News

Knowledge-management vendor looks at self-serve apps

September 14, 2003

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Software vendor Kanisa has new funding, and a new board member and a new focus on the customer experience.

According to an article in Line 56, the company just banked another $13 million in financing, led by Needham Capital Founders and general partner Tom Shanahan, a former founder of Agile Software, who joined the Kanisa board.

The buzz is around knowledge management, a market analyst firm IDC pegs at $15 billion in 2006, and its link to customer relationship management (CRM), the still-growing market centered on customer experience, sales and service.

"We are particularly focused on the service resolution process," said Ben Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Kanisa, in the article. "CRM solutions are great at managing the case, but once an agent or support professional or the customer needs to solve the problem or resolve the incident, they begin to reach the limits of their functionality."

That's because CRM systems are oriented around database and transactional technologies, Kanisa said, as opposed to knowledge bases, natural-language search, collaboration, interview scripting, and automated reply, which require deep integration to CRM systems.

Such systems need to be supported with applications that separately address self service and multi-channel contact centers, and more recently, "expert forums," like the one developed by Kanisa with client Hewlett-Packard.

This is another channel of self-service where customers create community-based or peer support-based service in which expert users solve problems for other users online, the article said.