GoldMine Update On Tap

The update, GoldMine Sales and Marketing 2002, is due to debut this week and should make it easier for SMBs to foster collaboration between sales and support staff who need CRM and colleagues who may need to work with them but don't want the full application, said Raj Patel, FrontRange CTO.

A user can now access GoldMine functions from the Outlook toolbar to complete important tasks without launching the full application, Patel said.

"We have one client with more than 900 employees, but they don't want or need 900 GoldMine seats," said Harry Landis, president of A-H Consulting, a Peoria, Ill., solution provider. "But they do need to coordinate schedules and appointments."

The application's support for the iCalendar specification means that GoldMine users can share appointments with users of other mail systems, including Lotus Notes/Domino and Eudora, Patel said.

E-mail integration is a hot button for other CRM and contact management players, industry observers said. FrontRange rival SalesLogix, for one, plans better Outlook integration with its next release.

Aside from e-mail integration, the GoldMine update offers "one-button" synchronization to ease offline use. It also includes enhanced organization chart features that let users roll up all pending account contacts or the history of an account by company or account name.

GoldMine Sales and Marketing 2002 is $495 per seat for new users, and upgrade pricing is available. FrontRange FrontOffice, which includes GoldMine and the company's HEAT service and support application, is an additional $3,250 per user.

CRM solutions for the SMB market became a hot topic earlier this year when Microsoft said it would offer a Great Plains-built CRM offering. That move sparked competitive concerns among vendors such as FrontRange, Pivotal, Onyx and SalesLogix, while calling attention to the category.

"On the plus side, we've raised the flag of midmarket CRM for years, and no one realized this was important," said FrontRange's Patel. "Microsoft has shown this is a multibillion-dollar market. . . . The negative is it does cause some confusion."