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CRM Week in Review

By Juliana Kenny
TMCnet Web Editor

It was a fantastic and enlightening experience getting to meet so many of today’s leading CRM and call center industry players at TMC’s Open House last week.

I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Don Palmer (News - Alert), CEO of SIP Print. He provided some insightful information on how the company is not just maintaining its position in the VoIP call recording industry, but is expanding exponentially. Through a mixture of marketing to small businesses and word-of-mouth circulation about its excellent product, SIP Print has managed to soar through the ranks of the call recording competition.

Palmer mentioned that the company has “had the most incredible few last months,” as they have been approached by Verizon and a host of other big clients including Ingram Micro (News - Alert), and Astra Canada. He noted that the SIP Print has been trying to get more international clients, especially “trying to get into the Japanese market. We couldn’t get into it until I spoke to the guy who heads up Astra Canada…turns out he also heads up Astra Asia.”

These rapid-fire contracts that SIP Print has been forming are the perfect example of the company’s long term goal. “We’re geared for the SMB market, but we want to dominate the marketplace,” remarked Palmer. He relayed a story about a woman he met who wanted to record calls for her company that consisted of eight phones. One of the big namers wanted to charge her $35,000. Incredulous at that outrageous sum, Palmer offered her $6,000 and promised customizable features for her small business.

I also discussed recent developments in the hosted CRM industry that have made the market quite competitive for growing CRM-related businesses. With expansion into the cloud, customers want customization, increased security features, accurate data recording, and agent proficiency.

I interviewed Manu Das, president and CEO of Soffront, who let us in on the tactics the hosted CRM provider has developed to keep up with the competitive marketplace.

TMC (News - Alert): How does Soffront set itself apart from other competitors in the CRM industry?

MD: Soffront gives our customers the ability to customize the CRM quickly and easily to facilitate changing business needs. Most CRM vendors claim that their software is customizable, but the level of customization abilities varies from vendor to vendor. For example, if you want to setup two fields - one to list countries and the second one to list states or provinces of a selected country, which should be a simple task for any CRM to do. Unfortunately to do this simple task in Microsoft dynamics CRM, you have to write code! Salesforce.com does not even allow the country field to be a list field - you are required to type in the name of the country (need to know how to spell)! Soffront CRM has a very simple user interface to accomplish this. 

I also dove into the realm of cloud telephony this week. The term “cloud telephony” suggests the move away from hardware and into a computing space that is moveable and free of hard location. A recent webinar from Fonality, providers of cloud telephony software, discusses the ways in which a cloud-based phone system allows employees and decision-makers to work anywhere at any time with access to all the same information.

Using the cloud enables businesses and their workers to work out of the office while also communicating with each other. This technology makes it easier for employees to work from home, on the road or anywhere there is Internet access. Mobility itself can increase business productivity, sales, and communications. It can also provide disaster recovery abilities, if employees work remotely, to save data.

Aron Aicard, senior director of product management at Fonality, and Thomas Howe (News - Alert), CEO of Light and Electric discuss the benefits of VoIP systems in the cloud for businesses and consumers alike during the webinar. Starting from the basics, Aicard mentions that “the terminology of ‘cloud’ is one of the key points to start with. Cloud-based telephony is about having a phone system that you used to think about in hardware…existing in your network. It’s a network-based approach to providing communications through business.”

To find out more about SIP Print, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2010. To be held Oct. 4 to 6 in Los Angeles, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Don’t wait. Register now.