SOFTRAX CORP.

Revenue management specialist SOFTRAX Corp. has brought out Inform, an addition to its flagship Operations and Financials product lines. The new application is designed to enable all employees -- in finance, sales, marketing, service and support -- to view operational and financial information easily and securely.

Inform's browser--based interface allows users to create personalized pages tailored to their needs, creating a secure, unified view of customer data configured to include contracts, locations, product, license, maintenance and other information. Canton, Mass.-based SOFTRAX says Inform is easily integrated with Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) and other financial and support applications.

"The purpose of Inform is to promote the dissemination of financial and operational information to the rest of the company, as the CFO and others perceive the need to do that," SOFTRAX CEO Robert O'Connor said in an interview. SOFTRAX has specialized in the software and related high-tech services industry since its founding in 1995. "We've seen a lot of new business models in the industry," O'Connor said, including subscription or application service provider (ASP) forms. "We want to maximize [customer] revenue opportunities and minimize the costs. There's a compelling ROI because of the increased revenue they can generate."

"It's been our strategy to coexist with other applications," he adds. "When we come in to a site, they might have an existing financial application, a PeopleSoft or Great Plains or whatever. We want to be able to work with whatever they have in place."

Inform allows employees to he set up as users or user groups, with the ability to restrict data to specific regions or customers. A key function of the system, O'Connor said, is the ability to manage recurring transactions, contracts, and maintenance renewals -- especially when complex billing procedures and revenue-recognition issues are involved.