By William Fellows
In a bid to claw back its status as a top-tier industry player, NCR Corp is to begin selling new Interaction Plus software designed to collect and consolidate customer information from a range of sources, enabling users to develop more focused marketing and support programs.
NCR believes Interaction Plus can bridge the currently one dimensional world of collecting views of customer behavior in call centers, customer relationship management, web site tracking, back-end systems and other datawarehouse applications. In doing so, NCR hopes it can create more synergies between its computers, ATMs and retail terminals businesses by capturing transaction information from each (in addition to third party applications for which it has created Interaction Plus adapters) as well as drive sales of its Teradata datawarehouse which is used to collect customer information and store data repositories but is not required as the back-end system. It already has adapters for Genesis’ CTI software; Valex; Vantive customer information management; and Microsoft IIS.
A typical installation will begin at $1m-plus including services, NCR says, a big company ticket item. Teradata and Interaction Plus, created specifically for use on NT, are the two key IP components of NCR’s new focus on CRM customer relationship management. It has even created a CRM framework for customers and partners. NCR is currently recasting itself as a solutions provider. The software ships next month. NCR expects quickly consolidating markets, including utilities industries to drive initial sales. NCR has already kicked off a new ad campaign with the theme of transforming transactions into relationships.
