Avidian's Prophet OnDemand Marries Hosted CRM to Outlook

In what may be the first linkup of its kind, Avidian TechnologiesOutlook-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution. has married hosted/software-as-a-service delivery to its Prophet

 

The union, Prophet OnDemand, gives sales teams working within the popular Outlook application an easy-to-use sales CRM solution without having to purchase or maintain server software. That makes the Prophet product, currently on Prophet 5, more affordable than ever before, which will enable more firms: especially small/midsized businesses (SMBs) to benefit from its features and functionality.

 

Some of Prophet OnDemand’s other key deliverables include:

 

*          Easy contact management in Outlook

 

With Prophet OnDemand companies can easily create, manage and share contacts and sale information with their sales teams. It turns Outlook into a centralized and secure contact and sales management system.

 

Prophet’s Outlook base eliminates the need to manage multiple contact databases or toggle between separate applications. Built on the .NET (News - Alert) platform, Prophet works entirely inside Outlook and easily integrates with other critical business capabilities. It turns Outlook data into the building blocks of an effective sales management solution.

 

*          Quick install times

 

Simple implementation cuts installation from months down to hours. Avidian’s client services team walks customers through the best practices for setup, configuration and customization. Live, instructor-led training is also included in the setup fee.

 

*          Effective data protection

 

Prophet OnDemand is hosted in a safe, accessible data center with redundant power, Internet connections and daily backups.

 

*          Automatic product updates

 

With Prophet OnDemand, companies will always run the latest version of Prophet, including any new feature releases and updates.

 

Avidian executives say that as far they are aware, Prophet OnDemand is the only hosted CRM solution that is built inside of Outlook. Avidian’s announcement is timely given the challenging economy with need to boost sales performance and keep costs down. Hosting software built on familiar platforms lowers up-front expenses while providing a comfort factor with that delivery choice.

 

Avidian created Prophet OnDemand specifically to meet the needs of SMBs and other small offices and operations. A recent Market Tools survey of SMBs found that most respondents (67 percent) want CRM that runs inside of Outlook, and 62 percent said they want CRM data stored in Outlook. The survey also found that 69 percent want a solution that runs over the Internet, yet 57 percent want a solution that is also available offline.

 

“Prophet OnDemand is the best of both worlds for sales teams dependent on Outlook who need to close more sales,” says Tim Nguyen, CIO and co-founder of Avidian Technologies. “The new team version of Prophet lets Avidian host and manage all of the shared data on a 100 percent secure, 100 percent accessible server that requires no additional hardware or software configuration by the client.”

 

The Prophet 5 product suite, including Prophet OnDemand, can be purchased by individual users with Prophet Personal, Prophet Advanced and Prophet Premium. For sales teams that need more collaboration there is Prophet Professional Server & Client and Prophet Enterprise Server and Client. Extensions of Prophet 5 include Prophet for Windows Mobile and Prophet for Palm.

 

Prophet customers have embraced the Prophet OnDemand union.

 

“As an existing Prophet user, Prophet OnDemand has been what my team has been waiting for,” reports Fern Lam, a mortgage consultant with MetLife Home Loans. “As a small team that doesn’t want the headache of managing our own backend server and trouble our IT department, Prophet OnDemand made a lot of sense to me. I jumped at the opportunity of still doing my CRM within Outlook while not having to worry about the backend server stuff.”