Chicago, Illinois and Foxboro, Massachusetts, USA — Etherios and Axeda Corporation are enabling real-time data from connected machines and products to automatically populate a leading customer relationship management (CRM) solution, in order to extend the value of key asset information company-wide.
Etherios is a cloud computing expert services provider, delivering customer success for hundreds of organisations. Axeda is a provider of cloud-based services and software for managing connected products and delivering machine-to-machine (M2M) applications.
By extending the Salesforce Service Cloud to connected assets, Etherios and Axeda will provide users with a 360 degree view of their customer and product interactions in one place, thereby redefining customer service and technical support.
“We believe that the shift to a more social enterprise is a positive disruptive force for businesses around the world,” says Mike Dannenfeldt (pictured), founder and CEO, Etherios. “A big part of this shift is what we call The Social Machine™, which Axeda has brought to life. They have been at the forefront of M2M for years and it is great to collaborate with a partner that not only understands the market and technology today, but where it will be five years from now.”
By connecting real-time product data from the Axeda® Platform to Salesforce.com, valuable asset information such as owner, location, product configuration, health status, usage, and alerts, automatically populates the customer profile. This enables users to view an asset as they would a contact. Axeda and Etherios also enable connected machines to ‘talk’ directly to the CRM platform and automatically trigger business process workflows such as automated case creation, pay-per-use billing, warranty management, and more.
“Machines and products of all types are connecting to networks at a rapid rate. Axeda delivers a virtual cloud for these connected products that allows companies to listen to machine chatter and collaborate with assets as they would with their customers and employees,” said Keith Bartlett, Axeda’s vice president of business development. “Working with an expert integration partner like Etherios to enable cloud-to-cloud CRM integration will unlock the value of The Social Machine™ and its business intelligence for our customers.”
Etherios claims a deep understanding of the Customer Service and Technical Support best practices as it relates to case management, assignment, workflow, routing, escalation, collaboration, reporting and analytics. Extending these processes to additional constituents including Sales, Product Development and Engineering, and Supply Chain adds value throughout the customer’s organisation.
Axeda and Etherios are taking advantage of customer service and support processes already deployed through the CRM solution and extend them to The Social MachineTM. Through the integration, The Social Machine™ is also mobile-enabled through the CRM platform, providing access by field service technicians to key information via mobile devices.
“Integrating machine data into CRM extends the value of that information beyond service and support,” said Michael Maoz, vice president and a senior analyst at Gartner, Inc. “With information access and better insight as to what is happening with each customer, companies are in a great position to utilise information that had historically sat in silos to now improve processes to help both the customer and the enterprise.
