Entellium Opens Asian CRM Headquarters in Singapore

Entellium Asia, the Asian arm of the second generation hosted CRM provider, yesterday announced the set-up of its regional operations in Singapore.

The company originally started operations in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, in May 2000, but closed its sales operation in Asia in 2002 and shifted its corporate headquarters to Seattle, Washington, in 2003.

A successful U.S. launch has seen the company grow rapidly in the past 12 months. It simultaneously expanded its research and development headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

While the company plans to continue expanding its resources in Kuala Lumpur to more than 70 research and development staffers this year, Singapore has been chosen as the regional hub to host its Asia Pacific expansion.

Asian Demand Up

The decision to relaunch sales operations in Asia coincides with a significant increase in demand across Asia for hosted Internet services for sales and customer service automation. The company said it had seen a sharp increase in the second quarter of 2004, continuing a trend that began in the middle of 2003.

Dannie Francis, former global head of marketing at Entellium, has been promoted to vice president Asia Pacific and is responsible for driving business development, sales and marketing in the region.

Francis was formerly based in Singapore, with local and international marketing, publishing and PR consultancies.

He said the first target was to grow the partner and alliance network before the company would embark on an aggressive sales and marketing campaign.

"Entellium has been very successful at attracting OEM partnerships and selling through channel. It's a significant differentiator against our competitors and a major reason we can keep prices low but quality high," Francis said.

Convenient Proximity

He asserted: "Our partners can begin selling today. There are zero upfront costs and high commissions providing added incentive to join our partner network. Additionally we offer comprehensive, training and support services including 24/7 phone, e-mail and live Web chat support."

Francis said Singapore was chosen because of its travel convenience to large volume markets in the region and excellent communications infrastructure.

Entellium offers sales, customer service and marketing automation solutions hosted over the Internet. All data resides in an international data center with the highest levels of security boasting some of the biggest names in the world of business.

Entellium customers buy on a per-person per-month subscription basis that costs about the same as basic business phone subscription per month.

Offered in 'Modules'

"Our solutions are offered as a service, as long as you can connect to the Internet you can go live, plus additionally you can download and massage data offline, or integrate via web services with a variety of devices and third party applications," Francis said.

Entellium is the only hosted-CRM provider that offers its Sales Force, Customer Service and Marketing products as "modules" available for purchase separately on a monthly per subscription fee basis.

Entellium users pay only for the modules to which they subscribe on a monthly basis, with fees ranging from $9.95 up to $59 per month for the entire suite, compared to upwards of $120 for a single application from other vendors with comparable features.

Entellium was founded in 2000 and is an early pioneer of hosted CRM solutions.