Acumen Solutions has introduced its Cable in the Cloud program for the cable industry.

The program uses software-as-a-service, or cloud computing, for sales and service business support systems.

Cable in the Cloud focuses on optimizing sales, marketing and CRM operations, improving customer service, reducing the cost of sales and designing forward-looking IT roadmaps . Acumen specializes in integrating applications in the cloud with legacy sales, billing, OSS, facility mapping and other enterprise systems, and in deploying Web-based e-commerce systems.

Combining data about the cable operator’s facilities or future build-outs with customer and prospect data enables facilities-based prospecting by facility for upsells or cross-sells; the building of management relationship tracking for commercial services; and survey and construction process management. The program offers consolidated customer views by location, case management tracking, agent desktop support system integration with call routing and a telephony platform for account or case screen pops, and operational reports.

“Cable companies are investing heavily in business services as a growth engine and aggressively looking to capture commercial market share,” said Brian O'Rourke, cable practice managing director for Acumen. “They are also looking to improve customer experience while also reducing the costs of servicing customers, both for residential and business services. Our forward thinking clients are capturing sales and service success early by launching support systems in the cloud and integrating these applications intelligently with their on-premise systems.