New Cost-Effective Team Work, Collaboration and Contact Management Software for Small and Medium Size Businesses

The benefits of effective team working, collaboration and contact management are now available to small and medium size businesses with the release of OfficeTalk 4.5 which provides shared calendars, contacts, e-mail, tasks, planners and project management in one integrated package. Includes integrated e-mail server with anti-virus and anti-spam protection. A new competitor to Act!, Goldmine and Outlook.

New York, NY (PRWEB) April 14, 2006 -- The benefits of effective team working, collaboration and contact management are now available to small and medium size businesses with the release of OfficeTalk 4.5 which provides shared calendars, contacts, e-mail, tasks, planners and project management

"OfficeTalk 4.5 provides a powerful, low cost, easy to use alternative to Outlook, Act! and Goldmine. Unlike its competitors OfficeTalk is focused on sharing information, collaboration, team working and getting jobs done. Everyone in the team can benefit, not just sales professionals," explained Simon Bates, joint CEO of Softalk. "OfficeTalk can greatly increase the effectiveness of both individuals and teams by bringing all of their most important information together in one place."

OfficeTalk 4.5 was specifically developed as collaboration software for organizations with five to 500 users who need to share business information and work more effectively as a team. This means that all of its collaboration features are integral to OfficeTalk's design rather than being added on to what was originally a standalone personal information manager or sales contact system. OfficeTalk 4.5 starts at $625 for five users or $6750 for a 50 user license.

Softalk designed OfficeTalk 4.5 to improve productivity and simplify administration by providing one central place to organize business information such as contacts, appointments, telephone calls, e-mail, letters and other documents. The group mode and meeting mode simplifies internal administration by enabling users to easily set up meetings and manage all shared resources such as meeting rooms, digital projectors and exhibition stands. The shared calendars make it easy to view any other users' diaries and task lists.

The contact management mode provides single company records with separate records for each contact linked to it. This means that any team member (with permission) can view all related information for either a company or a contact in one place under a pending or history tab to see what needs to be done or has been done in the past.

The OfficeTalk e-mail mode enables users (with permission) to view any other users' e-mail folder with an instant update of any changes. Individual messages can be flagged and set with a reminder that action is required.

OfficeTalk 4.5 also has a project management mode to plan and monitor related tasks. Tasks can be given start dates and durations and then assigned to local OfficeTalk users or remote users by e-mail. The current status of projects and tasks can be tracked using a GANTT style view and compared with baseline snapshots showing the project's original timescale. Projects can be imported and exported to Microsoft Project.

OfficeTalk 4.5 also enables workgroup synchronization for sharing business information across multiple sites. Mobile and offsite users can work offline and synchronize with the main database offline. Data can also be synced with Palm PDAs.

OfficeTalk 4.5 is quickly installed from a download and an entire team can be up and running in less than 30 minutes. Users can start benefiting from OfficeTalk 4.5 immediately with little or no training needed. It can also be customized to add additional data fields, profiles to restrict or allow access to different modes for individual users or groups of users. An application programming interface (API) enables OfficeTalk to be integrated with other applications.

Integrated e-mail server with anti-virus and anti-spam protection

OfficeTalk 4.5 is now bundled with the Softalk Workgroup Mail server to provide scalable, secure messaging with integrated anti-virus and spam protection. It also now offers email message archiving, searching and retrieval to enable businesses to comply with new laws regarding storing data and correspondence for several years.

About Softalk

Softalk provides a range of messaging, collaboration and contact relationship management software solutions specifically designed to benefit small to medium size businesses. Softalk is in the Deloitte European Fast 500 and the UK Fast 50 of the fastest growing technology companies. It was set up in 1993 and is a privately held company headquartered in Maidenhead in the UK with a US office in New York. Customers include American Express, Cancer Research, Cap Gemini France, Cisco, Lufthansa and Xerox. Its products include Softalk Collaboration Suite which includes WorkgroupMail, an email server for small businesses; WorkgroupShare to enable organizations to share Outlook folders without the need for Microsoft Exchange; and Softalk Organizer, a web-based collaboration client enabling users to share calendars, contacts and email. OfficeTalk is a low cost contact and customer relationship management solution enabling the whole team to share business information. For more information visit www.softalkltd.com or join in the conversation at the Let's talk business blog at http://talk.softalkltd.com

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