11/11/2003

MITEM Corporation, a provider of integration software and business applications, says it has added Colonial Savings to “a growing list of customers who have selected MITEM's technology as a viable and cost effective alternative to packaged customer relationship management (CRM) applications.

“MITEM's solutions are built on its patented integration platform, MitemView, and have been deployed in call centers of companies including L. L. Bean, Baltimore Gas & Electric, EDF Energy, Consolidated Edison, American Electric Power, Swiss Life and, recently, Colonial Savings.

“In a call center environment, MitemView pulls customer data from legacy systems and other disparate back-end systems and presents it to the client in a Windows, HTML or Macromedia Flash environment. The MITEM approach eliminates the need for customer service representatives to laboriously access dozens of screens of information, one by one, to answer a customer inquiry - service reps can now access all the customer information they need with just a few mouse clicks.”

"We offer a very attractive alternative to standard CRM packages for companies that run on legacy systems. Our customers often tell us that their systems already have the exact functionality they need, but require improvements to the end-user workflow. Our customers don't want to start from scratch with a new CRM system that may turn out to be totally inappropriate for their environment. They want to preserve and extend the investments they've made in their rock-solid legacy assets," stated Bill McDonald, senior product manager/call center solutions for MITEM.

Colonial Saving's call center went live in May of this year with a MITEM solution. Before deciding on MITEM, Colonial looked at several packaged CRM applications. David Fritz, programmer/analyst for Colonial remarked, "To get the functionality that we needed, it would have been very expensive, not to mention the additional consulting time for customization that we might have needed. Additionally, many of the CRM package systems out there claim to integrate with everything, but then you find out they don't integrate with the one thing you really need. With MITEM, we were able to handle all of our integration requirements, and build a custom solution for a fraction of the cost of other vendors."

"MITEM has built a solid reputation for solving some of the most persistent problems that face managers of call center operations such as reducing call handle times, improving customer service and reducing training time for customer service reps (CSR)," McDonald said.

Baltimore Gas and Electric's (BGE) call center, which handles up to 4 million calls a year, has been running on a MITEM call center solution for over 18 months. BGE's call center solution consists of MITEM's integration engine and a graphical user interface (GUI) that serves as “an intuitive, easy-to-use interface between its legacy CIS and its customer representatives,” MITEM notes. “The new client interface, which BGE calls GUIdance, was built to enable call center reps to access the information they need easily and efficiently, so they can respond to customers' requests and inquiries more quickly.

“GUIDance is considered the crown jewel of several initiatives that are saving BGE over $1 million dollars annually. Since the deployment of GUIDance, BGE has seen dramatic and measurable reductions in costs associated with their call center operations. CSR staff has been reduced from 209 to 135. Total staff is down to 155. In addition, CSRs have increased their in-service phone time from the low 70th percentiles in 2000 to between 98% and 99% today.”

"GUIdance goes beyond the call center and embodies the holistic approach of the corporation in meeting customer's needs and expectations. It's a strategically essential part of our business moving forward," said Alan Stambaugh, IT consultant for BGE. MITEM's McDonald added, "Deploying a large-scale CRM solution is fraught with complexity and risk. The data conversion aspect of the process itself can be a traumatic event. MITEM's call center solutions bypass problems like data conversion and loss of original system functionality. Our customers are amazed at how quickly and cost effectively we can have a MITEM solution up and running for their call center. Our deployment success rate stands at 100%."

Fritz of Colonial Savings commented, "The production roll out of our MITEM-built call center solution went very well. We only had a few small glitches that were fixed very quickly. We were up and running on day one."