FrontRange Shoots For (IP) Suite Success

FrontRange Solutions continued its push into the IP telephony market today with the announcement of GoldMine IP Voice Suite Version 5.0, fusing IP telephony and CRM functionality targeted specifically for GoldMine Corporate Edition users. The release represents what the company calls its Power of Two campaign, which enables organizations to add telephony to their database foundations, according to Jim Puchbauer, senior product marketing manager at FrontRange Solutions. "For the end user the sum of the two is greater than the individuals [with the Power of Two]," Puchbauer says. "It's the contact management-not just the relationship management. It's full, complete, end-to-end management of that customer relationship from the beginning contact all the way through to the management and reporting of the activities and interaction with your customers." The announcement comes just 10 days after the company unveiled IP Office Suite Version 5.0, a standards-based telephony system that integrates with Microsoft Office and FrontRange line-of-business apps. Although the release of GoldMine IP Voice Suite marks a new application for FrontRange, its Version 5.0 status is attributable to its origins as a spin-off of the company's IP Contact Center product, first announced roughly 18 months ago. While IP Contact Center is a telephony foundation for a full-blown contact center environment, GoldMine IP Voice Suite is a telephony foundation for a CRM environment, Puchbauer says. "GoldMine companies are not necessarily call center. They are more of a CRM solution set, so we've now brought specific telephony solutions to them." In addition to integrating with version 6.7 and later installments of GoldMine Corporate Edition, IP Voice Suite also delivers inbound and outbound functionality including VoIP softswitch, unified voice messaging, conversation-recording tools, and click-to-dial out of GoldMine contact records with the ability to track call activity in customer records. Other capabilities include screen pops, automated telemarketing call scripts, an automated preview dialing application, management and reporting, and a Web-based application builder. "With a single vendor you've got a complete solution guaranteed to work together," Puchbauer says. "We're really offering customers the ability to have very, very high-end enterprise functionality at a price that speaks really well to the small to mid-enterprise customers who have been priced out of this marketplace." GoldMine has been very successful at the low and medium end of the market, and this suite may bolster the company's chances of tacking on additional capabilities to GoldMine users. "I don't expect them overnight to go after the major VoIP telecommunication companies like Avaya, Siemens, Nortel, and [companies] like that, but they hit a very sweet spot in the marketplace for themselves," says Ken Landoline, principal analyst at Saddletree Research. "Their existing customers are excited about the potential of the integration of a voice telephony suite with their CRM solution, and you're going to see more and more prospective clients look at this as a possible solution. It does put together a couple of very key midrange solutions that are going to be very applicable and very affordable to many companies in the low and medium end." Related articles: FrontRange Heads Toward Privacy A tech-focused private equity firm gives the midmarket CRM company access to deeper pockets, which one analyst says could portend an aggressive growth strategy. SMBs Confront Barriers to IP Adoption Voice Clicks With IT Apps Voice-embedded IT applications have the potential to save organizations up to 30 percent on telephone outlay, according to a new report.