I got an interesting introductory email today from Willow Merritt, Media Relations Manager, for Douglas Telecom Inc. in Portland, OR. Willis was filling me in about their latest product. Douglas Telecom's system is a hosted PBX integrated with their FlexyTrack™ CRM (Customer Relations Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. They say the integration is unique compared to the competition, as it is a native integration with seamless interaction between the two systems. Many companies, including IBM and Microsoft, acknowledge the need for a unified communications platform, but are really still in the planning stages.

Their future integration envisions a mixed-vendor solution, relying on one vendor for telephony and on another for CRM software. Willow sais that "a mixed vendor solution implies delayed product availability for the end-user and, as history has proven, extensive debugging challenges." While I won't dispute that claim, a mixed vendor solution is currently the only way to adopt and integrate established best-in-breed solutions.

This is the age-old quandry as to whether it's wiser to risk vendor-lock with a single provider or to spread the wealth and integrate best-in-breed solutions. Vendors and solution providers will always argue their position is best. And their all right, and wrong. This is a decision that has to be based on business needs really.

Douglas Telecom's natively integrated platform is available now. Here's what they say:

Our hosted PBX system matches the capabilities of a traditional PBX while expanding functions and flexibility. The Flash-based interface features intuitive graphic commands and delivers a pleasant user experience. The web interface seamlessly inter-connects all employees, dramatically simplifying conference calling, internal messaging, and general call management. Equally, the FlexyTrack™ web interface features intuitive and transparent call-holding queues. It gives users and managers unparalleled visibility on call-traffic and call handling. All call information is displayed on the interface and users can pick up calls with the click of a button.

Douglas Telecom Inc.’s FlexyTrack™ is much more than a CRM-ERP module—it is an entire database. FlexyTrack™ can incorporate a wide range of daily functions, including order, inventory, part number, and vendor management, credit card processing, invoicing, a shipping module, and a customer service portal.

In summary, our INTEGRATED PBX-FlexyTrack™ System is a new instrument to upgrade efficiency in communications while giving management better oversight and instant visibility of operations.

I'll be contacting will for more information and digging in a bit to hear what they have

We believe your Readers should be interested to know about our System—please contact me for any information that may help for an article. Depending on what shakes out of that, Portland's only two hours away. Maybe we'll go down and pay them a visit together.


Technorati Tags: Douglas Telecom, unified communications, Customer Relations Management, CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP