Pivotal CRM for Homebuilding and Real Estate 5.9 Is Now Generally Available
ORLANDO, FL, 2008 International Builders Show® – February 13, 2008 – CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a provider of industry-specific enterprise software and services, today announced the general availability of Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate 5.9, a major new product version that is intended to help builders increase revenue and margins on home options, while significantly reducing the cost and effort of integration with common back-end systems. Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate is an industry-specific customer relationship management system (CRM) designed to help building and real estate firms manage relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. This comprehensive solution helps manage front office functions, including marketing automation, lead management, sales automation, quoting and contracting, surveying, and customer care.
Pivotal CRM contains several important features including product library enhancements with support for units of measure, option rules and extended wildcarding, group calendaring including support for delegation, and C# conversation, which helps with migration to newer Pivotal platforms.
Pivotal CRM is also designed to reduce the cost of integrating with Envision, a widely-used enterprise suite of applications that enables builders to offer each of their buyers a personalized portal with just their options/products for use in the design process. With Envision, buyers browse and study their options/products and save their favorites to their wish lists prior to their design appointments with builders. The pre-built connector between Pivotal CRM and Envision is intended to help accelerate the process of rolling out an integrated Envision Design Center, provide enhanced options management solutions and improve customers’ home buying experience by placing options information in their hands according to New Home Technologies.
“In today’s market, especially during economic downturns, successful home builders recognize the importance of reacting quickly to customers, providing detailed and accurate information and meeting commitments,” said Steve Lewkowitz, Professional Services Director of the home building & real estate group at CDC Software. “We believe this new version of Pivotal CRM will create opportunities for homebuilders to increase margins, improve customer satisfaction and achieve a higher operational efficiency.”
“We are very excited that CDC Software has provided the native integration between Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate 5.9 and Envision,” said Melissa Morman, vice president, general manager of Builder Homesite and New Home Technologies. Builder Homesite founded New Home Technologies, a subsidiary that focuses on solutions for homebuilding that includes Envision. “In today’s climate, our builders are looking for every possible way to not only maximize the take rate of options, but also to drive more leads/sales on the front end. Having this integration in place helps builders take advantage of both of these crucial opportunities, while reducing implementation costs and speeding up launch cycles.”
About Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate
Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate is an industry-tailored customer relationship management system designed to help building and real estate firms better manage relationships throughout the customer lifecycle—from the first point of interest to the management of post-sale service and repeat sales. The only comprehensive solution for managing the complete front-office marketing automation, lead management, sales automation, and customer care activities of home builders and real estate companies, four of the top 10 U.S. Home Builders use Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate to help them cost effectively deliver a superior customer experience. Awarded IT Product of the Year and Best Sales, Marketing and Customer Service Automation product at the 2006 Innovative Housing Technology Awards, Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate is used by many leading U.S. home builders, including Beazer Homes, Centex Homes, Toll Brothers, and WCI Communities. To learn more, please visit www.pivotal.com/homebuilders.
About CDC Software
CDC Software, The Customer-Driven Company™, is a provider of enterprise software applications designed to help organizations deliver a superior customer experience while increasing efficiencies and profitability. CDC Software’s product suite includes: CDC Factory (manufacturing operations management), Ross ERP (enterprise resource planning) and SCM (supply chain management), CDC Supply Chain (supply chain management, warehouse management and order management), Pivotal CRM and Saratoga CRM (customer relationship management), CDC MarketFirst (marketing automation and lead management), Respond (customer complaint and feedback management), c360 CRM add-on products, industry solutions and development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, Platinum HRM (human resources) and business analytics solutions.
These industry-specific solutions are used by more than 6,000 customers worldwide within the manufacturing, financial services, health care, home building, real estate, and wholesale and retail distribution industries. The company completes its offerings with a full continuum of services that span the life cycle of technology and software applications, including implementation, project consulting, outsourced business services, application management and offshore development. CDC Software is the enterprise software unit of CDC Corporation, and is ranked number 12 on the MBT 2007 Global 100 List of Enterprise and Supply Chain Management Application vendors. For more information, please visit www.cdcsoftware.com.
About CDC Corporation
The CDC family of companies includes CDC Software focused on enterprise software applications and services, CDC Games focused on online games, and China.com focused on portals for the greater China markets. For more information about CDC Corporation please visit www.cdccorporation.net.
About Builder Homesite and New Home Technologies
Builder Homesite Inc. and its subsidiary, New Home Technologies, were both founded with the same mission-to bring homebuilding industry leaders together to develop world-class technology solutions. Builder Homesite is a consortium of 38 of the nation’s largest homebuilders and its flagship product is NewHomeSource.com, a consumer website offering the Internet’s most comprehensive information and selection of new homes. In 2003, Builder Homesite founded New Home Technologies, a subsidiary consortium of new homebuilders and product manufacturers to focus on solutions along the homebuilding supply chain. The first of these tools is Envision-and integrated and standardized online new home design options management solution. For more information, visit www.builderhomesite.com.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and includes statements relating to the ability of Pivotal CRM for Homebuilders and Real Estate 5.9 to help increase revenues and margins, reduce integration costs and effort, accelerate processes, and provide enhanced solutions and customer experiences, our belief regarding opportunities for homebuilders to increase margins, enhanced customer satisfaction and greater efficiency, the ability of Pivotal CRM to address the needs of homebuilding and real estate clients such as the ability to improve efficiencies, improve customer service, drive cost savings and provide competitive advantages. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties and changes in circumstances. There are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements including, among others: the conditions of the homebuilding and real estate markets; the continued ability of Pivotal CRM solutions to address industry-specific requirements of companies in the homebuilding and real estate industry; demand for and market acceptance of new and existing CRM solutions; development of new functionalities which would allow homebuilding and real estate companies to compete more effectively and changes in the type of information required to compete in the homebuilding and real estate industry. Further information on risks or other factors that could cause results to differ is detailed in filings or submissions with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission made by CDC Corporation in its Annual Report for the year ended December 31, 2006 on Form 20-F filed on July 2, 2007. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to management as of the date of the press release, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward looking statements which speak only as of the date of this press release. The company assumes no obligation to update or alter the forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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