Following on from Dan's post below. BT are indeed making some great strides forward with this type of proposition. They have an active Development Community who are working on all sorts of solutions (both internal solutions and customer facing ones). One such solution has just gone into beta - BT Bizbox. It is a prime example of the sort of solutions that are coming into existence now for small businesses to start to operate with the same levels of functionality and business process automation that the big guys have been using for years. This solution uses BTs SDK environment to allow the business owner to "Click to Call" and "Click to SMS" their customers directly from within the application. It logs all of the SMS's and calls for future reference and call be searched upon at any time in the future to offer a true audit trail and full accountability of who is interacting with the customer and what they are interacting with them on. These types of solutions will become more important for small businesses in the future as the globalisation of business takes place and they require every tool at their disposal to remain a competitive advantage. One important aspect here is the development activity is undertaken in a community led way. Users are actively encourage to request features and the solution will generally move in the direction of the community requirements. If your a small / medium sized business and in the market for a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management ) solution then I recommend you take a look. Regards Dean Disclaimer: I am actively involved in the BT BizBox solution and getting it to market with BT.
