PeopleSoft CRM Gets More Productive

PeopleSoft Inc. today announced a set of productivity enhancements for its customer-relationship-management 8.8 release.

The CRM enhancements focus on three areas: packaged business-process integration to third-party applications; increased business and IT productivity; and synchronization with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.

"This adds to a very broad and expansive integration strategy we have for PeopleSoft CRM," says Brad Wilson, VP of marketing for PeopleSoft. "We're now providing a shrink-wrapped and prepackaged way to hook up core CRM business processes to back-office SAP and Oracle [software]. This provides single vendor accountability for the process connection and data connection."

To reduce application integration costs, PeopleSoft is now offering six CRM-specific process-integration packs, which provide pre-built solutions for integrating PeopleSoft CRM with third-party applications, he says. The packs enable integration of PeopleSoft Order Management, Service Request Materials Authorization, and Field Fulfillment to Oracle and SAP. In addition there are integration packs for PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, Supplier Relationship Management, and Enterprise Service Automation.

The process-integration packs are "only the first wave that will be released across all of PeopleSoft, including human resources, financial, and supply-chain management," says Andrew Leigh, senior product marketing manager for PeopleSoft.

The company also has added enhanced functions, including a call-tracking mechanism that makes it easier to comply with federal Do Not Call legislation; a feature to allow call-center agents to create a new customer record when opening an E-mail inquiry; and a feature to enable sales departments to capture bulk orders as a single order entry. To support mobile clients, PeopleSoft Infosync for CRM will add bi-directional synchronization of customer information between PeopleSoft CRM and Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes.

The enhancements are scheduled to be available in September.