GoldMine Software Corp has extended its sales and marketing customer relationship management software, adding support services facility gained from its merger with Bendata Inc earlier this year (CI No 3,652). The expanded offering will enable Colorado Springs, Colorado-based GoldMine to compete in terms of product breadth with sales force automation players like Onyx and Pivotal.
GoldMine’s FrontOffice 2000 will be targeted at GoldMine’s 100,000 customers and Bendata’s 15,000 in the small to medium-sized enterprise market. Bendata’s software was designed to provide helpdesk support, but 40% of its customers use it for customer support, says GoldMine executive VP John Ferrara.
The company has also added to its sales and marketing software, its traditional software offering, to appeal to a wider spectrum of users. GoldMine release 5.0 includes a simpler interface, with a clearer, more customizable set-up screen and computer-based learning, which enables users to ‘teach themselves’ how to use the product. GoldMine has preconfigured the software for use in legal, financial and real estate markets and added integration with Microsoft Outlook which lets users synchronize email between Outlook and GoldMine 5.0.
GoldMine still lacks facilities in e-commerce, computer telephony integration and partner relationship management, according to Ferrara, but the company has deals with Lucent and Nortel for CTI. As regards moving up-market to compete with the biggest names in CRM, Ferrara says GoldMine has no desire to be a Siebel. GoldMine will continue to focus on the SME sector which it says is still a lucrative area, where only 4% of target firms have made a CRM investment.
