Tools Fine-Tune Sales Processes

Frontrange solutions USA Inc.s GoldMine 7.0 Corporate Edition and Maximizer Software Inc.s Maximizer Enterprise 9 eCRM allow companies to manage and refine sales processes.

GoldMine 7.0 Corporate Edition, available now, is priced at $299 per user and is a good option for smaller organizations or groups within a larger enterprise that want a solution that covers the basics at a relatively low cost. Maximizer Enterprise 9 eCRM, also available now, is priced at $799 per user and is a well-rounded marketing, sales and service application for midsize organizations.

In eWEEK Labs tests, we found GoldMine 7.0 Corporate Edition did a good job of providing the tools necessary to manage sales and customer contacts. A long-established solution in the CRM (customer relationship management) space, GoldMine has a significant number of third-party add-on products. One of the major changes in the latest release is to the framework for performing integration, which should make it easier for developers to closely tie other applications in to GoldMine.

However, GoldMine is primarily a sales and contact management application, and companies that want a tool for managing customer support will have to integrate GoldMine with FrontRanges Heat or another support tool.

In our testing of Maximizer Enterprise 9 eCRM, we found that Maximizer has refined many areas of the product since we reviewed Version 8 almost two years ago, with most of the immediate benefit visible in reporting and workflow management. We also liked the improved integration with Microsoft Corp.s Outlook and Exchange Server. Administrators will find the system easier to manage as well.

Both GoldMine and Maximizer can be purchased in a range of configurations, from stand-alone clients to workgroup solutions to client/server deployments with Web interfaces. In addition, both packages have add-on products for integrating with back-end messaging infrastructure and accounting systems.

Click here to read the full review of GoldMine 7.0.

Click here to read the full review of Maximizer Enterprise 9 eCRM.

Technical Analyst Michael Caton can be reached at michael_caton@ziffdavis.com.

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