ELK Promotions Opts for Entellium; Promotions Industry Leader Sees a ''New World of Opportunity'' Thanks to Hosted CRM Suite

Business Wire, August 8, 2006

SEATTLE -- Entellium (www.entellium.com) today announced that ELK Promotions, Inc. (www.elkpromotions.com) has deployed Entellium's hosted CRM suite to help it anticipate client needs and open up new marketing and business opportunities.

Founded more than 30 years ago, Columbus, Ohio-based ELK Promotions specializes in quality products in the awards and promotion industry, including pens, coffee mugs, apparel and many other items that bear a company logo. Large companies with thousands of locations and hundreds of logo items turn to ELK Promotions to manage the storage and distribution of these items to employees and customers. One such "aggregate" client is a fast-food chain with more than 6,000 locations and 700 logo items.

ELK Promotions develops a deep relationship with its clients similar to that of an advertising agency. As a trusted advisor, ELK Promotions helps clients determine which items from more than 3,000 industry manufacturers will have the biggest impact within a given budget. This requires detailed records about previous orders, qualities and demand patterns.

"With Entellium, our salespeople now have immediate access to a client's order history," said Scott Wieclaw, vice president of sales for ELK Promotions. "What's even more exciting is that we no longer have to wait for clients to call -- we keep track of their ordering patterns from the previous year and call them before their next big event. Entellium helps us manage our customers better and that has already translated into more sales."

In evaluating CRM options, ELK Promotions opted for the convenience and deployment speed of a hosted solution, especially after learning that packaged software alternatives would require custom programming to meet ELK Promotions' requirements.

Entellium worked from the start. "We found Entellium to be very easy to use," Wieclaw said. "We were able to configure the system and get started with CRM very quickly without having to invest in custom programming. Since this is our first attempt at a CRM system we wanted to see if it would work for our industry in a low-risk way. We are finding that it is very good for us, essentially out of the box."

The hosted model is also enabling ELK Promotions to increase salesperson flexibility. For example, an experienced salesperson recently moved to another city, which in the past would have meant losing a valuable employee. Today, the rep is working remotely for ELK and enjoys full access to key information.

Through Entellium, ELK plans to increase marketing outreach to let clients know about close-outs and holiday specials. One mode of communication is likely to be a targeted email campaign, managed directly through Entellium.

"Entellium opens up a new world of opportunity," Wieclaw said. "We are looking forward to all the possibilities we have now to grow our business."

"In many ways, Entellium CRM is a business turbocharger for companies that already have an effective business model and sales process in place," said Natalee Roan, chief marketing officer for Entellium. "Because the Entellium system is easy to deploy and highly adaptable, businesses can start leveraging it with minimal disruption and downtime -- they are able to take what is already working and clone it to more people and parts of their company creating greater efficiencies with fewer resources."

About Entellium

Founded in 2000, Entellium's suite of CRM solutions has been designed specifically for small and midsize companies and divisions of large enterprises that want a powerful solution that strikes the right balance between the everyday needs of sales and service representatives and the reporting requirements of management. Entellium has won several industry awards for innovation in usability, and was recently recognized by Forrester Research for top scores in Usability and Cost among leading CRM providers (The Forrester Wave: Hosted Sales Force Automation, Q1 2005(1)). Entellium is also the recipient of the Frost and Sullivan 2005 Customer Service Leadership award for outstanding service to its customers. Entellium is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with a global R&D Center in Malaysia and sales operating worldwide via its partner network. For more information, visit http://www.entellium.com.

(1) The Forrester Wave: Hosted Sales Force Automation, Q1 2005, L. Herbert (with Erin Kinikin and Jessica Harrington), March 31, 2005.