These are just a few of the big reasons why integrating your telephone system with your CRM system is appealing:
- Power-dialing (where your phone system dials contacts in a campaign automatically)can increase telesales productivity by as much as 300%!
- Using low cost Voice over Internet solutions versus traditional telecommunications carriers can save your organization 50% and more on phone bills.
- Integrating call tracking with your CRM data can provide major efficiencies and highly useful analytics.
New voice technologies are hot in general! Expectations are that over 60% of organizations will move to a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) enabled phone system in the near future. VOIP has many advantages including the potential to realize significant savings over time. And, because “Voice over the Internet” enables organizations to extend their “phone system” beyond their physical office, beyond the local area network (LAN) and even beyond their wide area network (WAN) to include remote users, even cell phones. Such greater mobility offers strategic staffing options not available within environments running more traditional “PBX” phone systems.
Access to the low-cost, high-speed Internet access is making an explosion of the VOIP industry possible. Marketing by residential VOIP providers such as Vonage has raised the awareness of the benefits of this technology. And, many telephony equipment providers such as Avaya, Mitel, 3COM and others who provide are realizing double digit growth. Systems for small to mid-size businesses by providers such as Altigen and TeleVantage feature incredible functionality. Software as a Service (Saas) providers have made VOIP easy and economical to deploy rapidly. But VOIP is one part of a better solution. Phone system without integration to your contact database (CRM system) is still just a phone system, even if it is a better system.
If you’re a GoldMine user in the market for VOIP, the desire to integrate with your contact database is probably one of the greater concerns facing you. After all, buying a new phone system is costly enough, so you wouldn’t want to switch CRM systems as well in order to integrate the two.
There are established vendors with VOIP systems that will integrate with GoldMine out-of-the-box. But I believe FrontRange’s latest VOIP technology, Voice 5.1, offers superior integration. With FrontRange Voice (FV) the value of your CRM database is extended to your phone system. Inbound and outbound calls are more easily tracked. Integrated screen-pop, power dialing, and skills-based routing provide efficiencies that can add huge value to your organization!
Frankly, I’ve been skeptical of GoldMine’s integrated VOIP technology to this point. FrontRange Solutions introduced Voice over IP products about 18 months ago, called IPCC and GoldMine Voice Suite, but I was not satisfied with their functionality or their stability. The products needed to mature. I see positive change coming with the release of FrontRange Voice 5.1. This product is the next generation of FrontRange’s VOIP system and it incorporates the best of both products on one platform that supports integration between all of FrontRange’s products, HEAT, ITSM, and the full GoldMine CRM line with their Voice 5.1 product.
FrontRange affirmed their commitment to this technology at the recent national sales conference. Numerous awards, and over 100 installations, a detailed product map and strong R&D budget, as well as positive feedback by industry analysts on FrontRange’s vision all indicate that FrontRange Voice has a bright future. So much so that I’m taking the plunge in my firm, First Direct Corp. and converting our phone system over to FrontRange Voice 5.1. In a phrase, “I’m eating my own dog food.”
There are many features in FrontRange Voice 5.1 that I’m excited about having, let alone selling. It’s going to be a huge help with call campaigns. “Call monitoring” along with “Silent Whispering” are great tools that will help us train and coach representatives. Call transfer with GoldMine record screen-pop will help our organization’s teamwork.
Remember, a phone system without integration to you CRM, is still just a phone system. VOIP and CRM are a winning combination. To request information on FrontRange Voice 5.1 click here.
