Cyberserv’s New Challenge: Linking Companies and Customers

7/31/00
By Steve Robblee

Smith Wood believed his internally funded Vienna, Va., company, Cyberserv, Inc. was heading for success as it moved closer toward profitability.

Cyberserv, through its primary subsidiary Seneca Corp., provides call-in computer support services for private companies and government entities such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Chevy Chase, Md., the state of New Hampshire and the U.S. Navy.
But it wasn’t until Wood stopped and looked around at the big picture that he realized he could capitalize on a potential trend.

When the industry buzz started growing about electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM), nobody thought of Cyberserv, even though Wood’s company was developing new software products to help organizations communicate internally and with customers and vendors.

“We kind of scratched our heads and said, ‘We’re already in this business. We’ve got to rebrand it,’” Wood recalled.
The software can go beyond just reaching customers, helping employees communicate better with each other and with vendors, he said.

“We really try to think of relationship management as not just customers, but we really think of managing all related parties,” Wood added.

Cyberserv had been profitable for two years and was “approaching $15 million in revenue” in 1999, Wood said, adding that the company hopes its fastest growth lies ahead with a suite of e-CRM products labeled BeCyber.

Cyberserv plans to introduce BeCyber at an Oct. 24-26 conference in San Francisco, but the company already has inked some customers.

Cyberserv is not the only Potomac area firm focused on e-CRM. CyberRep.coM is a McLean, Va., e-CRM company whose clients include Qwest Communications International Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc. ISky Inc., of Columbia, Md., focuses on an e-CRM niche targeted at handling customer relations for other companies on a contract basis.

Bill Follin, Cyberserv’s newly hired vice president of marketing, said the e-CRM products were developed paying close attention to the technology analysts’ predictions.

For example, the company is introducing a pricing model based on concurrent users, rather than on the industry standard of a per-seat use. In the per-seat model, customers must buy licenses for each member of their organization regardless of how frequently they would use the product.

Cyberserv also touts that its software was created with Web interaction in mind, rather than simply adapted for use on the Web. “It’s a big deal in CRM as to whether you have built from the bottom up — not built from a client-server [information system] and jury-rigged in,” Follin said.

Research firm Cahners In-Stat Group believes Web-based e-CRM should be among the fastest growing areas of that market, with Web-based consumer interaction services predicted to reach $1.8 billion by 2004.

Cyberserv’s products include a Web site called My Page that can act as a company intranet to help staff track projects or as a customer-oriented extranet that lets users set up contact lists, hosts files and provides individually tailored news stories.

Another service is a noncookie-based tracking service that helps companies know which information is the most frequently read. Wood said he expects this to be popular with trade associations and other nonprofits that want to measure what Web site services their members are using.

AECDirect, a Washington, D.C.-based Web company that focuses on information for architects, engineers and contractors, uses Cyberserv to create some of the graphics for its newsletter and to track what stories subscribers are clicking through to read.

“It helps us decide what stories connect with our readers and what stories don’t,” said Amadie Hart, managing editor of the DirectNews online publication.

The company also plans to enlist Cyberserv’s help to create a product that users can customize to their own interests.

“We don’t have the ability to do it” internally, Hart said. “It’s a big software issue.”

Follin believes Cyberserv will be competitive because the company wants most features of its Web-based service to be managed by customers. Many other systems require full-time consultants, which increases the price and reduces customers’ autonomy, Follin added.

Several large technology companies are already entering this market, including Baan Company NV, Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., SAS Institute Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc.

So how will Cyberserv, a company that admits it isn’t an experienced marketer, compete against those giants?

The answer is it won’t, Follin said. Cyberserv will target mid-size businesses, which are smaller than the big corporations that will first be targeted by the tech companies that have become household names.

“I think we’ll bump into the bigger players once in a while,” Follin said, “but I don’t think it will be a peer relationship.”