Accenture and Kana Announce Strategic Global Alliance to Promote Cutting-Edge Solutions for Managing Customer Relationships
Strategic Global Alliance Formed to Market Advanced Communications and Interaction Solutions Across the Extended Enterprise
Redwood City, CA and New York, NY, July 18, 2000 -- Accenture, a leading global management and technology consulting firm, and Kana Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:KANA), a leading provider of integrated e-business solutions, today announced the formation of a multi-year strategic global alliance. Through this alliance, Accenture and Kana plan to deliver a comprehensive suite of customer-facing applications supporting marketing, sales, service and communications solutions through a web-architected e-business platform to Global 2000 and leading Internet companies.
Under the alliance Accenture and Kana plan to market and deliver solutions that will enable businesses to share global views of their customer interactions and business relationships with customers and partners across the extended enterprise. Kana’s suite of web-architected, e-business and interaction applications are integrated through a scalable, rapidly extensible e-business platform supporting a broad range of interaction methods through online and traditional communication channels including Web, phone, email, mobile, fax, and in-person. Accenture and Kana will implement these solutions across proactive, assisted, virtual assisted and self service interaction methods.
Recent Accenture research reveals that a typical $1 billion company could increase profitability by as much as $150 million annually by achieving top performance in CRM capabilities. Improving customer interaction capabilities is one of the single largest impact areas, as reported in the cross-industry study: How Much are Customer Relationship Management Capabilities Really Worth? What Every CEO Should Know
"Our research has clearly shown that companies gain a significant bottom-line impact from effectively managing interactions with their customers," said Steve Lorack, an Accenture partner who leads both the firm’s global e-Commerce activities within the Electronics and High Tech Industry and its Silicon Valley Dot-Com Launch Centre. "Through our strategic alliance with Kana, we can provide our clients with leading-edge solutions for improving these interactions, regardless of how, where or when customers, partners and employees connect with the enterprise."
Kana’s solutions help companies to more effectively compete and succeed in the new economy to:
- rapidly deliver relevant and consistent information to customers
- increase cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
- decrease cost per contact
- build strong loyalty and relationships, and
- reach beyond the traditional boundaries of an enterprise to include partners and employees
"By interacting with customers and partners proactively, personally and consistently across multiple channels, you are creating a compelling experience, building long-term relationships, and empowering customers and partners to manage their experiences across the enterprise," said Michael McCloskey, CEO of Kana. "Accenture’s thought leadership and deep expertise in consulting and business integration, combined with Kana’s award-winning e-business platform and customer communications and interaction applications, provide our clients with the means to succeed and differentiate themselves in the rapidly growing and changing marketplace."
Accenture and Kana have successfully implemented solutions enabling clients to proactively interact, transact and communicate with their customers across both web-based and traditional communications channels. Joint successes include clients such as ReplayTV, a pioneer in personal television technologies, and Washington Mutual, one of the leading U.S. mortgage origination lenders.
"With ambitious marketing plans in place, ReplayTV recognized the need to reposition their supporting infrastructure and processes to become the market leader," said Alex Gray, Executive Vice President of Business Operations for ReplayTV. "Drawing on Accenture’s customer relationship management expertise and Kana’s web-architected customer service applications and platform, ReplayTV can now manage customer contacts, track interaction history, and order returns through fulfillment and repair providers. I was impressed by the way the project team put on their entrepreneurial hats, conducted a thorough assessment of our requirements and delivered the project, exceeding our expectations."
"At Washington Mutual, we are dedicated to providing ’the Power of Yes’ to our mortgage customers. We want to allow our customers to work with us anytime, anyway and anywhere they want. In order to achieve this goal, we must conduct business effectively over the web with both our customers and partners," said Genevieve Smith, Senior Vice President of Mortgage Banking and Financial Services Marketing. "Working with Accenture and Kana, we were able to quickly integrate communications from our multiple websites with our existing customer support organization. As a result, we are able to more effectively manage our customer relationships."
In furthering their strategic global alliance, Accenture and Kana will pursue joint business development, marketing and sales-related activities. Allied with Accenture’s network of businesses, Kana’s comprehensive suite of integrated e-business solutions will be delivered to clients and showcased at Accenture’s CRM solution centers and dot-com launch centres on a global basis. In addition, Accenture will train more than 650 professionals to deliver Kana’s integrated solutions.
About Kana Communications, Inc.
Kana Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: KANA), a leading provider of Web-architected e-business solutions, delivers a broad range of world-class, integrated e-business and interaction applications with a modular and scalable platform for both Internet and Global 2000 companies. Kana solutions deliver personal portals that offer customers, partners and the enterprise a global view of their communications and relationships. This global view includes managing the full set of communications channels such as e-mail, Web, chat, instant message, VOIP, phone and person-to-person, as well as e-business and communications applications to integrate the marketing, sales and service functions. This full-service suite enables e-businesses to compete and succeed in today’s customer-driven economy. For more information about the solutions found in more than 600 companies, including 7 of the 10 most trafficked Web sites, please visit Kana at http://www.kana.com.
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