Software tackles CRM for professional services firms

CHICAGO - There's nothing like a corporate spinoff to jump-start a company's customer relationship management project.

When Adams Street Partners gained independence from its parent company in January, Brinson Partners, the asset management firm took with it a Microsoft Excel file detailing 10,000-plus contacts culled from Brinson's CRM package. The customer data quickly became fragmented as various departments started working with subsets of clients, says Adams Street partner Miguel Gonzalo.

Meanwhile, the Chicago firm was searching for CRM software to consolidate the pockets of data and streamline marketing efforts. It recently settled on InterAction from Interface Software.

InterAction is aimed at professional services businesses such as law firms, financial services companies, and architecture and engineering firms. It differs from traditional CRM software because its emphasis is on managing client information - personal contacts, correspondence with clients and internal firm expertise - rather than managing product transactions and sales leads.

InterAction sits on an application server in front of a Microsoft, Oracle or Sybase database server. It can extract and consolidate into a single repository data from third-party sources including Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, human resources applications and accounting systems. Using Java and XML, InterAction delivers data through a Web browser to client PCs, wireless devices, or a corporate intranet or extranet.

When a user updates a client's contact information, the software makes the revised data available to linked third-party applications. It also ties duplicate names - John E. Smith, Jack E. Smith and J. E. Smith, for example - to a single contact. In addition to contact management, InterAction can track referrals, check for client conflicts and report firm expertise by industry. Security controls let users protect confidential client information while making unrestricted data available companywide.

Accuracy and administrative efficiency are two reasons MWH Energy & Infrastructure deployed InterAction. Before InterAction, the company mailed its annual review by manually compiling and verifying multiple contact lists, says Claire Dewar, manager of applications training and IT projects delivery at the environmental engineering firm. "With over 30 administrators and 30 different lists, this task took about 320 hours over four months to accomplish," Dewar says.

"The annual review mailing list now takes two hours to assemble," she adds.

Dewar says the security features that allow users to keep data private have encouraged uses that go beyond managing contact information to keeping track of conversations, faxes sent and letters mailed in InterAction. "Having the ability to keep that information private to a select group of people has been key in getting this sort of data in the system," Dewar says.

MWH Energy & Infrastructure considered competing contact management products, including ACT from Interact Commerce and GoldMine from FrontRange Solutions, but chose InterAction for its scalability and security features, Dewar says. The company has been using InterAction since 1999; its contact list has grown from 8,000 records to 35,000.

Implementation is under way at Adams Street Partners, and Gonzalo expects the firm to be up and running with the software by the end of September.

Per-user InterAction licenses cost $389; server licenses range from $60,000 to $250,000.

Interface Software: www.interfacesoftware.com

Contact Senior Writer Ann Sullivan

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