X2Engine, which provides software and hosting for X2Contacts, an open source sales management application developed by X2Engine, announced the availability of X2Contacts beta that provides social sales solution for small and medium-sized business.

“In today’s global economy, all companies need sales management applications in order to be competitive,” said John Roberts (News - Alert), founder and CEO of X2Engine, in a statement. “The problem has been these apps have become so huge and complex, it’s impossible to implement the simple and straight-forward sales processes that actually make reps more knowledgeable and effective.”

X2Contacts streamlines contact and sales actions into one compact, blog-style user interface, according to Roberts. By adding contact and colleague social feeds into the equation, the company delivers a social sales solution that makes sales representatives smarter and more effective resulting in increased sales and higher customer satisfaction, Roberts added.

X2Contacts is built on the latest open source software including Apache, PHP, MySQL and Linux (LAMP). Developers can use X2Studio, an administrative tool, to create and share new application modules, without any programming knowledge. X2Contacts supports HTML5, iPad, iPhone and Android (News - Alert) mobile phones.

The solution stands apart from its competitor due to the fact that it boasts a compact, blog-style user interface, according to company officials. It features interactive and collaborative tools commonly found in social networking pages including tagged pictures, shared docs, newsfeeds, group chat, discussions boards and iPad apps.

These solutions are combined within a compact, lightning fast contact sales management application. It enables sales reps to make more sales contacts while leveraging the combined social intelligence of peers, enabling them to add more value to their customer interactions leading to higher close rates.

San Jose BMW, which sells and services BMW motorcycles for the San Francisco Bay Area, has been using a pre-release version of X2Contacts for the past six months. The company was impressed with the compactness of X2Contacts coupled with its results-oriented sales management foundation, according to company officials.

“The integrated social media tools provide my sales team with real time knowledge of customers’ interests resulting in more effective sales interactions,” said Chris Hodgson, owner of San Jose BMW Motorcycles, in a statement. “Simply put, we are interacting with our customers faster and with more actionable knowledge.”

X2Contacts is fully internationalized and has been localized into six languages, with additional languages on the way. The social sales app is available for download from GitHub, Code.Google (News - Alert).com and SourceForge.net, and is licensed under the GPLv3.

X2Engine plans to roll out commercial support and private virtual server hosting packages in October, company officials said. As part of this launch, the company also introduced a Worldwide Partner Program that includes specialized developer, administration, hosting and sales management resources and training.

“With this first beta of X2Contacts, we are introducing our World Wide Channel Partner (News - Alert) Program for IT consulting, hosting and solution providers,” said John Roberts, founder and CEO of X2Engine, in a statement. “Now companies across the globe can work with partners offering X2Contacts hosting, administration, support and consulting services.”

According to a recent research, “Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report,” from IBM Coremetrics (News - Alert), social network-driven retail sales exceed social network-driven traffic to retail sites, indicating social retail visitors are highly likely to convert.