Base CRM Steps Up to the Enterprise
Base is branching out and aiming at the booming market for enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.
The Chicago-based software company today unveiled Base Enterprise, a version of its Web- and mobile-enabled CRM platform with advanced management, communications and reporting functionality. Having already won over mobile users — 95 percent of users gave the Base app a four-star (out of five) rating or higher on iTunes and Google Play — the company is now targeting businesses with substantial sales forces, says Base CEO Uzi Shmilovici.
“As the top-rated CRM app in multiple mobile marketplaces, and more than 10,000 customers, we were constantly receiving requests from large organizations for a feature set that would answer their needs,” said Shmilovici in a company statement. To date, Base's client roster includes big brands including Nationwide Insurance, Century 21 and White Castle.
Base is betting that the consumerization of IT trend, particularly the growth of business software with consumer-friendly touches, will help the company make a splash in the enterprise. “Large teams and companies using traditional SaaS CRM won’t believe how much more productive they are when they have software they actually love using,” added Shmilovici.
To get big businesses on board, Base is differentiating Enterprise from the Starter and Professional editions by delivering more user management features, cloud storage capacity and reporting options. New user-level permissions help managers and administrators control data access on a per-team or per-user basis.
Organizations can improve manager and administrator visibility by organizing teams by regions, groups or other determinants, according to Base. The software now generates advanced visual reports that can be filtered by individuals or groups.
Finally, Base has added voice calling. Features include calls to and from Base, a dedicated phone number, call recording and automatic call logging. Outgoing calls cost $0.02 per minute while incoming calls are charged at a rate of $0.01 per minute.
Base stores customer information in a single, universal contact card. Users can capture contact details form social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook using the company's Contact Clipper add-on for Google Chrome. It also integrates with email to provide context-sensitive, auto-sorted conversation tracking.
The company boasts that users can be on-boarded in mere hours, rather than weeks and months using traditional CRM platforms. Another benefit, asserts Shmilovici, is employee buy-in. “One of the key problems with CRM is adoption. Solving this problem by designing a new user experience is our core focus,” he stated.
“The fact that working on Salesforce is often listed as a LinkedIn skill indicates just how complicated CRM systems have been for end users. Enterprise companies understand this adoption challenge and its impact on employee productivity,” added Shmilovici.
Base Enterprise is available now. A subscription costs $125 per user, per month.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
