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The most flexible CRM architecture on the market today.

SemaTree Products

ECS CRM Resources

Product Highlights

  • Version 5.0 Released
  • 100% Web-based
  • Integrated Quoting
  • Lead Management
  • Account Management
  • Contact Management
  • Sales Force Automation
  • Customer Service
  • Multi-Language Support
  • Query Builder
  • Activity Reporting

Featured Documents

ECS Product Suite Overview

Overview

Enterprise Component Series (ECS) is a suite of products that enables organizations to manage all customer interactions and their resultant activities. All ECS products are designed to be used by both internal and external user communities. ECS product line consists of the products listed below.

  • ECS CRM
  • ECS Customer Self-Service
  • ECS Secure Messaging
  • ECS Fulfillment
  • ECS Tradeshow
  • ECS PartnerNet

Flexible CRM Architecture

The SemaTree organization has over 15 years of experience building, implementing and deploying CRM systems. In addition to understanding the application space so well, we also have tremendous experience in architecting products that using the best available technology standards of the times. SemaTree's first commercial product, Prospect Management System, was released in 1992. Prospect Management Systems was based 100% on 4GL and UNIX technologies. Once client/server technology became the predominant market force in the mid 90s, Enterprise Series was released to meet those needs. In the late 90’s the Internet became the predominant product architecture. SemaTree responded by completely rewriting  its product line to take advantage of service orientiated architectures  and released Enterprise Component Series. The technology migration is now complete, and the resultant ECS 2005 product suite is ready to be applied for solutions in the post-bubble economy. ECS 2005 represents 15 years of CRM experience built on the latest open standards of Java and J2EE™, adhereing to the principles described below.

  • ECS products are installed, configured and implemented like any commercial product.
  • ECS products enable organizations to extend its functionality using industry accepted technology standards.
  • Customers can extend and customize our products without sacrificing upgradability.
  • ECS products enable organizations to incrementally add CRM capabilities to their existing internal systems.
  • ECS products enable organizations to add CRM capabilities to their existing customer web site.

Form follows function - thus the ECS architecture mandates that the business components and logic are separated from its user interface. ECS 2005 is the most flexible CRM architecture in the market today. Our architecture allows organizations to use ECS as is,  as a starting point to develop or integrate CRM into existing business systems or to optionally develop new functionality using the business components directly.

Product Summary

SemaTree's ECS 2005 product suite enables businesses to manage their customer base, from initial inquiry through product delivery and sustaining customer involvement. Our products are designed to improve your organization’s ability to respond quickly to your customers' needs and ultimately, to maintain long and profitable relationships.

The table below describes if the ECS product is internal or external facing. Internal facing indicates that the product is designed for the employees of your organization. External facing indicates that the product is designed to be used directly by your customers or channel partners. Some products are both Internal and External facing. This indicates that the external facing application is integrated with the ECS CRM.

Product Description Table

Product Name Internal Facing External Facing Technologies
ECS CRM Yes No EJB/RMI
ECS Tradeshow Yes No JSP/Struts/Tiles/WebServices
ECS Fulfillment Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS Customer Self-Service Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS Secure Messaging Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS PartnerNet Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services

Product Actors Table

The table below describes the actors or users who benefit from using the product.

Product Name Actors
ECS CRM Marketing Personnel, Salespeople, Sales Administrators, Sales Managers, Customer Service Representatives and Public Relations Managers
ECS Tradeshow Marketing Personnel and Tradeshow Booth Personnel
ECS Fulfillment Sales Administrators, Marketing Personnel and Customers
ECS Customer Self-Service Customer Service Representatives and Customers
ECS Secure Messaging Customer Service Representatives and Customers
ECS PartnerNet Marketing Personnel, Salespeople, Sales Administrators, Sales Managers, Customer Service Representatives, Public Relations Managers and Partners

Product Deployment Table

Supported Application Servers

  • IBM WebSphere 5
  • BEA WebLogic 6,7,8
  • Oracle 9iAS
  • Oracle 10G
  • JBoss 3

Supported Servlet Containers

  • IBM WebSphere 5
  • BEA WebLogic 6,7,8
  • Oracle 9iAS
  • Oracle 10G
  • JBoss 3
  • Tomcat 4,5

Supported Databases

  • IBM DB2
  • IBM INFORMIX
  • SYBASE
  • Oracle
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL

The table below describes the container and database requirements of each ECS product.

