US-based Asterisk IP-PBX maker Fonality has made an investment in the CRM market with the acquisition of a specialist open source software company based in Sydney.
Insightful Solutions, which specialises in customising and hosting
solutions based on the commercial open source CRM solutions SugarCRM
was acquired by Fonality which develops phone systems based on the open
source IP PABX software solution Asterisk.
Insightful Solutions which began operations in 2005, specialises in
the SMB market and has customers throughout the Asia Pac region. The
solutions, which are generally delivered as a hosted solution are
integrated with PBX software like Asterisk to allow for phone
integration with the Sugar customer relationship management software.
The Fonality merger will see a much closer integration between the
SugarCRM and Fonality's Asterisk implementation PBXtra. A version
offering basic screen popping and click to call functionality is
available immediately under the new product name FonalityCRM, provides
click-to-call dialing, agent screen pops, telephone campaign management
for outbound sales teams, and more. It is hosted at one of the six
Fonality data centres and available immediately to PBXtra and trixbox
Pro customers worldwide.
However, Insightful Solutions CEO Mac Englaro told VoIP News a more
extensive version with greater integration will be released in the New
Year. According to Englaro, the roadmap for the new version includes maiking
the PBX and CRM systems aware of each other so that the "agent" or a
person using the
phone is tied to the user record so the people can be provisioned and
managed in
a unified way.
Every phone call that the PBX makes or receives will be
captured in the CRM system against the agent involved. This means that even if a
sales rep doesn't record the details about a call to a client, that at
least the system has automatically captured that the call occurred. Combined
with inbound screen-pops which open the CRM at the appropriate CRM screen when
the phone rings, to make a sales rep, or support agent's life a whole lot
easier.
When there are audio recordings of phone calls, such as in call centres and verbal
contracts, the voice recording will be linked with the CRM system, he said.
And also, with the new release, when the PBX knows about the contents of the CRM
system, it will be able to make intelligent decisions about what to do with inbound
phone calls. For example, when an important customer calls, then the PBX
looks up the customer's phone number in the CRM system, finds the details
of the customer's account manager, and immediately routes the call to the
appropriate person.
Englaro along with the other Insightful co-founder, Rick Bushel,
and 15 engineers will all migrate to the new owners after the deal.
Englaro will become General Manager of Fonality's CRM Division with the
main engineering and support thrust will continue to emanate from
Sydney's Insightful HQ, but the merged entity will take advantage
ofFonality's extensive US hosting platform to deliver the new solution.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The solutions are targeted at organisations with sales teams in the
5 - 100 seat range and the company counts companies such as
communications company Soul Australia and a number of Australian
Government Department on its client list which totals more than one
thousand seats in 13 countries. These arehosted from the three existing
data centres in Sydney, Auckland and Singapore. Fonality has over 1,000
hybrid-hosted call centres in 25 countries on its client list.
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