IT Management News

Dublin, CA April 3, 2007

FrontRange Solutions announced today that its HEAT® and GoldMine® solutions were selected by ISM Inc., Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Real-Time Enterprise strategic advisors, as a Top 15 CRM Small & Medium Business Software Award for 2007. This is the fifth consecutive time that ISM has named GoldMine to its awards list and the fourth consecutive time for HEAT to be named a winner.

“The Top 15 CRM Awards, which serve as the standard for comprehensive CRM software, have evolved since 1990—when ISM began the Awards—to be the industry benchmark,” said Barton Goldenberg, founder and president of ISM. “The Top 15 winners represent the best and most comprehensive CRM software serving internal and external customers with features ranging from predictive modeling to Web 2.0 to access to handheld/wireless devices.”

HEAT and GoldMine were chosen after intensive testing by the ISM Software Lab at its Bethesda, MD-based headquarters. Each package was rated according to 217 selection criteria, including 103 business functions, 52 technical features, 36 implementation capabilities, 9 real time criteria and 17 user-support features.

“FrontRange is to be praised for obtaining the Top 15 honor as ISM’s software selection process is strenuous and comprehensive,” said Goldenberg. “FrontRange is among the leaders of the CRM industry.”

The Top 15 selections are featured in ISM’s 15th edition of The Guide to CRM Automation and in a Top 15 CD available at(www.ismguide.com).

Latest edition of “Best Help Desk Solution” enhances ease of use
Dublin, CA March 26, 2007

FrontRange Solutions, an established global leader in IT Service Management, Voice Application, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for the Mid-Market and Distributed Enterprise, today announced the general availability of the latest version of HEAT® Service & Support™, the fully configurable Help Desk and external customer support tool that logs and tracks incidents through completion. HEAT8.4.1 builds on the benefits of HEAT by enhancing ease of use, and is currently available to new customers, as well as to current users as an upgrade.

“This newest edition of HEAT is an example of our drive to develop products that continually improve the experience for our users,” said Kevin J. Smith, Vice President of Products for FrontRange. “We are dedicated to remaining the best and most widely used IT help desk and service management application, and continually earning the trust of our customers is the key.”

Highlights of the latest version of HEAT are:

Performance enhancements to e-mail monitoring and business processing
Additional configuration options when designing forms
A new “Snap to Guide” feature accelerates the process of creating edit sets and new and improved tool tips.
HEAT won “Best Help Desk Solution, Best in Americas” from the 2006 Members’ Choice Awards, a recognition program hosted by ContactCenterWorld.com, the global support organization for contact-center industry professionals.

The Members’ Choice Awards are based entirely on customer feedback, and the winners are organizations that receive the highest average scores as voted by their customers.

Independent Research Report cites “quick deployment and low total cost of ownership” of GoldMine
Dublin, CA March 21, 2007

FrontRangeTM GoldMine® Corporate Edition was recognized as a “Strong Performer” in the recent edition of “The Forrester WaveTM: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q1 2007” (February 2007) released last month.

In her accompanying commentary, “The Forrester Wave™: Vendor Summary, Q1 2007,” Forrester Senior Analyst Liz Herbert wrote the “quick deployment and low total cost of ownership” of GoldMine and called the software a “strong prepackaged” solution.

“The GoldMine product line is moving beyond its contact manager roots with GoldMine Corporate Edition, and it plans to move up another rung with the upcoming release of GoldMine Enterprise Edition… making the vendor a strong player in the customer relationship management (CRM) market for smaller businesses,” wrote Herbert.

To prepare for the report, Forrester conducted a survey in July, August, and September 2006 of 15 CRM vendor products. Forrester analysts also spoke with 28 vendor-supplied references. Forrester analyzed vendor financial performance and defined the size and growth trajectory of the worldwide CRM applications market.

In early February, FrontRange announced the general availability of FrontRangeTM GoldMine® Enterprise Edition. The latest version of the award-winning software features rapid configuration of the solution to deliver faster time to benefit, higher ease of use and a lower total cost of ownership than other existing CRM applications.

“The days of the complex and business-unfriendly CRM system that took months to install and even longer to really work have passed,” said Kevin J. Smith, Vice President of Products for FrontRange Solutions. “Customers want lots of powerful and flexible features, but in a product that is quick to implement and easy to live with every day.”

