In-tech,   November 27, 2001
By H. Amir Khalid

FrontRange Opts For Advantage

Colorado-based customer relationship management (CRM) software developer FrontRange Solutions has appointed Advantage Systems Sdn Bhd as its first solutions partner in Malaysia.

The appointment would improve its already strong position in the country, claimed FrontRange regional vice-president Archie Wilson, citing the company's some 30 customers in Malaysia, from the banking, finance and manufacturing sectors.

FrontRange's solutions are CRM applications intended for the middle ground between enterprise-class products for large multinational corporations, and PC-based contact management applications like Microsoft Outlook.

These solutions are intended to help mid-sized companies gain new customers and keep their existing ones in a productive and competitive way, according to Advantage Systems managing director Gerard Tan.

Its GoldMine sales and marketing solutions and the HEAT support and service solutions should be used by up to 500 concurrent users.

An implementation of GoldMine to support three salespeople could cost as little as RM10,000, while a small-scale HEAT installation would cost RM20,000 to RM30,000.

A key part of FrontRange's market in the Asia Pacific region consisted of the country units of multinational corporations, Wilson said.

"These MNCs typically implement a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution worlwide, but their various country units will go with the CRM solutions best suited to the country's requirements." he said.

Wilson said GoldMine and HEAT employed an open architecture at the database level, and their modules were written to an open application programming interface, which kept integration relatively simple.

In addition, Advantage Systems and other solutions partners will write interfaces to specific applications used by enduser organisations, he added.

He said that the CRM market in Malaysia was still growing robustly, with IDC predicting a compound annual growth rate of around 30% until 2004.

"We are aiming for a 25% market share, which should work out to RM10mil in license revenues for the first year," he said.

 


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