SEDONA Acquires Equity and Reseller Rights for Internet Lead Tracking Technology; SEDONA to Embed Lead Factory Into Its CRM Solution
LIMERICK, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 14, 2000--SEDONA Corporation (Nasdaq: SDNA) announced today that it has made an equity investment in Lead Factory's forthcoming lead tracking Internet application.
SEDONA has also acquired worldwide non-exclusive reseller rights to the new software and will embed it into its Internet Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for small and mid-sized companies.
Lead Factory Inc. is a Boston-based start-up that has architected and is developing an affordable, web-based lead-tracking solution that helps sales and marketing organizations easily track and manage their leads. It is an active system driven by a set of user-defined workflow rules. Set-up wizards help users customize the system for their own organization in a matter of a few minutes and the system requires no IT support or special hardware/software other than an Internet connection and standard browser. Lead Factory allows companies to measure the effectiveness of their marketing programs and ensure that the names generated are contributing best to revenue goals and optimizing company resources. Lead Factory will be integrated into SEDONA's offering in the second quarter of this year.
SEDONA is embedding the technology within its CRM solution as the front-end process for collecting and cultivating prospect information into an overall closed loop marketing and sales process. Critical to end-to-end customer management, the very first interactions with a prospect can create lasting impressions throughout the relationship. The tight integration of Lead Factory with SEDONA's visual profiling and other CRM technologies, will significantly help organizations effectively acquire and retain more customers.
Commenting on SEDONA's investment in Lead Factory, Marco Emrich, president and CEO of SEDONA, said, "Lead Factory is a critical component for SEDONA to provide a complete CRM solution for financial institutions and e-tailers. We selected Lead Factory because it is specifically designed to fulfill the needs of small and mid-sized businesses. It is extremely easy-to-use and focuses on the specific tasks involved in lead tracking."
Alyssa Dver, founder of Lead Factory, said, "Lead Factory is uniquely positioned to help non-technical business people to gather, cultivate, manage and measure lead generation programs and overall marketing efforts. Coupled with SEDONA's visual profiling and other CRM technologies, we have a very powerful way for companies to find and optimize prospecting opportunities in today's highly competitive business environment."
Dver continued, "Lead Factory is best suited for companies that sell products that require multiple interactions with prospects so that the interactions can be tracked and shared among the various individuals working with the prospect. Financial services companies and e-tailers are an ideal match for this product as they are continuously striving to win new customers as well as cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers. Yet they both have extreme pressures to mind their costs and profitability."
About SEDONA Corporation
SEDONA Corporation, headquartered in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, develops and markets enterprise scale Internet-based application solutions that enable organizations to more quickly and precisely visualize new and changing customer information, greatly enhancing their customer acquisition, intimacy, satisfaction and retention capabilities. Through strategic partnerships with leading Customer Relationship Management and Content Management systems providers, SEDONA's application solutions are uniquely positioned to enable organizations to create real-time visual profiles of information from which informed decisions are made to swiftly improve bottom-line results.
About Lead Factory
Lead Factory Inc. is a Boston-based start-up developing an Internet-based solution for lead management and tracking. Available in the second quarter of 2000, Lead Factory will enable sales and marketing professionals at small and mid-sized companies the ability to closely track and monitor their lead generation processes and programs to ensure optimization of resources and time. Contact Lead Factory at 508/881-5664. |
