iCentera 4.1 Delivers Web 2.0 Features and Functions in On-Demand CRM Portals for Enterprise Communications

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007; 04:37 AM

iCentera, the leading provider of on- demand CRM portals for sales, partner and customer communications, today announced the immediate availability of iCentera 4.1. iCentera's "Portals for Mortals" enable anyone in an organization to create customized and branded portals for any internal or external audience in minutes. The latest version of iCentera delivers enhanced Web 2.0 capabilities, allowing enterprises to securely deliver and govern sophisticated, rich-media portals while saving time and money.

Now companies can customize iCentera portals with a variety of Internet applications such as Google calendars, maps, blogs, forums or RSS feeds in order to provide relevant and rich functionality and content to a targeted audience.Designed for marketing and sales "mortals," companies today leverage iCentera as a vehicle for dynamic content, two-way communication, collaboration and relationship building with multiple audiences through marketing event portals, sales intranets, and partner and key account portals.

"The best metric for success is when the organization's top reps stand up at an annual sales meeting and say that the iCentera portals have been one of the most exciting things they have seen," said Bill Fuesz, senior marketing manager, ADC Telecommunications Inc. "Today we use iCentera's portals to aggregate, deliver and manage content and communications for internal sales, sales agents, VARs, distributors, field engineers, key accounts, marketing events, as well as to drive lead-generation programs. With only a few days of implementation time and little training, we were able to get up and running. Today we have delivered 65 portals with over 4,000 portal users."

iCentera 4.1 delivers a host of advanced features and functionality that increase the adoption, usability and effectiveness of every intranet or extranet portal delivered. New key capabilities include:

- Application Mashups - Customize portals by embedding any on-premise application or web application, such as Google calendars, Yahoo! maps, VoIP, and IM, within portals, providing functionality and rich content tailored to targeted audiences. - Web 2.0 Functionality - Securely deliver multiple Web 2.0 features including blogs, RSS feeds, configurable portal pages and "functionality widgets." In addition, icExchange Community provides the free exchange of templates, communication best practices, and user directories in a way that is easy to track, manage and govern. - Increased Collaboration and Communication Features - Communicate on- demand both internally and externally with new features, including IMing content creators, increased chat capabilities and forum creation. - Deeper CRM Integration - Support for deeper integration with CRM solutions such as salesforce.com with the ability to embed iCentera"applets" within salesforce.com providing best-in-class functionality.

"While the concept of business portals has been promoted for many years, it has been difficult for organizations to leverage these web services in the past," said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies, a strategic consulting company. "iCentera has developed a powerful, yet easy to use and cost-effective web-based solution that enables organizations to fully realize the value of portals as internal and external communications, educational, marketing and sales tools."

Pricing for internal users from $20-$100 per subscriber per month.