Minimize Internet Customization, PeopleSoft CEO SaysMinimize Internet Customization, PeopleSoft CEO Says

A packed audience filtered into the Grand Ballroom of the MGM Grand Convention Center in Las Vegas on Monday morning to listen to Craig Conway, PeopleSoft Inc.'s president and CEO, kick off the PeopleSoft Leadership Summit and, as expected, unveil the company's PeopleSoft 8 CRM product.

Conway says the company's new Internet-based architecture for its customer-relationship management products will let businesses collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers. "I refer to a collaborative enterprise as a dramatic new development," Conway told about 2,000 attendees. "It's a brave new world because it changes everything," he said, mentioning some of the new features in the company's six CRM applications.

Using PeopleSoft's portal interfaces, businesses will be able to grant access rights and create custom page views for their customers, partners, suppliers, and internal employees. "There's a huge impact of the collaborative enterprise on productivity," Conway said. "You can measure it by the tens of percents, not the tenths of percents, and implement it at a significantly lower cost."

Conway detailed a list of imperatives he says are necessary to build a collaborative enterprise. The first, not surprisingly, is the need for a pure Internet architecture that will give access to data via a browser, with no software installed on the client's end. "You've also got to minimize customizations," he said. "I didn't say eliminate customization because some customization is important, but heavily customized systems will plague you."

Holding software vendors accountable for successful projects and accommodating multiple databases also topped the CEO's list. "It amazes me how many companies license software that only works with one database. It's like buying a light bulb that's welded to the lamp," Conway quipped. "To have a collaborative enterprise, you have to be able to support multiple platforms and technology standards," he said, referring to PeopleSoft's XML-based integration capabilities and pointing to the importance of interoperability with multiple vendors.

Scalability is another important factor. "You can't think in terms of how many employees might access the application," he says. "You've got to think in terms of partners, customers, suppliers, and employees accessing the application." Stan Swete, senior VP and general manager for PeopleSoft CRM, later touted a new benchmark released Monday by PeopleSoft and Compaq that says the PeopleSoft CRM applications can handle 30,000 concurrent users with 50% more efficiency then client-server systems.

Standardizing business processes might be the greatest hurdle for businesses trying to create a collaborative enterprise, according to Conway. "If you can standardize business processes, you can create a collaborative enterprise much more easily," he said. "This is the bugaboo with creating a collaborative enterprise. It's not the software anymore, it's the business process and the people issues that go along with that."

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was scheduled to address the conference late Monday.