Consona CRM Press Release

Consona CRM, a worldwide leader in total customer management for the enterprise, today announced the release of Onyx Adaptive CRM Version 6.0 (v6.0), KNOVA v7.1, and Million Handshakes v4.5—just 10 months after the company’s entry into the customer relationship management (CRM) market with the acquisition of Onyx Software Corporation.

“Consona CRM has achieved several product milestones in a very short period of time through the combination of M&A, in-house product development, and partnerships,” said Jeff Tognoni, CEO of Consona Corporation. “The result is perhaps the most competitively priced, well architected, functionally rich CRM solution available to medium- and large-sized businesses.”

The Consona CRM release presents a full suite of functionality, including sales, service, support, and marketing automation; service resolution and knowledge management; business process management; and business intelligence. Specifically, the release includes the general availability of Onyx v6.0 and the release of both KNOVA v7.1 and Million Handshakes v4.5 to the division’s growing customer base.

“The strengthened Consona CRM product portfolio enhances our ability to help our customers achieve ‘total customer management’ (TCM),” said Pete Strom, general manager of Consona CRM. “To us, TCM is the implementation and ongoing management of the people, processes, and technology associated with achieving a differentiated and cohesive customer experience. The key to TCM is partnering with a vendor that has the functionality breadth, architecture and professional services to support this objective, and this release solidifies Consona as that vendor.”

Onyx v6.0 includes several significant enhancements, including a SQL generation framework, new calendaring functionality, a robust user interface configuration framework, and a comprehensive group collaboration tool named Assignment Studio. The release also offers improved upgrade ability and referential integrity.

The UK arm of the Butterfield Group, Butterfield Private Bank, is one of many Onyx customers either live with or implementing v6.0. Managing Director George Bogucki said, “During the evaluation process, we noted v6.0’s leading architecture and extensive functionality, as well as the Consona team’s holistic approach to CRM, which they refer to as total customer management. These, together with the new features in v6.0—in particular the new collaboration and configuration tools—were deciding factors when selecting Onyx. We look forward to leveraging the full functionality of the system in the future and expect strong returns going forward.”

As part of the general availability of Onyx v6.0, Consona CRM is now offering KNOVA v7.1, a service resolution and knowledge management solution (acquired in March), and Million Handshakes v4.5, a marketing automation and customer dialog solution from new technology partner Million Handshakes, atop the core Onyx CRM solution to both new and existing customers.

“Because it is built on a leading technology architecture, Onyx v6.0 offers maximum extensibility and reliability, and easily integrates with other applications without the need for pre-built connectors,” said Tim Hines, vice president of product management for Consona CRM. “With such actionable technology, we’re able to quickly go to market with our acquired products and create new value for our existing customers.”

From the contact center to field service personnel, KNOVA v7.1 uses patented knowledge management and search functionality to allow for an intelligent and personalized customer experience. Solution highlights include contact center, forums, self-service, field service, knowledge desk, and guided selling enhancements.

Million Handshakes v4.5 is a product suite used for dialog marketing activities (including e-mail, direct mail, and telemarketing). Solution highlights include a dialog designer, message designer, questionnaire designer, customer Web profile, an internal customer data portal, and report designer.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with our acquisition of KNOVA and partnership with Million Handshakes,” said Strom, “and even more thrilled with how quickly we have been able to deliver the market’s first operational and collaborative CRM offering to our customers. Our goal is to allow companies to define their unique business processes, align data and actions to those processes and, in general, facilitate improved teamwork across complex sales and customer service scenarios.”