Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have become essential to the day to day operation of most organizations. CRM software plays a vital role in marketing, sales and customer retention process while ERP software is critical to management and monitoring of the entire work flow of an organisation. Both ERP and CRM software connect the operations to each and every activity within as well as to the outside client.
There is intense competition within the providers of CRM and ERP software. CRM and ERP software companies within various business domains are looking to differentiate their product from the rest. CTI integration into CRM and ERP is one such key differentiator that these vendors are trying implement within their software. Integrating CTI into CRM/ERP software is easier said than done due to enormous variations between various PBX and telephone system providers. This situation is changing with the emergence of IP based phone systems and the availability of powerful open source hybrid PBX like Asterisk.
There are powerful call center ACD software for Asterisk that allow full CTI integration. The availability of “.NET” and socket library for such Call Center ACD based on Asterisk presents an opportunity to integrate and embed CTI into any CRM and ERP software and provide an integrated solution. Such an integration will be a game changer for the CRM/ERP software vendor and a true differentiator.