Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Concursive Corporation, a vendor of open source Customer Relationship Management, content management and business social networking technologies, is providing its on-demand ConcourseSuite 5.0 customer relationship management (CRM) software free of charge for up to 100 users for a period of one year.

 

This offer "arms businesses" with a full-featured front office product available to "a meaningful number of users" and comes with a 100-user limit.

 

"ConcourseSuite 5.0 lets us manage the entire sales cycle -- from lead capture and contact management to pipeline tracking and quoting," said Dave Cook, Director at Amalgatek.

 

A Software as a Service (SaaS) on-demand offering, ConcourseSuite 5.0 requires no setup, company officials say - "business users simply subscribe and then log in to begin using the system. There's nothing to install and no IT skills are required."

 

The ConcourseSuite product combines customer relationship management (CRM), online presence management, marketing, team collaboration and customer service within a single platform. The tools within the suite let users track prospects and sales activity, generate new leads, manage the sales process and service existing customers.

 

"Opening up the availability of this tool that we have designed for everyday business use is a natural extension of our business model," said Michael Harvey, EVP for Concursive.

 

After twelve months, businesses using ConcourseSuite 5.0 under this offer will be given the opportunity to continue the service at what Concursive officials call "low promotional rates - on the order of half of the rates of competing on-demand CRM offerings."

 

Starting in November of last year, businesses were already able to sign up for a free 5-user account for ConcourseSuite 5.0. To date, nearly 1500 firms have started using ConcourseSuite 5.0 under that previous offer.

 

Earlier this year Concursive, formerly Centric CRM, said that AlphaGraphics implemented ConcourseSuite 5.0 in the company's corporate headquarters, and is "recommending it as the preferred CRM program to its network" of franchises.

 

Part of the U.K.'s Pindar Group, AlphaGraphics operates a franchise network for printing, document management and visual and marketing communications products. The firm wanted a front-office product to improve customer management and communications throughout its extended enterprise, including employees, customers and franchisees.

 

ConcourseSuite 5.0 has multiple deployment options with the same software application. For example, the ConcourseSuite 5.0 used by corporate staff at AlphaGraphics' corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City hosts a private, multi-tenant on-demand system for use by its network of franchisees. This lets AlphaGraphics franchisees collaborate, manage projects and share information with corporate headquarters and each other.

 

"A single instance of ConcourseSuite 5.0 gives each franchise operation its own dedicated CRM, sales and Web content management system," the Concursivians say. System capabilities include managing leads and marketing activities and tracking customer service queries, a Web content management system that allows franchisees to create customer-facing Web portals and e-commerce sites and team collaboration tools with shared workspaces, project management, discussion forums, and more.

 

ConcourseSuite 5.0 was launched to coincide with Concursive's corporate name change and providing front-office products beyond "simple CRM," officials say.