GROUPLINK ANNOUNCES ORION, A NEW eCRM SOLUTION

 

Salt Lake City, Utah, March 20, 2001/Press Release/ - GroupLink®, a software development company specializing in applications for Novell® NDS® eDirectory™ and Novell GroupWise®, announced the release of a new eCRM product called GroupLink’s Orion™.

            “GroupLink provides a range of solutions that scale to the needs of a wide variety of organizations. Orion takes customer relationship and contact management to the next level,” said Paul Turner, Director of Product Management for Novell’s Collaboration Service Group. “It enables executives to see the big picture—how all of their business processes impact their customers. GroupLink’s Orion leverages eDirectory, GroupWise, and the Internet to make this possible.”

Kim Madsen, GroupLink Marketing/Communications Director, said Orion allows this big picture approach by integrating other back and front office applications into the CRM application. “Orion is more than just an application,” Madsen said, “it’s a workflow process, a way of allowing those who need to know—whether they’re employees, customers, or partners—access to the information they need to make critical decisions.”

            GroupLink made it’s name with ContactWise™, a CRM plug-in for  eDirectory and GroupWise®. They were awarded the GroupWise Developer of the Year award for ContactWise at Brainshare 2000. Now, according GroupLink Sales Manager Jared Lord, not only has Orion been added to the product list, but ContactWise has been subdivided into three versions.

“There are different user needs out there,” said Lord. “We’re responding to the need for varying requirements from entry to enterprise level, with corresponding pricing.” He explained that ContactWise is now available in a single-user version called ContactWise VIP™. “It blows Outlook, or any other PIM, out of the water,” said Lord. “and it’s free. It not only organizes information about your contacts, it has the capability to store history items—phone calls, emails, and other notes and documents.” He emphasized that ContactWise VIP will be available with GroupWise 6.

           

“The shared database version is called ContactWise VIP²”, said Lord. Both entry  level versions of ContactWise—VIP and VIP² are a step up from their predecessor, ContactWise Lite, in that they both have history abilities. “But since VIP² can see shared databases, VIP² users can also see all the custom tabs and properties fields that might be created by a ContactWise Elite user,” Lord continued. This benefits companies who want to roll out ContactWise to many users, he explained, but might want to control the abilities to create custom items.

            ContactWise Elite™, on the other hand, integrates completely with GroupWise® calendars and tasks, allowing a user to schedule appointments and other events. “ContactWise events show up on the GroupWise calendar, doing away with the need for redundant calendars and email systems. Event recipients, whether assigned or scheduled, are notified through their GroupWise mailbox. It’s an elegant way of leveraging the collaboration services of GroupWise to integrate CRM into employees’ everyday work environments,” Turner said.

            When asked why a new eCRM product was needed when ContactWise was so robust, Bruce Holt, head of GroupLink’s Product Development team said, “GroupLink’s Orion™ has all the abilities of ContactWise Elite, but a new dimension of ebusiness processes has been added. We saw the need, based on our own experience and feedback from other companies, to be able to organize other business process information in direct relationship to customers and be able access and share that information when needed .”

            GroupLink’s eCRM solutions will be demonstrated in the Technology Lab of Novell’s BrainShare 2001 conference, March 18-23, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

            All of GroupLink’s products are available from their website for a free 30 evaluation period. More information and downloads can be found at http://www.grouplink.net .

 

Novell, NDS, GroupWise and BrainShare are registered trademarks or service marks, and eDirectory is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and in other countries.