US supplier of front-office automation (FOA) solutions, The Vantive Corporation, is to incorporate enhancements into the next version of its flagship Vantive Enterprise product family that are the result of strategic alliances recently announced with niche players. The Santa Clara, California-based company plans to announce the 7.5 version of the suite of integrated client-server applications over the next couple of months, with the probable launch timeframe being the end of summer. It will include, in its sales force automation (SFA) segment, on-demand access to information required by sales reps, thanks to the Knowledge-Enabled Selling solution from Renaissance Worldwide Inc, a Boston, Massachusetts-based consultancy, and features such as a product configuration capacity, provided by Vantive’s association with Austin, Texas-based Trilogy Development Group. Vantive unveiled its alliances with these companies in late February and mid-March respectively. The Vantive Corp has enjoyed dramatic growth in revenues in recent years, having gone from $25m in 1995 to $64.3m in 1996 and $117.3m last year. According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, the company ranks number two in the overall FOA market behind Remedy Corporation of Mountain View, California, and leads in the customer support segment. However, according to the company’s executive vice-president of strategic marketing, Christopher Lochhead, our competitors tend to have only part of the puzzle; only Vantive offers an integrated solution. He cites the case of Remedy, which is primarily in employee help desk management. Lochhead’s assertion is backed up by the Aberdeen Group, which concludes in its study that while many suppliers concentrate solely on customer service or sales force automation. Vantive addresses the big picture. The alliances with Renaissance and Trilogy are thus aimed at maintaining Vantive’s competitive edge by adding further features to the latter’s offering of software. While RenaissanceÆs’ Knowledge-Enhanced Selling technology enables sales reps to call up all the relevant detail on the particular customer and the sector they are operating in, the tie-up with Trilogy will enable Vantive to incorporate the company’s Selling Chain solution into the upcoming release of Enterprise. This means the next version of the suite will automate the pricing process (pricing management), tailor product configurations to the individual customer on demand from the reps (configuration management) and generate customized proposals and quotes (proposal and quote generation). There is a trend toward consolidation in the front-office automation sector, the most recent example of which was Vantive competitor Siebel Systems Inc’s acquisition of Scopus Technology Inc (CI No 3,359 and 3,370), in which the former seeks to ally its strength in SFA with Scopus’ customer services and field support prowess. Noting that they’re still missing help desk in order to rival VantiveEnterprise, Lochhead says the union of the two is recognition that Vantive had the right strategy. However, with Vantive’s revenues up 80% last year and Siebel’s up even more, by 203%, larger software players such as Baan NV, SAP AG and Oracle Corp are showing increased interest in the FOA segment. Thus Siebel and Vantive’s strategies, whether entailing acquisitions or alliances, suggest they are seeking to add further technological muscle to their product ranges in the expectation of greater competition for business from here on.
