oracle Consulting, AFFINA intends to rapidly implement key business processes with the following CRM FastForward Flows: "Call to Resolution", "Campaign to Results" and "Call to Order." By using CRM FastForward Flows, companies can lower costs, increase time-to- market and drive revenue by reducing the complexity, time, and cost associated with large-scale software implementations. IT Consolidation IT system consolidation was a major reason AFFINA selected the Oracle E-Business Suite over offerings from companies like Siebel and SAP. The company currently maintains more than 15 customer relationship management (CRM) systems, each of which addressed a specific customer touch point, but none of which was comprehensive enough to address all customer needs. The disparate IT environment resulted in high maintenance costs and substantial employee training costs, as many AFFINA customer service representatives utilized multiple systems. The Oracle E-Business Suite is expected to drastically reduce the amount of money AFFINA has to spend on maintenance and training. Additionally, AFFINA is outsourcing the Oracle software management and administration to Oracle. This will help AFFINA implement the Oracle E-Business Suite rapidly, lower its IT administration costs and stay focused on critical business functions such as servicing customers while aggressively up-selling and cross-selling its clients' products. "As an outsourcing company, we understand and believe in the high value of outsourcing as a business model," said Tom Asp, AFFINA's vice president of IT. "With the help of Oracle E-Business Suite Outsourcing, we'll be able to focus on our core competencies and new value-added services while decreasing support and maintenance costs for our IT infrastructure." About Oracle Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at www.oracle.com. Trademark Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. OracleMobile 415/401-4000 jmorgan@tenthdimension.com top of page |
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