Product Name Application Server Servlet Only Database
ECS CRM Yes No Yes
ECS Tradeshow No Yes No (XML) backing store.
ECS Fulfillment Yes Yes Yes
ECS Customer Self-Service Yes Yes Yes
ECS Secure Messaging Yes Yes Yes
ECS PartnerNet Yes No Yes

Product Packaging Table

The table below describes how the ECS products are packaged and deployed. A value of EAR file indicates that the product requires a Java application server. A value of WAR file indicates that the product only requires a Java Servlet.

Product Name EAR File WAR File
ECS CRM Yes No
ECS Tradeshow No Yes
ECS Fulfillment Yes Yes
ECS Customer Self-Service Yes Yes
ECS Secure Messaging Yes Yes
ECS PartnerNet Yes No

Product Usage Scenarios

ECS CRM

ECS CRM is an integrated solution for your marketing, sales and customer service users. ECS CRM is an internal facing application that is meant to be deployed to users within your organization. The main modules that comprise ECS CRM are listed below.

  • Advertising and Response Tracking
  • Lead Management
  • Sales Force Automation
  • Account Management
  • Contact Management
  • Case Management
Module Usage Scenario
Module Name Usage
Advertising and Response Tracking Use this module if you want to
  • Define your advertising so that its effectiveness can be tracked.
  • Analyze different advertising media – TV, Web, Direct Marketing, Magazines, and Public Relations etc.
  • Perform Direct Marketing or Email Campaigns
Lead Management Use this module if you want to
  • Record product or service inquiries from your customers.
  • Qualify and score customer inquiries into leads.
  • Distribute leads to sales people.
  • Analyze lead quality and lead sources.
Sales Force Automation Use this module if you want to
  • Allow sales people to convert leads into sales opportunities
  • Allow sales people to track and manage their sale pipeline.
  • Allow sales managers to define sales territories and assign them to sales people.
  • Allow sales managers to review sales activity
  • Allow sales managers to review and manage different sales pipelines.
  • Allow sales managers to manage customer activity.
Account Management Use this module if you want to
  • Allow users in your organization to record customers within a Business-to-Business model.
  • Allow users to manage one or more addresses for an account location.
  • Allow users to maintain a hierarchy of accounts.
  • Allow users to assign one or more contacts to the account.
  • Allows users to manage all activity within an organization or a hierarchy of accounts.
  • Allow users to track specific information about an account.
Contact Management Use this module if you want to
  • Allow users in your organization to record customer interactions.
  • Allow users to review customer contact history
  • Allow users to send email to customer contacts
  • Allow users to assign contacts segment information
  • Allow users to send letters and product literature to customer contacts.
  • Allow users to record user-defined information about a contact.
  • Allow users to manage a customer’s email preference.
Case Management Use this module if you want to
  • Record and track customer service issues
  • Build a knowledge-base of service resolutions.
  • Ensure that you meet customer service level agreements.

ECS Tradeshow

ECS Tradeshow application is designed for organizations that wish to capture leads using a consistent lead form for each tradeshow. ECS Tradeshow eliminates hand writing mistakes and streamlines fulfillment and sample processes. ECS Tradeshow Features:

  • Customized Lead Forms allowing you to capture information that is meaningful to your organization
  • Web-based Lead Forms can be used on PDA devices to allow multiple users to capture leads at once.
  • Web-based Lead Forms allow you to leverage existing PDA devices.
  • Supports multiple product groups within the same Tradeshow Booth.
  • Export leads to Excel
  • Supports Scanning of any 2D or Magnetic Stripe Badges
  • Integrates with ECS Fulfillment to streamline the fulfillment module
  • Integrates with ECS Advertising and Response Tracking to provide full analysis of the tradeshow effectiveness
    including cost per lead and lead quality
  • Integrates with ECS SFA module so that leads can automatically be distributed to your channels.
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS Tradeshow Use this module if you want to
  • Use your organizations lead form at a tradeshow.
  • Allow multiple people within a booth to capture leads at one time.
  • Automatically manage fulfillment requests from a tradeshow.
  • Automatically import leads that were captured at a tradeshow
  • Automatically route leads that were captured at a tradeshow
  • Allow fulfillment to be completed at point of lead capture.
  • Perform Direct Marketing or Email Campaigns

ECS User Management

The User Management Module allows your customers to register and maintain their account preferences from your web site. User Management Module look and feel can changed so that it reflects your organization’s look and feel. User Management Module is required for all ECS Self-Service modules since access information is maintained in this module. User Management Module Features:

  • Allows customers to register themselves.
  • Allows customers to pick choose their user name and password.
  • Allows customers to change their password.
  • Provides a “Forgot Password” feature.
  • Provides email notification templates for new registered users.
  • Allows you to “specify” your login module so that authentication can be integrated to existing security systems.
  • Utilizes industry standard approaches to HTML design. All pages use Cascading Style Sheets to provide its look and feel.
  • Administrator features to reset passwords.

