Avidian Technologies has announced today that it has been granted a U.S. patent for technology used in Prophet, the company's sales CRM software for Microsoft Outlook. The patent, US 7,269,605 -- Personal information manager data synchronization and augmentation -- deals with a key contact management feature built into Prophet.
Tim Nguyen, CTO and co-founder of Avidian, said he believes the patent "will allow us to maintain a key differentiator between Prophet" and competing products.
The patent covers the way Prophet automatically links company and contact information. When a Prophet user looks up a contact, this feature displays the contact's company (if one is entered), and allows the user to view all contacts, addresses, and sales information for that company. It also allows the user to track all communications related to that company -- e-mails to and from the company, appointments, tasks, and other items.
The feature described in US 7,269,605 was built into the original version of Prophet and all subsequent versions.
Unlike traditional CRM or contact management software, Prophet is built into Outlook. Built on the .NET platform, Prophet works entirely inside Outlook and integrates with other business capabilities. "As a result," company officials say, "Prophet turns Outlook data into the building blocks of effective sales CRM software."
Last year Bellevue, Washington-based Avidian announced that it would support Terminal Server and more advanced User Permissions in Prophet 3.0. Both features were made available to existing customers as an update and shipped with all Prophet purchases.
These added features are designed to give companies using Prophet "greater control over their sales data and easier access for all users," according to James Wong, CEO and co-founder of Avidian Technologies.
"This update to Prophet answers the call from our customers for an easy way to maintain better control and security over their sales data," said Wong at the time. "With support for Terminal Server we've broadened the options for accessing sales information."
According to company officials, support for Terminal Server allows users access to their Prophet data through a Terminal Server session, providing ease of access and mobility, as users can access their Prophet data from any computer with the Terminal Server interface.
--------
David Sims is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.