FrontRange and enteo combination creates a comprehensive, end-to-end IT Service management and PC Lifecycle management offering; Provides Customers superior Service Levels and increased business value
Dublin, CA March 12, 2007

FrontRange Solutions™, a global market leader in IT Service Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Voice applications for the mid-market and Distributed Enterprise, has signed an agreement to acquire enteo Software, Inc., a developer of market-leading PC Lifecycle Management & Citrix Management solutions (www.enteo.com). Based in Germany, enteo is a recognized leader of Asset Management solutions and has more than 1,200 customers and 200 partners globally. enteo’s product offerings include solutions for Patch Management, software distribution for Operating Systems and applications, License Management and Compliance, and Configuration Management. With solutions from enteo, businesses can easily manage and service network-based endpoints – from mobile devices, laptops and desktops to servers and storage assets.

Michael McCloskey, CEO of FrontRange, stated: “The combined offerings of FrontRange and enteo will provide customers with the ability to integrate world class Service Management with PC Lifecycle and Remediation management solutions, thereby increasing infrastructure availability and value to the business.”

The FrontRange HEAT® help desk and IT Service Management (ITSM) enterprise products are industry-recognized market-leading solutions with more than 8,000 customers and 300 partners in 24 countries. By acquiring enteo Software, FrontRange expands its global footprint in the IT business software market. enteo’s industry-leading solutions offer capabilities including Patch Management, Remediation, License Management and software distribution solutions; the combination of FrontRange and enteo will provide customers with end-to-end IT service management and lifecycle management solutions based on best practice frameworks, such as the ITIL methodology and key corporate initiatives including Sarbanes Oxley.

Stephan Glathe, CEO for enteo Software, said, “PC configuration and remediation can provide synergies to IT service management for a more comprehensive service and asset solution. IT organizations thinking strategically about future business needs are looking for more complete solutions with the right value proposition. It’s all about doing more with less by optimizing the lifecycle of assets while delivering better service.”

“Leading service and support organizations are seeking to align their strategy and toolsets for IT service desk and PC lifecycle configuration management,” said Kevin J. Smith, Vice President of Products for FrontRange. “Bringing these critical applications together can empower infrastructure management and service teams, with benefits including more proactive IT and customer service and an increase in first-contact resolution rates. This leads to many benefits for IT and the business, including higher end-user satisfaction and lower support costs.”

“Companies are challenged with delivering business value despite constant pressures to manage increasing IT complexity at the lowest cost possible,” said McCloskey. “This combination does just that by merging the remediation capabilities of enteo including Patch, Software Distribution, Licensing and Monitoring together with our proven Service Management, CMDB, and Inventory Management and Discovery solutions. The synergies of FrontRange and Enteo accelerate the continued execution of our strategy to deliver enterprise-class solutions with fast time to benefit, low TCO, and high customer value.”

“FrontRange will allow enteo to realize its goal of bringing our Lifecycle Management solutions to the global market. With our combined products, we have a unique ability to provide innovative solutions to our customers. I am excited that we will continue to play a major role and driving force as the competency center for executing the asset management strategy of FrontRange,” said Glathe.

John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research for the Service & Support Professionals Association said, “As service management tools mature, offering ‘best of breed’ capabilities for license and asset lifecycle management becomes core to service management. With more emphasis by CIO’s on cross-enterprise integration, the ability to manage workflow across the enterprise, including unlimited integration points, will further drive effectiveness and productivity of frontline service teams.”

Continued McCloskey: “We are excited about enteo and believe that this will help us achieve our goal of building the market leader. enteo will play a large role in our future plans, and I look forward to working with Stephan and the enteo team on driving our strategy forward.”

Leading software company can double account load while maintaining relationships
Dublin, CA March 6, 2007

CrossTec Corporation, the Florida-based software company known for its exceptional, customized service and support, was recently in search of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution to handle a growing volume of data. With more than 2,000 reseller partners to track and 250,000 contacts total, CrossTec wanted to integrate its CRM application with other business applications to improve efficiency.

CrossTec selected GoldMine Corporate Edition from FrontRange Solutions for the easy-to-use interface and volume of data it could accommodate. With help from Connections for Business, CrossTec was able to integrate the company’s order processing software and tele-support solution. “In terms of how we relate to customers, GoldMine offers the speed, accuracy and depth that enables us to know and appropriately respond to our customers,” said Mark Krueger, sales support supervisor.