ECS Secure Messaging

Secure Messaging Module allows your customers to create messages through your web site and direct them to your customer service personnel. Secure messaging allows you to create a set of response templates to standard questions that you receive. Secure messaging helps direct your customer support through a single channel – your web site – which allows better customer service as well as opportunities to market new products and services. Secure Messaging Features:

  • Integrates with User Management Module
  • Allows you to define message categories.
  • Allows you to define message responses to categories.
  • Allows you direct messages to specific users and queues.
  • Automatic email notification when a message is created
  • Automatic email notification when a message is responded to
  • Supports message escalation
  • Activity and production reporting
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS Tradeshow Use this module if you want to
  • Create a consistent touch point for all customer messages
  • Reduce calls into your customer service center.
  • Add customer value to your customer web site by offering useful functionality.
  • Allow your customers to post questions to your customer service representatives through your web site.
  • Allow your customer service representatives to use answer templates as responses to messages.
  • Manage customer service follow-up activity.
  • Allow questions to be escalated.
  • Automatically notify customers when a CSR responds to their message
  • Allow your customers to maintain a history of their requests

ECS Self-Service

The goal of Case Management Self-Service is provide your customers with the ability to solve their product issues by making knowledge resources available to them. This approach will reduce your organizations costs and increase customer satisfaction. Case Management Self-Service integrates directly with the SemaTree’s customer self-service module so that when customers cannot resolve their issues themselves, they can open and submit the case to the Customer Service Center. Case Management Self-Service Features:

  • Integrates with User Management Module
  • Integrates with ECS Product Module
  • Integrates directly with ECS CRM Case Management
  • Search Knowledge-Base functionality
  • Allows you to define any number of case categories.
  • Product information is associated with the case.
  • Allows you to route cases to specific users and queues
  • Automatic email notification when a case is created
  • Automatic email notification when a case has been updated
  • Supports automatic case escalation
  • CSR Activity and production reporting
  • Customers maintain their case history
  • Customers may remove cases from their view
  • Customers may reopen a case
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS Self-Service Use this module if you want to
  • Create a consistent touch point for all customer service requests
  • Reduce calls into your customer service center
  • Add customer value to your customer web site by offering adding self-service functionality
  • Allow your customers to post support questions to customer service based on a product
  • Integrate service entitlements into self-service
  • Allow your customers to search a knowledge base for answers to product questions
  • Manage customer service follow-up activity including escalation
  • Automatically notify customers when a CSR responds to their case
  • Allow your customers to maintain a history of their requests

ECS Product Management

The User Product allows your customers to download, register and request maintenance agreements for their products from your web-site. User Product module information is used within Case Management Self-Service so customers can open cases against their registered products as well as control entitlements. For example, you may allow your customers to use your web sites knowledge base to resolve problems but will not allow them to open cases if they have not purchases maintenance agreements. Your customer’s product information can leverage by SemaTree’s Marketing and Lead Management modules to notify customers of product upgrades and maintenance renewals. Product Management Module Features:

  • Register one or more products
  • Product download support
  • Provide a central area of product documentation and release notes
  • Provide product upgrade notifications
  • Provide product maintenance expiration notification
  • Customers maintain a history of their downloaded products
  • Integrated with Case Management Self-Service
  • Integrates with User Product Module
  • Integrates with Marketing and Lead Management modules
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS ECS Product Management Use this module if you want to
  • Allow customers to register their products from your web-site.
  • Allow customers to download products from your web site
  • Allow customers to review product documentation
  • Allow customers request maintenance renewals
  • Maintain a complete history of customer downloads
  • Automatically notify customers of product upgrades

ECS Fulfillment

ECS Fulfillment enables your customers to request or download product literature or samples directly from your web site. ECS Fulfillment enables your organization to efficiently process all literature requests from your customers, salespeople or customer service representatives. ECS Fulfillment supports the features listed below:

  • Handles electronic or letter fulfillment
  • Maintains a catalog of literature with inventory reorder levels
  • Inventory re-orders reports
  • Literature usage reports
  • Email support for electronic based literature
  • Supports any number of fulfillment queues so that you may spread your fulfillment processes across your organization.
  • Supports multiple letter templates and mail merges
  • Supports RTF based documents
  • Supports HTML based documents
  • Provide a central area of product documentation and release notes
  • Maintains a history of customer fulfillment requests
  • Integrates with the ECS Tradeshow module to provide automatic import of requests as well as “on-line” requests.
  • Provides a “self-service” interface to manage fulfillment requests directly from your customers or prospects
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS Fulfillment Use this module if you want to
  • Allow your customers to request product literature or samples via your web site.
  • Allow customers to maintain a history of their product literature.
  • Allow customers to track their literature requests
  • Improve your internal fulfillment process by implementing fulfillment queues.
  • Centralize all available literature for download or to be mailed.
  • Maintain a complete history of customer literature inquiries.
  • Provide a standard cover letter when literature is requested.
  • Maintain an inventory of  product literature.

