REDMOND, Wash., and BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 30, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. and Onyx Software Corp. today announced a multiyear global sales, marketing and technology development initiative to deliver powerful customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to large global enterprises in specific vertical market segments, beginning with financial services.
The first of these solutions, Onyx’s Investment Management Edition, will consist of Onyx’s new 100 percent Internet-based platform and native-XML integration services running on Microsoft® .NET Enterprise Servers to enable deep business process customization and extensive legacy application integration. The offering also will include industry-specific CRM strategy services from RevenueLab, a strategy consulting firm recently acquired by Onyx. The vertically aligned Microsoft and Onyx sales forces will initially target the financial services industry, with particular focus on investment management and retail financial services worldwide. In addition to their direct sales and marketing efforts, Microsoft and Onyx will work with complementary businesses to further serve the targeted vertical markets. Those will include systems integrators, vertical service providers, outsourcers, strategy consultants, and other independent software vendors.
“By combining Onyx’s industry-specific applications and the .NET Enterprise Servers, we are delivering a fully scalable, reliable, Internet-ready solution that brings a greater level of business agility to our mutual clients in the financial services industry,”
said Orlando Ayala, group vice president, Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services Group at Microsoft.
“We anticipate enterprise financial services firms will realize rapid and significant return on investment by utilizing the integrated solutions to improve customer relationships.”
“Speed to market, accelerated revenue and customer loyalty are critical in today’s competitive business environment,”
said Brent Frei, President and CEO of Onyx Software.
“Onyx and Microsoft have a tremendous amount of experience developing, implementing and supporting customer-centric strategies in large financial institutions. By combining forces, we will enable our clients to deploy our solutions faster and more effectively than ever before with technology that will let them grow and adapt quickly as their businesses change.”
The RevenueLab strategy services are designed to help financial institutions optimize their sales strategy and align it with the rest of their organization. Through this engagement, companies will be able to map their business processes from marketing through customer engagement into relationship enhancement, with the objective of translating those processes into tools and information necessary for successfully implementing a CRM solution. The RevenueLab programs, called DecisionLab and DesignLab, offer standalone consulting engagements and will be offered as a core part of the Microsoft and Onyx financial services initiative.
“Companies must define their marketing, sales and customer service strategies as part of any technology acquisition for CRM programs to be successful,”
said Liz Shahnam, vice president, CRM Infusion, META Group Inc.
“CRM technology vendors must engage organizations at a strategic level to better understand business requirements and enable successful organizational realignment and elimination of front-office ‘stovepipes,’ making it possible to take full advantage of customer relationships and the technologies that support them.”
“I consider the Onyx and Microsoft solution a tremendous strategic advantage,”
said Brad Orben, national sales manager at Dreyfus Corp.
“With fast, accessible systems to tell us what our intermediary customers are buying and why, we can more easily grow our assets, and by providing these customers with fast, responsive service, we can help them grow their assets too.”
The Investment Management Edition includes investment management terminology, industry-specific workflows, best practice process maps, specific data fields and key metrics to assess marketing effectiveness, sales performance and revenue forecasting. It was developed as a result of best practices derived through more than 49 successful implementations with investment management clients. Similar industry editions are also available from Onyx for the managed care and high-tech industries, and editions for other market segments are forthcoming.
About Onyx Software
Onyx Software Corp. (Nasdaq
“ONXS”
) is a global supplier of enterprisewide, customer-centric e-business applications that connect and power a company’s entire e-business world. Onyx’s products are known for flexibility, reliability, scalability and ease of use, resulting in high return on investment, low total cost of ownership and industry-leading customer satisfaction. RevenueLab is a division of Onyx Software, which has a proven track record of developing revenue-accelerating strategies in large financial services firms including Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bank, MFS Mutual Funds and John Hancock. Onyx operates worldwide, with customers including American Express, AT & T, Commerce One, Credit Suisse, Dreyfus,
Prudential Securities and Sierra Health Services. For more information, call (888) 275-6699, e-mail [email protected], or visit http://www.onyx.com/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the time the statements are made and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. The words
“believe,” “expect,” “intend,”
and
“anticipate,”
variations of such words, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could affect Onyx’s actual results include, but are not limited to, the
“Important Factors That May Affect Our Business, Our Results of Operations and Our Stock Price”
described in the quarterly report on form 10-Q for the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2000. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon these forward-looking statements that speak only as to the date of this release. Onyx undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date of this release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
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