Press Releases
Lilly Software Innovates Front- to Back-Office CRM
Integration Links Salesforce, Marketing and Service to Shop Floor
24 March, 2000, Hampton, NH (USA), Royston, Herts (UK) - Lilly Software Associates is pleased to announce the release of VISUAL Customer Relationship Management™ (VISUAL CRM™), a comprehensive suite of front office applications that are fully integrated with the production and distribution execution functions within its VISUAL Manufacturing™ and VISUAL Supply Chain™ suite of products.
"Integration is the first distinguishing feature," said Scott Rich, Lilly's VP of Marketing. VISUAL CRM integrates key elements of true customer service into a single user-friendly front-office tool. Lilly believes this design is optimal for mid-market customers. "Mid-market manufacturers are hungry for CRM applications, especially ones that seamlessly integrate to back-end ERP systems," wrote Industry Analysts AMR Research in their March 21 AMR Research Alert on Enterprise Applications.
"An example of the real power of this integration can be seen on the sales side," said Rich. "VISUAL CRM gives the sales force on-the-spot access to VISUAL Supply Chain's parametric configurator and its U.S. Patented concurrent scheduling engine. They will have the ability to say on a sales call, 'here are the rules based configuration options, we have all the materials and resources in place to deliver the order at 2pm tomorrow afternoon.' This can be accomplished since the CRM module is not a bolt-on, but rather an integral VISUAL module that shares the same database tables and leverages our existing scheduling and sales order configuration modules. On the post sales side, service orders are generated as actual production work orders. Which is a critical integration point if an organization is sharing materials and resources between both field service and new customer orders."
According to Bob Bettencourt, an LSA Product Manager, "VISUAL CRM is a 'workbench' for not only sales and service, but the marketing personnel as well. With VISUAL CRM, they all have access to the same information that the plant floor and distribution centers have. This allows service and marketing personnel to provide informed and timely answers to their customers and partners, and in the case of the sales force, to the prospects." According the Bettencourt, "These users have traditionally relied upon non-integrated, personal productivity tools. Now they can become integrated with the rest of the organization and have real-time access to the centralized repository of corporate data."
AMR Research wrote that "Lilly will likely find great success with its new integrated CRM product suite. This development illustrates once again that mid-market ERP vendors are leading the charge to provide integrated front- and back-end applications."
VISUAL CRM includes a contact management foundation module, plus four other applications: VISUAL Sales™, VISUAL Call Center™, VISUAL Service™, and VISUAL Marketing™. VISUAL CRM also integrates with Microsoft Office®, allowing users to access calendar and task list information.
About Lilly Software Associates
Lilly Software Associates, Inc. provides a complete line of enterprise and
supply chain solutions for manufacturers and distributors. The VISUAL
Enterprise™ suite of products helps companies capture and analyze real-time data
about all their business processes using ERP, Project Management, Business
Performance Management, Quality Management, Customer Relationship Management,
and Warehouse Management System capabilities. From award-winning software to
strategies in Lean Manufacturing and TOC, Lilly Software offers companies the
tools they need for higher productivity and profitability.
Most VISUAL® applications run on Windows® 98, Windows NT,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, UNIX®, LINUX, Novell®, using
SQLBase®, Microsoft SQL Server®, or ORACLE®
relational databases.
Lilly Software has received many industry awards for its products, service, and
financial growth since its inception. Most recently, the company has been voted
one of the Top 10 Best of Breed solutions for manufacturing by readers of
Consumer Goods Technology, listed in
Software Magazine's Top 500,
selected as a Top 100 Logistics Information Technology Provider in
Inbound Logistics, listed in the Top
100 Application Vendors in Supply Chain
e-Business, included in MSI's
Top 100 for its eighth year, and ranked as one of
Start magazine's Hottest Companies.
BACK TO NEWS
|