ECS PartnerNet

ECS PartnerNet enables an organization to extend ECS CRM functionality to its outside sales channels or dealer network. ECS PartnerNet provides a business model where each channel partner can be integrated directly into your marketing and sales processes. Each channel partner’s customer information is maintained by the partner accessible by the organization but not viewable by other partners. ECS PartnerNet is ideal to integrate into existing customer portals or extranets.

  • Supports any number of channel partners or dealers
  • Allows partners to “subscribe” to the PartnerNet service
  • Partners can maintain their own employee list
  • Provides contact and account management supports
  • Provides customer profiling
  • Provides activity management features such as TO-DOs
  • Allows your organization to route leads directly to your partners
  • Reporting structure to manage your best dealers
  • Integrates directly with ECS Self-Service applications to provide direct partner support
  • Customizable HTML pages for easy branding. Utilizes open standards Cascading Style sheets
Product Usage Scenarios
Product Name Usage
ECS PartnerNet Use this module if you want to
  • Extend account and contact management to your partner channel
  • Push leads to your partners and track their activity
  • Deploy sales force automation processes to your partner channel
  • Integrate with existing partner web applications

Product Deployment Options

This section provides how ECS can be deployed within your IT infrastructure. The main categories are Behind Firewall and Outside of Firewall. Behind Firewall indicates that the deployment of the ECS product should be deployed inside your corporate firewall for security and performance reasons. Outside of Firewall indicates that the ECS product has been architected so that it can be deployed outside your corporate firewall without any security or performance issues. The main technology supporting “outside of firewall” deployments is web services.

Product Deployment Matrix
Product Name Behind Firewall Outside Firewall Technology
ECS CRM Yes No EJB/RMI
ECS Survey Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Web Services
ECS Tradeshow Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Web Services
ECS Fulfillment Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS Customer Self-Service Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS Secure Messaging Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services
ECS PartnerNet Yes Yes EJB/RMI/Struts/Tiles/Web Services

Product Configuration Table

This section provides summary information that describes the methods required to customize ECS products.

