SOURCE: Concursive Corporation

March 25, 2008 08:36 ET

Concursive Enhances Leading Open Source CRM and Front-Office System With E-Commerce and Web Content Management Upgrades

Powerful Online Presence Management Capabilities Are Now Integrated With CRM and Available to All ConcourseSuite Users; Co-Developer and Customer Brand Fuel, Inc. Is First to Leverage New Features

NORFOLK, VA--(Marketwire - March 25, 2008) - Concursive Corporation (formerly Centric CRM, Inc.), a leading developer of open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM), content management, and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, has integrated a Web Content Management system (WCM) and e-commerce capabilities into its popular ConcourseSuite 5.0 software. The new features, developed in partnership with Concursive customer Brand Fuel Promotions, enable users to create robust websites and manage content from within ConcourseSuite and allow orders to be accepted online and fed directly to the CRM database. The new capabilities are included in the latest release of ConcourseSuite available both as a free download or hosted on-demand system from www.concursive.com.

Brand Fuel Promotions, based in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park and Norfolk, Virginia, is a bellwether company in the promotional products space. It operates online stores that sell branded merchandise on behalf of clients, including Red Hat, PPD, and SAS. Brand Fuel has been a Concursive user since 2006. When the company approached Concursive to request that a web content management system be added to the CRM system, both businesses partnered to develop the functionality, which Concursive now makes available to all its customers as a fully integrated module of ConcourseSuite.

Brand Fuel has used the new WCM capability to replace multiple technology platforms it used in the past. Now, by simply clicking on a tab in ConcourseSuite, Brand Fuel can author web sites, manage the content on the sites, and install pre-defined product ordering modules. Logos, product images and text descriptions all reside in the CRM database and all edits to web pages can be published in real-time. Orders placed through the site are entered directly into the CRM system.

In addition, ConcourseSuite's WCM tool supports JSR 168-compliant portlets, which enable users to easily add application-based windows to a web page. With a portlet, users can add interactive functions such as a contact form that directly enters leads into the CRM system, graphical dashboards, and Web 2.0-style "mash ups."

"In a crowded industry, our goal was to make Brand Fuel stand out by offering one of the most collaborative and strategically valuable e-commerce capabilities anywhere," said Brand Fuel Co-founder Robert Fiveash. "We can correlate web traffic, examine sales patterns and perform other database research. These kinds of insights are very valuable to our clients. Concursive has created a solution with broad functionality including graphics storage, search capabilities, and a document library."

"The WCM system isn't simply integrated with ConcourseSuite -- it literally is the same system, enabling users to analyze and leverage the customer data within the CRM," said Michael Harvey, Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer for Concursive. "This new release is a perfect example of how the open source model works to benefit the larger community. Once Brand Fuel told us they needed an integrated WCM system, we partnered to develop a tool that delivers significant commercial benefits to all users of ConcourseSuite. There are no dead ends with our platform -- as easily as functionality can be imagined, it can be achieved."

Other publicly accessible websites already built with and running on ConcourseSuite's integrated web content management system include the Open Solutions Alliance (www.opensolutionsalliance.org) and, of course, Concursive's own website.

About Brand Fuel Promotions

Brand Fuel is a specialty advertising, promotional products, and web services agency with two locations -- one on the edge of North Carolina's Research Triangle Park and another in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. Co-founders Robert Fiveash and Danny Rosin head the agency.

Each Brand Fuel location offers clients a large product and apparel showroom, as well as in-house marketing, graphic design, web and fulfillment services. The agency has more than 1,500 active clients nationwide, including Sentara Healthcare, Red Hat, Inc., Quintiles Transnational, Dominion Enterprises, Virgin Mobile, Norfolk Southern, Pokemon, Cogent Communications, SAS, and KPMG.

Brand Fuel has 30 full-time employees. Learn more at www.brandfuel.com.

About Concursive Corporation

Concursive Corporation is the developer of two advanced enterprise-class open source business productivity applications, Concourse Suite (formerly Centric CRM) and Team Elements. Both are Java/J2EE-based web applications that run on virtually any standard platform, whether proprietary or open source. They have been in continuous development for almost seven years, share identical architectures, and are fully integrated.

Concursive's products are used today by Fortune 500 companies in large configurations and by thousands of smaller enterprises. Concourse Suite includes all common CRM modules and adds capabilities such as Website Authoring, integrated Web Content Management, Document Management, Customer Surveys, and advanced Help Desk functions. Team Elements delivers a complete Enterprise 2.0 team collaboration and community management suite. Concursive is a founding member of the Open Solutions Alliance and a member of the Red Hat Exchange (RHX). Among the investors in the company is Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.concursive.com.