May 15, 2006

Selligent, LignUp Combine VoIP, CRM Products

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Selligent, a European vendor of CRM products, and LignUp Corporation, a vendor of converged communications products, have announced a partnership to deliver communications-enabled business process (CEBP) products by integrating the LignUp Communications Platform with Selligent’s enterprise and web-based customer relationship management products.

The combined offerings, according to officials from both companies, will allow Selligent customers to “enjoy voice-enhanced CRM capabilities powered by the LignUp platform.”

Selligent’s CRM products are designed to manage all phases of customer interaction. They integrate web-based sales, marketing and customer care functionality with a multi-channel contact center, as well as content management, document management and analytical CRM applications.

“By integrating the communications function directly with the applications that drive productivity and interact with customers, organizations have a greater ability to sense business environment change and respond efficiently and effectively to that change,” said Steve Blood, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc.

This past March LignUp Corporation announced the European launch of FastLign, an industry alliance founded to accelerate the adoption of IP telephony services.

Alliance partners provide a telephony services architecture, turnkey hosted applications and regional partners to operate and fully support FastLign managed services.

TeliaSonera International Carrier and the United Kingdom’s Streamdoor Limited will extend FastLign’s reach into Europe, enabling the market’s numerous emerging service providers to deliver hosted telephony services.

“In the past, IP telephony services have been prohibitively time consuming and expensive to build, deploy and manage,” said Johan Andersson, VP and head of Marketing, Strategy and New Business at TeliaSonera International Carrier. “Service providers must build these services from the ground up, integrating a wide variety of technologies and services to provide a complete services product.”

LignUp’s flexible communications application server platform enables next generation CTI by combining standard session initiation protocol (SIP) and XML technologies to reduce integration time cycles and costs. This platform, LignUp officials say, allows independent software vendors and on-demand service providers such as Selligent to “easily build specialized IP telephony applications or voice-enable existing applications and services.”

“Integrating the LignUp platform with our CRM portfolio brings the dynamic capabilities of VoIP – voice, presence and messaging communications – to companies working to better develop and manage their customer relationships,” said Andrc Lejeune, CEO, Selligent.

“Organizations are always looking for new ways to obtain a competitive edge in reaching out to customers,” remarked Kevin Nethercott, president and COO for LignUp Corporation.

LignUp-enabled Selligent products will be generally available by the end of 2006 as a part of the CRM provider’s next portfolio release.

Selligent claims a customer retention rate of 87 percent in 10 years, which company officials claim is the CRM industry.

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

(source: http://news.tmcnet.com/news/-lignup-crm-voip-/2006/05/15/1649216.htm)