ECS CRM

Easily view opportunity related contact interactions. Yes Maintain different qualification criteria. None
ECS CRM Configuration Matrix
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
International Mail to different countries using their respective formats. Yes No None
Capture international addresses. Yes No None
Format international phone numbers Yes No None
Add or change country definitions. Yes No None
Add or change country/state/province definition Yes No None
Support additional languages on all user pages. Yes No None
Support internalization of data choices. Yes No None
Interactions Maintain a list of interaction types Yes No None
Maintain a list of interaction results types Yes No None
Maintain a list of email activities Yes No None
Fulfillment Categorize product literature Yes No None
Upload product literature Yes No None
Maintain literature kits Yes No None
Categorize form letters Yes No None
Mail merge into Word documents Yes No None
Mail merge into email messages Yes No None
Maintain a list of shipping carriers Yes No None
Create different fulfillment queues Yes No None
Allow users to specify fulfillment queues Yes No None
Contact Management Attach documents to a contact Yes No None
Customize user-defined fields Yes No None
Add fields to store customer contact data. Yes No None
Maintain a category of contacts Yes No None
Add additional phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses etc. Yes No None
Display duplicate contacts during data entry. Yes No None
Allow user to categorize their contacts. Yes No None
Send email. Yes No None
Disable email for a single customer Yes No None
Disable email for all customers. Yes No None
Add additional addresses for a contact Yes No None
Account Management Customize user-defined fields. Yes No None
Add fields to store customer account data. Yes No None
Attach documents specific to a customer account Yes No None
Maintain a category of customer accounts. Yes No None
Record secondary customer account types. Yes No None
Segment an account by Industry Yes No None
Display duplicate accounts during entry. Yes No None
Add additional addresses for a customer account Yes No None
Associate customers accounts with other accounts Yes No None
Sales Force Automation Maintain categories representing sales opportunities. Yes No None
Maintain my own sales templates complete with milestone information. Yes No None Maintain a list of won/loss reason codes. Yes No None
Specify forecast dates. Yes No None
Associate products with sales opportunities. Yes No None
Specify revenue dates Yes No None
Associate industry information with an opportunity. Yes No None
Attach documents to an opportunity. Yes No None
Support team selling Yes No None
Support multiple contact selling Yes No None
Yes No None
Associated sales territories with an opportunity Yes No None
Graphically view sales pipeline information. Yes No None
Sales Management reporting. Yes No None
Automatically audit sales forecast changes. Yes No None
Maintain a list of subjective forecasts. Yes No None
User Management Supports single sign-on Yes Yes None
Manage permissions Yes No None
Manage user preferences Yes No None
Add URL protection Yes No None
Add additional permission. Yes Yes None
Territory Management Associate one or more territories to a customer. Yes No None
Automatic calculation of territories based on Geography. Yes No None
Ability to handle exclusive territories Yes No None
Manual assignment of Territories Yes No None
Bulk territory reassignment Yes No None
Graphical representation of territories. Yes No None
Disable territory calculations Yes No None
Support multiple product groups Yes No None
Query Create additional queries Yes No None
Store queries for reuse Yes No None
Store the result of queries on a list. Yes No None
Store the result queries to a folder Yes No None
Advertising and Response Tracking Maintain a list of marketing sources Yes No None
Create advertising categories Yes No None
Maintain cost categories for advertising. Yes No None
Associate more than one cost category to a marketing activity. Yes No None
Associate location attributes with a marketing activity. Yes No None
Associate size attributes with a marketing activity. Yes No None
Associate frequency attributes with a marketing activity. Yes No None
Maintain a list of marketing response types Yes No None Obtain reports based on marketing activity. Yes No None
Lead Management Capture inquiry information relating to marketing source, response type and products. Yes No None
Yes No None
Define lead grades Yes No None
Automatic routing of leads Yes No None
User-Defined routing paths Yes No None
Custom lead routing workflow Yes Yes None
Manual routing of leads. Yes No None
Lead to Opportunity conversion Yes No None
Automatic lead escalation Yes No None
Lead Re-Routing Yes No None
Data Management Automatically maintain and build duplicate keys for customer accounts Yes No None
Automatically maintain and build duplicate keys for customer contacts Yes No None
Maintain a library of data standards Yes No None
Automatically standardize address data. Yes No None
Automatic postal code lookup Yes No None
Automatic duplicate detection during data entry. Yes No None
Case Management Maintain a list of case categories. Yes No None
Automatically route cases to CSR Yes No None
Automatically route cases to CSR queue Yes No None
Automatically escalate cases. Yes No None
Automatically partition cases among CSR Yes No None
Email customer of case resolution. Yes No None
View CSR activity. Yes No None
View current case load. Yes No None
Activity Management Maintain a list of customer action items. Yes No None
Ability to assign tasks to a user Yes No None
Ability to assign tasks to a group of users Yes No None
Ability to reassign an activity Yes No None
Ability to assign a due date to an activity. Yes No None
Ability to escalate an activity Yes No None

ECS Tradeshow

Configure badge formats
Tradeshow Customization
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
Tradeshow Configuration Maintain a list of tradeshows. Yes No None
Maintain a badge format with a tradeshow Yes No None
Configure lead form No Yes None

ECS Survey

ECS Fulfillment

ECS Fulfillment Configuration Options
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
ALL Maintain a catalog of fulfillment items. Yes No None
Maintain a catalog of form letters Yes No None
Track fulfillment usage Yes No None
Alert when fulfillment is reduced below a specified level. Yes No None
Support Word Documents Yes No None
Support HTML Merge Templates Yes No None
Support RTF Yes No None
Support upload of literature Yes No None
Allow customers to request literature Yes No None
Allow customers to receive literature via email Yes No None
Allow look and feel to be customized. No Yes None

ECS Customer Self-Service

ECS Self-Service Configuration Options
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
ALL Allow look and feel to be customized No Yes None
Customize email notification messages Yes No None
Selectively publish customer interactions Yes No None
Allow customers to maintain their case history Yes No None

ECS Secure Messaging

ECS Secure Messaging Configuration Options
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
ALL Allow look and feel to be customized No Yes None
Customize email notification messages Yes No None
Selectively publish customer interactions Yes No None
Allow customers to maintain their message history Yes No None
Maintain categories of standard response templates. Yes No None

ECS PartnerNet

ECS PartnerNet Configuration Options
Category Customization/Configuration Config Code Upgrade Effect
ALL Allow look and feel to be customized No Yes None

ECS Product Management

ECS Product Management Configuration Options
Category Customization/Configuration Config. Code Upgrade Effect
ALL Allow look and feel to be customized No Yes None