Leverage CRM And ERP Data With New ToolsLeverage CRM And ERP Data With New Tools

Two more vendors will get in the data-integration game this week with offerings to help businesses leverage their customer-relationship management investments.

Akibia Consulting is launching PhaseNext, a service that integrates data from Siebel Systems Inc.'s sales, marketing, customer-service, and partner-relationship applications with various back-office applications, such as financials and order management. Business-technology managers can tap into data stored in both front-and back-office systems for automated E-mail response and Web self-service applications.

BroadVision Inc. will unveil BroadVision Integration Services, which offer tools to integrate back-end data with the vendor's portal application. The software comes with pre-built adapters for back-end packages from companies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and Siebel.

Integration Services displays data from Oracle, SAP, and Siebel in BroadVision's InfoExchange Portal. Employees view human-resources data from an Oracle or an SAP application via the BroadVision portal. And customers view order, inventory, and account status via the same portal, once a business integrates that back-office data with it.

CRM, enterprise resource planning, and portal vendors must provide such integration points to other third-party products if they expect to compete. Virtually all of the largest CRM and ERP vendors provide integration options, including native hooks, third-party links, and enterprise application integration software. But only three quarters of midsize vendors and 40% of small vendors offer such options.

"While still not perfect, the integration of CRM and ERP has made great strides over the past five to seven years," says Barton Goldenberg, president and founder of Information Systems Marketing, a CRM consulting firm. "This integration point will be a nonissue within the next three years as CRM and ERP vendors realize either they must seamlessly integrate with one another or become a part of the technology museum."