"an on-demand XRM solution that enables businesses to more efficiently manage enterprise-wide relationships, processes and performance. Intellibank Professional builds on Intellibank Standard by incorporating advanced sales, customer support, partner, and contract management functionality. In addition, Intellibank Professional includes corporate-wide workflow modeling to optimize business process and information flow across all constituents in the extended enterprise. Finally, Intellibank Professional’s powerful reporting, analytics, and performance dashboards allow managers to monitor commitments, relationships and activities in real-time for smarter and faster decision-making."
XRM is a buzzword supposed to mean the integration of relationship management (CRM et al.), activity management and KM. (Think the intersection of Outlook, Project, Sharepoint, and Salesforce.com.) Looking at this screenshot, this application is browser-based. Who wants to manipulate vast amounts of data and go through many repetitive tasks on a browser? Intellibank pitches this as using software as a utility, but I strongly doubt claims of higher ease of use. I’ll believe it when I see it. Without proper support for drag and drop, and because of relatively slow roundtrips between the client and server, let’s face it, there’s a limit to what makes sense to run in a browser.
Yet speed and reliability are key to user adoption, or else employees will route around your software. Just try to force outbound sales reps to use a Sales Force Automation solution if it’s not super easy to use, and see what happens. In most cases they’ll keep using Outlook, Excel, Act or whatever it is they use locally, and they won’t feed your centralized system (or they’ll bullshit it just enough that you don’t fire them, if it comes to threats).
Plus, lets face it, anyone who’s anyone in the corporate world wants to be able to walk away with their freshest contact database at a moment’s notice. The idea that your contacts belong exclusively to the company is preposterous (I’ve sometimes heard sales managers entertain that illusion). Without their network, many professionals aren’t worth much.
02/27/05 update: JavaScript: DHTML API, Drag & Drop for Images and Layers.
Olivier-
Allow me to introduce myself and answer a couple of your questions. My name is Trip Foster, and I am the VP of Marketing at Intellibank. Below I have provided answers to the issues you pose in your coverage of Intellibank. I hope you find these responses helpful. Please contact me for a demo at your convenience.
Issue 1: “Who wants to manipulate vast amounts of data and go through many repetitive tasks on a browser?”
A: The operations within the Intellibank system are fast and can be conducted via batch process (not unlike checking and actioning multiple emails from your hotmail or yahoo accounts)
Issue 2: “I strongly doubt claims of higher ease of use. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
A: I would be happy to show you a demo of Intellibank. As far as ease of use, Intellibank enables users to relate any object in the system to any other appropriate object in the system — making the system very easy to use. For example, when I am looking at a contact, I am able to see all documents, tasks, notes, meetings, calls and appointments for that contact. This same paradigm exists for any object (contact, account, task, plan, lead, opportunity, case, note, etc) in the Intellibank system.
Issue 3: “Without proper support for drag and drop