Softalk talk on OfficeTalk

OfficeTalk 4.5, the recent upgrade to Softalk’s popular CRM software, has been announced by the company. The Softalk promise between OfficeTalk 4.5 is “to improve productivity and simplify administration by providing one central place to organize business information such as contacts, appointments, telephone calls, e-mail, letters and other documents.”

Simply put, OfficeTalk 4.5 is packed with features. In the project management mode, project planning, coordination and monitoring is managed, and tasks can be dated and then assigned to users by e-mail or remote. GANTT style view and baseline snapshots allow users to track progress graphically, and all projects can be imported and exported to Microsoft Project.

An application programming interface enables OfficeTalk to be integrated with other applications. Additionally, OfficeTalk 4.5 is bundled with the Softalk Workgroup Mail server to provide secure messaging with integrated anti-virus and spam protection; this also offers e-mail message archiving, searching and retrieval over several years.

The inexpensive solution is touted as an alternative product for small- to mid-sized business: “OfficeTalk 4.5 provides a powerful, low cost, easy to use alternative to Outlook, Act! and Goldmine,” said Softalk CEO Simon Bates.” The target market is organization of fewer than 500 users.

“Small- and medium-sized businesses are particularly vulnerable as they don’t have large IT departments to manage and monitor their e-mail systems,” said Bates. “Many businesses are relying on old e-mail systems that they first implemented when e-mail first became widely available and before it became a business critical system.” One critical statistic often quoted in Softalk material is the simple fact that e-mail traffic has gone from 15 billion to 132 billion pieces of email daily in just five years.