Case Studies KANA Transforms its Customer Service by Reducing Customization Costs by 75%

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	KANA Transforms its Customer Service by Reducing Customization Costs by 75%

KANA Transforms its Customer Service by Reducing Customization Costs by 75%

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries	Professional Service Software
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Process Control & Optimization Remote Collaboration Remote Control
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration Training
Challenge	Companies find it difficult to change the packaged applications they get from ISVs. No matter how good a software package is, invariably it will have to be changed in some way to fit the way the company works or its particular market or some specific process that gives it a competitive advantage. Every company is different; even routine business processes common to most businesses, such as answering customer questions, responding to email inquiries or processing online sales, differ for every organization. The issue of changing software becomes particularly acute when the ISV’s software addresses interaction with customers and other key stakeholders. In such customer-facing situations, organizations want the software to exactly match their business processes. And to complicate matters, a process may be slightly different even for different groups within the same company. In that case, no single change or set of changes works for everybody. That was the situation KANA faced. ISVs like KANA need visual configuration tools like WaveMaker built into their products to simplify the change process, both for the client and for the ISV. Without something like WaveMaker, ISVs that want to do the right thing for their clients in terms of ease of change often find themselves scrambling to support multiple versions of the product. This dramatically increases the cost of development, product management and support. Read More
About Customer	KANA Software is a leading customer service ISV with over 600 companies worldwide deploying its product, including half of the Fortune 50. KANA Software describes itself as helping the world’s best known brands master the service experience. With the assistance of KANA products, companies are able to engage in consistent, knowledgeable conversations with their customers across every channel: in-person, phone, email, chat and Web. KANA’s new product will represent a complete solution for mastering the multi-channel service experience including the contact center agent desktop, email management, chat management, agent knowledge and Web self-service. As evidence of KANA’s effectiveness, its clients report double-digit increases in customer satisfaction while reducing call volumes by an average of 20%. The ISV’s products are deployed in more than 600 companies worldwide, including half of the Fortune 50. KANA’s primary customer offering is marketed as a conventionally licensed, on-premise packaged software solution. The company also participates in a global strategic alliance with IBM. Together KANA and IBM have delivered more than 50 successful implementations for many of the world’s largest and fastest growing companies. Read More
Solution	WaveMaker Software provides an open source, drag and drop development platform that makes web development easy. It provides a browser-based studio that enables the ISV’s customer, especially those who are non-programmers and non-developers, to make changes to the software interface quickly and easily. In addition, that customization permeates the underlying processes without technical training or skills development. WaveMaker consists of a development tool, the WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio™, and a deployment server, WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Server™. WaveMaker’s drag and drop studio enables business managers and non-programmers to quickly create, customize and deploy sophisticated GUI software using only their browser. KANA Software is incorporating WaveMaker into KANA’s solutions to make it possible for nonprogrammers to modify and customize KANA’s customer interaction management software. The KANA back-end platform is based on IBM WebSphere (KANA is an IBM Global Strategic Partner). Because WaveMaker is a browser-based tool that runs on any Java server, it is easy to integrate with IBM WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server and a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). All told, KANA expects to save its clients over $1.75 million dollars a year in UI design development costs. The KANA experience shows how WaveMaker can potentially deliver an impressive return on investment for software partners that need to modernize their offerings. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Professional Service

Software

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Process Control & Optimization

Remote Collaboration

Remote Control

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Training

Challenge

Companies find it difficult to change the packaged applications they get from ISVs. No matter how good a software package is, invariably it will have to be changed in some way to fit the way the company works or its particular market or some specific process that gives it a competitive advantage. Every company is different; even routine business processes common to most businesses, such as answering customer questions, responding to email inquiries or processing online sales, differ for every organization. The issue of changing software becomes particularly acute when the ISV’s software addresses interaction with customers and other key stakeholders. In such customer-facing situations, organizations want the software to exactly match their business processes. And to complicate matters, a process may be slightly different even for different groups within the same company. In that case, no single change or set of changes works for everybody. That was the situation KANA faced. ISVs like KANA need visual configuration tools like WaveMaker built into their products to simplify the change process, both for the client and for the ISV. Without something like WaveMaker, ISVs that want to do the right thing for their clients in terms of ease of change often find themselves scrambling to support multiple versions of the product. This dramatically increases the cost of development, product management and support.

About Customer

KANA Software is a leading customer service ISV with over 600 companies worldwide deploying its product, including half of the Fortune 50. KANA Software describes itself as helping the world’s best known brands master the service experience. With the assistance of KANA products, companies are able to engage in consistent, knowledgeable conversations with their customers across every channel: in-person, phone, email, chat and Web. KANA’s new product will represent a complete solution for mastering the multi-channel service experience including the contact center agent desktop, email management, chat management, agent knowledge and Web self-service. As evidence of KANA’s effectiveness, its clients report double-digit increases in customer satisfaction while reducing call volumes by an average of 20%. The ISV’s products are deployed in more than 600 companies worldwide, including half of the Fortune 50. KANA’s primary customer offering is marketed as a conventionally licensed, on-premise packaged software solution. The company also participates in a global strategic alliance with IBM. Together KANA and IBM have delivered more than 50 successful implementations for many of the world’s largest and fastest growing companies.

Solution

WaveMaker Software provides an open source, drag and drop development platform that makes web development easy. It provides a browser-based studio that enables the ISV’s customer, especially those who are non-programmers and non-developers, to make changes to the software interface quickly and easily. In addition, that customization permeates the underlying processes without technical training or skills development. WaveMaker consists of a development tool, the WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio™, and a deployment server, WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Server™. WaveMaker’s drag and drop studio enables business managers and non-programmers to quickly create, customize and deploy sophisticated GUI software using only their browser. KANA Software is incorporating WaveMaker into KANA’s solutions to make it possible for nonprogrammers to modify and customize KANA’s customer interaction management software. The KANA back-end platform is based on IBM WebSphere (KANA is an IBM Global Strategic Partner). Because WaveMaker is a browser-based tool that runs on any Java server, it is easy to integrate with IBM WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server and a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). All told, KANA expects to save its clients over $1.75 million dollars a year in UI design development costs. The KANA experience shows how WaveMaker can potentially deliver an impressive return on investment for software partners that need to modernize their offerings.

Impact #1	WaveMaker enables business managers and process owners to customize the software themselves without requiring expensive and specialized technical experts.
Impact #2	IT departments can step back from the software customization process to focus on other business innovations.
Impact #3	WaveMaker ensures a stable, flexible, standards-based dynamic platform for the software product.

Impact #1

WaveMaker enables business managers and process owners to customize the software themselves without requiring expensive and specialized technical experts.

Impact #2

IT departments can step back from the software customization process to focus on other business innovations.

Impact #3

WaveMaker ensures a stable, flexible, standards-based dynamic platform for the software product.

Benefit #1	Reduce the cost to configure the UI for a typical customer service solution by 75%, from $100,000 to $25,000.
Benefit #2	KANA expects to save its clients over $1.75 million dollars a year in UI design development costs.

Benefit #1

Reduce the cost to configure the UI for a typical customer service solution by 75%, from $100,000 to $25,000.

Benefit #2

KANA expects to save its clients over $1.75 million dollars a year in UI design development costs.

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Overview

KANA Transforms its Customer Service by Reducing Customization Costs by 75%

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit