Onyx opens door into portal area

By Adam Gifford

Washington firm Onyx Software, whose customer relationship management (CRM) software is used by ASB Bank and Southern Cross Insurance, has moved into the fast-growing portal area.

"The Onyx Enterprise Portal brings together in a Web interface all of our CRM functionality together with the content from the internet that people use on a daily basis and any other applications they need," said senior vice-president of sales and marketing Eben Frankenberg.

ASB Bank is already installing a beta version of the portal. Onyx research shows that staff in companies with Onyx CRM installed are working in the application for on average 70 per cent of their time.

"They're using product extensively, it's probably their most important productivity tool. We wanted to give them the ability to bring other productivity tools into it," Mr Frankenberg said.

While other CRM vendors may be putting a browser veneer on their client-server products, they have not allowed for integration of internet content and other applications to the same extent.

Onyx Enterprise Portal allows a salesperson to do internet research, call up maps or weather information before calling on a company.

While they could do that by firing up a web browser, every time they do that they are leaving their customer system, wasting time trying to find that site, and then have to get that data back into the CRM application.

Onyx has formed partnerships with a number of internet content providers to provide prepackaged links, as well as working with application providers so the portal can be linked seamlessly.

"Our goal, because we know what front office people are doing, is to give them links out of box plus the applications they need so they have one desktop for all those applications, CRM and the internet," Mr Frankenberg said.

In this part of the world, Onyx has teamed with Yahoo! for the delivery of internet content.

On the application side it has partnered with Trilogy, to incorporate software which can handle commissions and complex prices and configurations, such as insurance rate calculations. It can also be integrated to Peoplesoft back end systems. Wang New Zealand will sell and implement the portal, and build in complicated links.

Mr Frankenberg said the price for an existing Onyx CRM customer to add the Enterprise Portal is about $US30,000.

He said the Onyx Enterprise Portal was "the future of Onyx. CRM is still critical but the best way to deliver CRM is through this technology."

Meanwhile, a competing product, Cyberprise Portal from fellow Washington firm Wall Data, has been canned.

Wall Data is folding Cyberprise back into its line of Rumba terminal emulation products, which are used by companies like Telecom and Waste Management to access legacy applications and data through Windows terminals.

It laid off a third of its staff, including Australia and New Zealand territory manager Paul Rahme.