One of the biggest benefits to CrossTec has been the automation of customer communication. GoldMine allows CrossTec to automate ongoing communication with prospects and customers to deliver the right message at just the right time. Marketing and sales teams schedule hundreds of automated e-mail campaigns based on a contact’s status. Additionally, with features like GoldSync®, leads are seamlessly integrated from external sources like trade shows and marketing campaigns. Web import capabilities allow Web site leads to be routed to GoldMine. With these tools, new account managers easily ramp up on customer information.

Krueger has found configuration one of GoldMine software’s most valuable benefits. The company configures fields and filters easily in order to target communications to segments of the database. Krueger alone created more than 200 filters. CrossTec analyzes its efforts with a series of custom reports on factors such as white paper downloads, evaluations, evaluations turned to sales, and various sales reports.

“GoldMine automated processes alleviate administrative burdens and the time-consuming tasks that account managers have to perform so they can focus on selling and supporting clients,” Krueger said. “It takes the burden off the sales rep from having to send each communication manually.” CrossTec realizes a substantial return on its investment in GoldMine through reduced administrative overhead on account management.

“With GoldMine use, an account manager can take on double the amount of accounts while not losing contact,” Krueger said.

On the sales side, GoldMine executes regular communications, allowing sales reps to focus on personal interaction with contacts. Krueger believes that level of attention through sales and support contributes to the company’s growth and position as one of the largest software distributors in Florida.

Software and hardware reseller accelerates first-call closure rates and supports global teams with quickly customized client service
Dublin, CA February 16, 2007

Software House International(SHI), one of the world’s largest software and hardware resellers recently launched an initiative to develop services that add value on top of its sales. The reseller, whose primary product lines include Microsoft®, McAfee®, and IBM®, had to evaluate its own help desk capabilities internally and externally.

With multiple modules of IT Service Management (ITSM) from FrontRange Solutions in full use, SHI notes significant efficiency and service improvements in its internal help desk. Readily available information and a tiered help desk have driven up the first-call closure rates to approximately 83 percent – significantly higher than before. With built-in communication around tickets, fewer internal customers call the help desk asking for ticket status. Online status with Self Service will further reduce those calls, allowing agents to focus on new issues. Automatic notification about ticket closure improves customer satisfaction. Bill Santos, general manager, Services Development for SHI, also notes a decrease in the volume of repeat incidents with the ability to identify problems and their root causes. Reporting on service-level performance ensures that SHI meets its own and clients’ service guidelines.

“Our goal is to get customers from signed to operational and customized in 30 days, and ITSM will allow us to do that,” said Santos. “We have a market-leading platform that balances performance with flexibility, and allows us to adjust processes to react to clients’ specific requirements – without having to incur tremendous cost.”

SHI needed a strong platform on which to build the new service. At the same time, the company wanted to improve its own internal help desk to support its 850 worldwide employees through rapid growth. The help desk’s incumbent Lotus® Notes-based application lacked built-in capabilities for call analysis and reporting, issue escalation or self help. Moreover, SHI needed to adapt its system easily and rapidly to the unique processes and knowledge bases of each client. Finally, demonstrating a commitment to industry best practices was essential to marketing the new service.

After various on-site demonstrations, the company selected ITSM for its strong, open standards architecture and price point. SHI first implemented ITSM as its internal help desk application. As a FrontRange partner, SHI deployed the software in just 60 days beginning with the Incident Management and Problem Management modules. SHI easily customized fields and screens to fit its workflow and to match the previous system.

With the Incident module, agents log, and track every issue to resolution. ITSM enables SHI to tier its help desk, automatically passing tickets on to level two or three agents when needed as tier one agents indicate the type of issue. The Problem Management module aggregates multiple incidents into problems, so SHI can address root causes and reduce the frequency of certain incidents.

Adding to its solution, SHI recently implemented the Service Level Management, Knowledge Management and Self Service modules. Service Level will be particularly critical to staying within established service level agreements for its outsourced service. Knowledge Management gives agents a customizable base of information from which to resolve issues, improving first-call resolution rates. With Self Service, end customers can log and check on their incidents online, ultimately reducing call volumes.

“ITSM was a more complete solution with the multi-tenancy, scalability and customizability to support our help desk service,” Santos said. “We can accommodate each client’s unique entitlement processes and custom knowledge bases.”

Delivers comprehensive, holistic view of customer information in a feature rich solution designed for cost-effective, quick deployment
Dublin, CA February 9, 2007

FrontRange, an established global market leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), IT Service Management, and Voice applications for the mid-market, is further enhancing the GoldMine family of products with today’s announcement of the availability of GoldMine® Enterprise Edition. This new version of GoldMine includes the robust capability relied on by the mid-market, with greater flexibility that allows rapid configuration of the solution to deliver faster time to benefit, higher ease of use and a lower total cost of ownership than other existing CRM applications.

“The days of the complex and business-unfriendly CRM system that took months to install and even longer to really work have passed,” said Kevin J. Smith, Vice President of Products for FrontRange Solutions. “Customers want lots of powerful and flexible features, but in a product that is quick to implement and easy to live with every day. They want to react quickly to changes in the market and to take immediate advantage of opportunities. GoldMine Enterprise Edition delivers these benefits and more for far less than the cost of traditional CRM applications.”

Unlike most existing CRM systems, GoldMine Enterprise Edition is a modular solution. Organizations may select and add capabilities as required, rather than undertake a time-consuming, large-scale installation that includes many features that may never be used. Modules include relationship management, sales management, quoting, campaign management, lead management, and customer service and support.

Vice President of Research for Service and Support Professionals Association, John Ragsdale said in his blog, “Based on our 2006 Technology Survey, SSPA Research predicts that small and medium sized technology companies will spend at least $309 million on CRM in 2007–more than twice the CRM spending of >$1B tech companies–and midmarket companies interested in a .NET CRM product should give GoldMine a look, with its multiple versions (Standard, Corporate, Premium, and the new Enterprise edition) targeting different sized businesses.”

GoldMine Enterprise Edition also features a new highly flexible user interface that enables individuals to set up their own preferred screen appearance using simple dropdown menus rather than custom programming. The new product is built on the same Microsoft® .NET platform upon which FrontRange Solutions developed its market-leading IT Service Management solutions. This architecture offers many advantages for delivering value to customers including a robust business rules engine for automating business processes and a dynamic integration capability utilizing Web services and XML.

“We are pleased to bring GoldMine Enterprise to our many loyal partners and customers and to introduce the GoldMine brand to new customers,” said FrontRange Solutions CEO Michael McCloskey. “This exciting new product is the result of an aggressive development investment over the past two years and reflects our valuable experiences working closely with partners and delivering real value to our global customers. In addition, we have built GoldMine Enterprise on Microsoft .NET technology, and are happy to have been selected by Microsoft as the only CRM product in their Vista launch for our market.”

Trade show display provider hopes to standardize CRM efforts across more than 140 dealers
Dublin, CA January 30, 2007

Skyline, the Minnesota-based manufacturer of trade show displays, recently launched a strategic initiative to standardize customer relationship management (CRM) systems across the dealer channel. With more than 140 dealers in 45 countries, Skyline was looking for an easy-to-use application that could streamline dealers’ ability to react to leads they receive, expedite reporting and integrate with quoting application QuoteWerks.

The company found many dealers were already using FrontRange Solutions® GoldMine®CRM application, and called upon First Direct Corp. to create a configured GoldMine template for the dealers. Skyline was also attracted by GoldMine software’s combination of functionality, configurability and affordability, as well as its worldwide network of support. The goal was to create a GoldMine system designed for dealers’ specific sales, marketing and operational needs.

“Skyline is trying to guide dealers toward common platforms so they can interact with us more easily, and prospect leads more proactively,” said Barb Baker, Skyline dealer support manager. As dealers add new leads and grow those relationships into customers, they can track information such as the shows a customer or prospect plans to attend, their exhibit sizes for shows, and key customer details like number of employees, revenue and competitors. Using a custom GoldBox© import profile created by First Direct, GoldMine also streamlines the processing leads from Skyline corporate. Skyline emails dealers a file, and in minutes they can bring those leads into GoldMine and begin contacting them.

With rich customer information readily available, dealers target their marketing efforts and customer interaction to specific customers. As they talk with customers by phone, they tap into the relevant GoldMine contact record for detailed data about each – resulting in a more organized, customer-focused approach.

“Sales reps can proactively look at those customers or prospects with upcoming shows. It’s show-based and date-based marketing.” Baker said.

Skyline is still in the process of the GoldMine rollout, but several dealers have gone live with the application and are already experiencing positive results.

“Since I have been working with GoldMine and the template, and training with First Direct, I have seen the benefits of using GoldMine versus our old database software,” said Grace Fong, design consultant with Skyline Exhibits MidSouth. “Tailoring GoldMine to our industry will help us be more efficient. Features that enable us to market at the most opportune time should lead to more sales. I am definitely impressed with the software.”

South Carolina’s largest public school system streamlines help desk operations in three departments, supporting more than 7500 employees.
Dublin, CA January 29, 2007

South Carolina’s largest public school system, Greenville County Schools, recently determined that in order to communicate effectively across more than 95 locations, the various school district departments needed to integrate. Despite balancing community expectations and funding concerns, Greenville aimed to streamline infrastructure, technical support and instructional support departments. The IT department needed a complete overhaul. With three separate areas of the school to support, officials found there was no consistency to call center problem routing and resolution. As a result, customer service suffered. In an effort to streamline call center procedures, Greenville turned to FrontRange Solutions IP Contact Center.

After upgrading to high-speed infrastructure, consolidating servers and implementing Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Greenville chose FrontRange Solutions partner CreekPointe to implement an IP contact center with trouble ticket application HEAT®. One important criterion for the school system was to have a call center application to manage the IT infrastructure with features like identifying inbound callers and an emphasis on first call resolution.

As a result, the technical, instructional and application support departments now operate together. IPCC has increased customer satisfaction by routing calls to the appropriate individual the first time. IPCC performs “data dips” in HEAT to intelligently route callers based on skill sets. Technicians also benefit from automated screen pops that identify callers. In fact, Andy Poston, Manager of ETS Customer Service Desk for Greenville sees improved productivity from screen pops alone. “Screen pops, along with IPCC’s metric reporting, has improved help desk operations across the school system. Before IPCC, Greenville did not have a system in place to track the number of calls or rate of abandonment. We now know that 150 to 200 calls a day come in, and workloads are adjusted accordingly.”

Greenvilleis currently working to implement other IPCC features as well. For example, routing callers to agents with whom the caller last spoke is a goal for the help desk. Greenville is also interested in the feature that allows after-hours callers to automatically open new service tickets that include caller contact information and voicemail attachments within the ticket.

Earlier this year, IPCC was named one of Call Center Magazine’s 2006 Products of the Year for helping “enhance agents’ and call center managers’ productivity, boost sales and/or improve overall customer service.” Every year, the editors of Call Center Magazine, a preeminent publication from CMP Media LLC covering “technologies, services and strategies for contact centers,” seek to recognize “new or existing products that offer a substantial advance as part of an upgrade or new module to an existing product.”

HEAT achieves “one of the highest overall ranks due to the well-roundedness of the solution”
Dublin, CA January 19, 2007

FrontRange Solutions announced today that HEAT®, the fully customizable Help Desk and external customer support tool, has achieved a Leader position in a comparison of five help desk software solutions conducted by Info-Tech Research Group. The report, released January 11, provides an evaluation of the help desk software market, along with an analysis of HEAT. This evaluation examines HEAT as a help desk solution, and provides key points of consideration for the enterprise’s help desk software decision.

Info-Tech Lead Analyst Brenda Kerton notes, “FrontRange™ HEAT® is generally more cost-effective than solutions with similar functionality, customizability, and interoperability.” She also says, “FrontRange HEAT is a well-designed, versatile solution from a vendor with a strong track record. It is ideal for enterprises with low to moderate call volume demands and a clearly defined set of functionality needs.”

HEAT is a help desk solution that logs and tracks issues through resolution. Built on more than a decade of service management experience, HEAT integrates core service and support components into one complete solution to reduce costs and drive higher customer satisfaction. One new feature to HEAT is the Call Logging Dashboard, which provides a one-stop location for common views and metrics. The new dashboard allows individual users to add hyperlinks to personal call groups, allowing for quick access to incident records based upon commonly used search criteria. In addition, the Metrics Section gives end users access to popular Help Desk metrics. A new Administration Navigation Dashboard has also been added to help the administrator quickly find and locate information and functions with a few simple clicks.

Info-Tech Research Group is a global leader in providing IT research and advice. In their inaugural review of the IT research industry, Outsell, an independent research house, ranked Info-Tech as a “Rising Star” in the IT research arena.

HEAT recently won “Best Help Desk Solution, Best in Americas” from the 2006 Members’ Choice Awards, a recognition program hosted by ContactCenterWorld.com, the global support organization for contact-center industry professionals.

The full Info-Tech report can be purchased online.