News Release - October 20, 2004

VoiceGate and Strategic Connections Announce Technology Partnership

COMPANIES DELIVER COMPUTER TELEPHONY POWERED CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PRODUCTIVITY SUITE TO THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IN ONE CONVERGED, WEB-ENABLED SOLUTION

In a move to deliver the most affordable, comprehensive communications solution available to the Automotive Industry, Strategic Connections Inc. and VoiceGate Corporation have joined forces to deliver a suite of productivity and call management tools designed specifically to assist Automotive Dealers to sell more vehicles and increase customer retention. Other benefits dealers will realize from the use of this product will be: increased service traffic; reduced advertising expense; workforce optimization and process execution; and ultimately, an improved bottom line.

This new automotive suite of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools tracks and measures advertising response; records telephone conversations and networked screen activity while providing instant wireless desktop messaging; call accounting and telephone system activity reporting; automated customer dialing, contact and update campaigns; and speech based call routing, facilitating better managed customer contact and activity reporting. This is all managed through a single web-based CRM consol designed specifically for, and tested in, automotive retail outlets.

“VoiceGate Corporation is a world leader in delivering call processing and voice recording computer telephony integrated hardware and software solutions for virtually any phone system – Strategic Connections is a manufacturer of industry leading, web based, contact management, measurement, and productivity software. The two companies have co-joined their technologies to deliver a Best in Class automotive CRM solution giving car dealers all the tools necessary to better manage their workforce, customers, and advertising campaigns” says Michael Bacon – Director of Automotive Solutions – VoiceGate Corporation. “This new converged technology fills a void within the Automotive CRM market - a market which has long awaited a fully integrated, low cost solution that connects and cross-references who’s calling into and who’s calling out of the dealership with CRM initiatives and deliverables. This ensures corporate advertising dollars are being effectively distributed and that the contact essential to customer satisfaction and retention are actually taking place. What all of this means is: automotive dealers can now definitively measure the return on their CRM investment and identify its direct impact on their bottom line, that before now, was difficult to quantify” says Bacon.

The two companies envision this combined solution to quickly gain traction in the automotive vertical by delivering an affordable suite of tools to car dealerships who wish to better manage and measure communications between their customers and front-line employees: this is accomplished by adding the Strategic Connections/VoiceGate “layer” on top of their existing communication and computing infrastructure. This “layer” will empower the automotive dealer’s management, sales, service, finance, leasing, accounting and used car departments to become a cohesive, well coached, interconnected team focused on improving customer relationships through a simple-to-use, web based access point.

About Strategic Connections Corporation
Strategic Connections, developers of Napoleon CRM, have successful partnerships with several automotive dealers, dealer groups and automotive manufacturers including Mercedes-Benz Canada Inc*., as well as several sales and marketing oriented Corporations outside of the automotive vertical. Napoleon CRM is an easy to use, automated Sales and Customer Management software customized to support business processes, increase marketing opportunities, and maximize profitability.

About VoiceGate Corporation
VoiceGate Corporation, founded in 1978 is an innovative leader in the voice processing, call logging, and instant wireless messaging industry. VoiceGate is a privately owned Canadian corporation with its head office located in Markham, Ontario. It also has offices in the United States and India. Sold and supported worldwide, its powerful Integrated Communications Server family of products incorporates leading edge, standards-based modular system architecture and years of customer design input. Working with its partners (Bell Canada, Intel, and Nortel Networks*) to deliver “best in class” communication solutions, its products offerings cover virtually all messaging and call processing applications. From speech enabled voice automated attendants to integrated instant wireless messaging, call accounting, emergency preparedness dialing engines and voice logging, VoiceGate has a solution to fit the smallest SOHO application to the largest most complicated central office based installations. VoiceGate’s diverse customer base includes government, ISPs, education, military, medical, hospitality, public safety, utility, transportation, and thousands of small to mid sized business.

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