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June 7, 1999

Low-End CRM

New products unify customer service information

By Natalie Engler

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ommence Corp. and MultiActive Software Inc. last week introduced customer-relationship management applications aimed at small and midsize companies. Analysts say they expect such products, which consolidate sales, marketing, and customer service information into a unified database, to appeal to emerging enterprises that have discovered the limitations of contact-management software but don't have the financial or technical resources to implement higher-end customer-relationship management systems from companies such as Onyx Software, Pivotal Software, and Saratoga Software.

Available in mid-June, Commence 2000 is a suite of five applications for sales, help-desk, time and billing, customer service, and contact-management tasks. It's the first product from Commence that works out of the box, says company president Larry Caretsky. The application for Windows 95, 98, and NT gives users access to customers' histories, and has tools that let customers modify the prebuilt applications to create new reports, or build and integrate new modules. Users can extend the application to the Internet, using Allure 2000, a Web application server from Commence.

Commence 2000 costs $299 per seat; the server version is $999, with network administration tools. Users can buy Allure 2000 for $6,900 or lease it for $200 to $300 a month.

According to Patrick Hee, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, E-commerce is driving many emerging enterprises to adopt customer-relationship management apps. He says the Web lets these companies capture a lot more information online and serve customers without human intervention. Multiactive Software Inc.'s new product, Entice, builds its features around online-purchase activities.

When a customer places an order online, Entice automatically qualifies the buyer, completes the sale, processes the order, and tracks the sequence for future reference. The software also can be used to launch E-mail campaigns, register and promote a Web site, answer E-mail inquiries, and share information with distributors. Its account-management module provides views of all of a customer's history with the company. Entice also includes a reporting and analysis tool to monitor sales and marketing efforts.

Pricing will begin at $25,000, including the Entice Server, 10 concurrent licenses for Windows 95, 98, or NT users, and one administration license. The product ships June 30.