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News >> Technology >>
Egain and NS Solutions enter into global alliance
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 01 October 2002, 19:30 IST
SUNNYVALE: Egain Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:EGAN), a leading provider of knowledge-powered customer service software for the Global 2000, Tuesday announced a worldwide alliance with NS Solutions Corporation, one of Japan's leading system integrators. As part of their e-government initiative in Japan, NS Solutions will sell and support Egain's software within its IT Infrastructure Solution called "e-Japan", a package of technology products and services that enables Japan's municipal governments to harness the power of the Internet for optimizing municipal operations and providing citizen services.
Egain Assistant, is the first Egain product to become part of NS Solutions' e-Japan bundle, reflecting the popularity of online "virtual agents" in Japan. Egain Assistant allows citizens to pose questions to an online virtual agent regarding municipal services in a natural language format, and receive instant answers. NS Solutions will also offer Egain Mail for email management, Egain Live for real-time customer service via Web collaboration, and Egain Knowledge for guided Web self-service.
"The need for our offering has been well-established and with Egain's broad and deep solution that includes new and increasingly popular interaction methods such as Web collaboration for real-time customer service and online virtual agents, we are able to offer an array of interaction options to citizens," said Eiji Kawamura, Senior Manager at NS Solutions. "This will allow municipalities to effectively serve not only mainstream customers but also citizens with special needs such as the elderly or the disabled, seeking assistance on various matters."
Although many Japanese municipalities have already invested in intranets for employee services and optimization of internal operations, the e-Japan offering, for the first time, enables local governments to provide easy and convenient access to citizen services via the Web. Thus, if citizens have questions about road construction, sanitation, school hours, taxes, traffic or water supply, they can choose a variety of channels for contacting their local governments: the Internet (email, real-time chat or Web self-service), and the phone including traditional phones, wireless devices and Web-enabled phones such as Japan's popular I-mode. As one of the most wired countries on the planet and home to the world's highest concentration of cell phones, Japan's local communities and citizens are uniquely suited to take advantage of e-government initiatives.
NS Solutions estimates that Japan's medium-sized cities and municipalities are natural prospects for their IT services, and targets working with 30% of the locales with a population of 100,000 or less. The company has already deployed solutions in Tokyo, Hokkaido and Kyushu, generating considerable publicity with its first-of-a-kind offering that addresses the unique needs of local government services such as library search and reservation of access to public facilities.
Also included in the e-Japan bundle is a customizable template for creating municipal extranets, through which government entities can quickly implement Web-based citizen services. The template includes options for capturing data from various sources such as online forms, designing employee workflows, as well as integration with existing business systems, the company claimed.