iCentera Rolls Out “Portals for Mortals”

January 26th, 2007: iCentera has just released version 4.1 of its on-demand CRM portal platform, enabling anyone according to the company, to create, customise and deploy branded portals for both internal and external audiences in minutes.

Dubbed “Portals for Mortals”, the company says its CRM solutions can deliver those magic web 2.0 capabilities such as rich-media, Google calendars, blogs, RSS Feeds and forums, and do it while maintaining deeper CRM integration than has been possible in the past.

iCentera designed the solution specifically for marketing and sales professionals as a means to deliver dynamic content and enable two-way communication and collaboration. Specifically:

• Portal customisation via embedding of web applications such as Google calendars, Yahoo! maps, VoIP, and IM.
• Web 2.0 functionality in the form of secure delivery of blogs, RSS feeds, configurable portal pages and so-called "functionality widgets."
• Increased collaboration and communication features such as integrated instant messaging, chat and forums.
• Support for deeper integration with CRM solutions such as salesforce.com with the ability to embed iCentera "applets" within salesforce.com.

"While the concept of business portals has been promoted for many years, it has been difficult for organisations to leverage these web services in the past," says 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 organisations to fully realise the value of portals as internal and external communications, educational, marketing and sales tools."

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