Carnegie Breaks New Ground With Relatis CRM

Billed as the industry's first exact-fit-to-business customer relationship management (CRM) solution and with an unprecedented implementation time of less than 45 days, Relatis is today launched by Carnegie Information Systems.

And Carnegie chief executive Steve Hughes has rival vendors squarely in his sights: "Traditional CRM is known for project and cost overruns, poor user acceptance and shameful return on investment. We can show it doesn't have to be that way and we think we can give some of the entrenched vendors a bloody nose."

Hughes comes to Carnegie with more than 20 years senior management experience in the software and CRM industry, most recently as vice president of international operations at Youcentric (acquired by JD Edwards, now Peoplesoft) and managing director of Point Information Systems (now S1 Corporation).

High on his target list at Carnegie are medium sized organisations wishing to adopt CRM for the first time or with mature systems simply not delivering what was promised. According to some industry analysts as many as 80% of CRM implementations may fall into this category, with only 20% able to demonstrate real return on investment.

Carnegie claims the real strength of Relatis is the way it can exactly match virtually any existing business processes within an organisation. This makes for immediate and high user acceptance since working practices do not have to change. In addition implementation times are much reduced.

"The accepted norm for CRM project duration is 18 months. We work on 45 days, start to finish, and have achieved 37 days with one customer," says Hughes. "This translates into real reductions in project cost. With classic CRM up to ?9.00 can be spent on implementation for every ?1.00 spent on software. With Relatis it's closer to ?1.00 implementation, ?1.00 software."

Cost of ownership too is substantially reduced, claims Carnegie. The over-complexity and poor user acceptance of some CRM systems can leave as many as 70% of paid-for software licences unused. By providing only those functions users need and nothing more, Relatis leads to typical take-ups of 100%.

This degree of fit with every business is a function of the Relatis architecture. Unlike traditional CRM solutions, Relatis is entirely built for the web and is wholly component based. System builders simply take the basic Relatis framework and add as many or as few off-the-shelf CRM components as they need. If any fine tuning of components is required to meet specific needs this is achieved rapidly with Relatis Process Helix Tools. Future business changes require only components to be added, removed or amended to maintain exact fit.

Relatis is unique in needing no client software beyond a standard Web browser, and in leaving no footprint on client systems. It includes full Web portal functionality as standard and works through browser-equipped mobile phones and PDAs as well as desktop systems. Any changes in core data are reflected immediately on every live terminal.

The inbuilt portal functionality makes adding an eBusiness channel quick and simple. Two early adopter organisations have added an online sales and marketing channel in as little as three days.

"We believe Relatis is the first piece of genuinely fresh thinking the CRM business has seen for years," says Hughes. "It was about time somebody started to consider the user and what they really wanted instead of forcing them down a road of complex pricing models, long drawn out implementations and broken promises."

Relatis is the product of development effort across two continents. It was engineered from the ground up for mainstream business and follows searching analysis of why so many CRM projects fail or do not produce the expected results.

Carnegie Information Systems is the CRM arm of the £260+ million turnover Murray International Holdings, one the UK's largest privately held corporations and with interests across the world. Among Carnegie's customers are some of Europe's best known brands, all using Relatis to manage, retain and sell to communities of thousands of loyal customers. A growing network of partner organisations deploys Relatis in banking, insurance, leisure, local government, retail and telecommunications.