IBM Corp has set up an independent software company to develop and market customer relationship management (CRM) software, a blanket term that covers front end applications such as sales automation software and computer telephony software for managing customer queries. As the name implies, the point of CRM – an increasingly lucrative area for software vendors – is to strengthen a company’s understanding of its customers so that it can better market products with an eye to not only selling more, but also retaining a higher percentage of customers. Companies such as Siebel have already carved out niches in the front-end applications market and other software applications that can fall under the CRM umbrella, such as data warehousing products, are also produced by companies such as Oracle Corp. IBM hopes to take on the competition by offering a broad range of products and integrating them with a wide range of existing systems. IBM’s new non-subsidiary company will offer Software Artistry software suite for managing the customer relationship over a period of time, as well as call center technologies and products from Early, Cloud & Co and the computer telephony products, Callpath and DirectTalk. IBM will employ a few hundred people for the company, whose headquarters will be in Indianapolis, Indiana, with sales locations dotted around the world. W. Scott Webber, former chief executive officer of Software Artistry will become the company’s CEO..
