Event Summary
Remedy Corp
(NASDAQ: RMDY) purchased Axtive to add personalization to Remedy's customer
relations management (CRM) and help desk products. Axtive can track a user's
profile and serve unique pages to each user based on the profile. Remedy believes
that this will ultimately reduce the costs of customer relationship management
and provide the right information to each customer in fewer clicks. The new
Remedy products will also contain features that let companies analyze the needs
and experiences of their customers, based in Axtive technology.
Market
Impact
This
should enable Remedy to have more attractive product offerings. Anyone who has
to interact with a web site when what they really want is personal attention
will welcome sites that seem to remember their last calls and can tailor information
to their skill level and previous history. Companies benefit from increased
information and from additional possibilities for creating marketing relationships
with customers.
While
the CRM product is certainly the right place to start integrating personalization,
it will be interesting to see whether Remedy eventually finds ways to add value
to its E-procurement product and other members of its enterprise portal family
Remedy@Work. This could prove to be just the right marginal differentiator
in a space that is going to become increasingly commoditized over the year.
User
Recommendations
CRM is used to describe a number of different software products. The addition
of Axtive's technology will only be interesting to you if Remedy's core product
meets your need. If it does, then there are two things to look at in evaluating
the value added by this acquisition.
First,
ask what can you do with it? Remedy should be able to make very specific proposals
about how this technology can make a difference in your particular business.
Second,
get a good understanding of what it will take to implement and maintain the
solution. Axtive claims that its tools are easy to learn and easy to use. Learn
enough about them to decide up front whether you want to train your own staff
for implementing your personalization or rely on the company's consulting services.
If
you choose Remedy to build the solution, get a firm schedule; it won't be surprising
if there is a period of a few months where Remedy people are coming up to speed
and Axtive's experienced people are spread too thin. If you choose to do it
yourself, sample the training and the technical support services before you
buy.