CRM Solutions For The Utilities And Telecommunications Industries

Forrester reviewed 24 CRM suite solutions to understand their strengths and weaknesses to support eight key cross-functional processes in the utilities and telecommunications industries: 1) customer management and billing; 2) financial customer care and dispute management; 3) service management; 4) order management; 5) dealer management; 6) telecommunications order management; 7) product management, including bundles; and 8) customer financials management. We found that Amdocs, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Siebel CRM, and SAP CRM stand out with strong solutions and substantial experience with companies in these sectors. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Oracle E-Business Suite CRM also offer capabilities to support the utilities and telecom sectors, either natively or through integration. Oracle CRM On Demand, Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies, and Sword Ciboodle can help utilities and telecom organizations with niche strengths but provide limited support for most of the customer processes evaluated. In addition to doing deep due diligence about the fit of CRM solutions to meet the unique requirements of the utilities and telecom industries, business process professionals must take into account the increased popularity of the software-as-a service (SaaS) deployment approach, the rise of business process management (BPM) solutions, and the rapid adoption of mobile technologies.