Ifbyphone, JumpForward Announce Partnership

Business Wire,  June 25, 2008  

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Strategic Agreement Combines Leading Voice Applications With Communications-Based Sports Relationship Management Solution

CHICAGO -- Ifbyphone, the telephone application platform company, and JumpForward, the on-demand sports-relationship-management (SRM) solutions provider, jointly announce a partnership today to deliver a comprehensive communications solution for high school athletes and college coaches that unifies the athletic recruiting process as never before.

JumpForward provides a converged on-demand communications platform that empowers high school athletes and parents to navigate and streamline the entire athletic recruiting and communications process. High school athletes are able to search detailed information for free on more than 2,500 colleges and 55,000 college coach's e-mails and phone numbers. From their Unified Communications Dashboard, athletes can instantly call college coaches by clicking the "Start Call" button, powered by Ifbyphone, while each call placed is automatically tracked.

For college coaches, JumpForward's on-demand SRM solution automatically tracks, manages and organizes calls placed by college coaches to prospect high school athletes.

"Calling potential high school student-athletes is a core activity within the athletic recruiting process," said Chris Higgins, a former NCAA Division I college coach. "JumpForward enables college coaches to seamlessly collaborate among one other, while automatically tracking, managing and organizing each call placed. It's truly innovative--transforming a simple phone call and wrapping an intelligent recruiting application around it."

Ifbyphone combines Web and voice services upon which breakthrough solutions like JumpForward's can be built. Ifbyphone provides a sophisticated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform from which it offers click-to-call, toll-free numbers and voice-broadcast services directly and through more than 200 resellers.

"The breadth and elegance of JumpForward's SRM solution is truly spectacular," said Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro. "We're proud to partner with forward-thinkers like those at JumpForward who grasp the power of Ifbyphone applications to help them serve an area of obvious need, such as fostering communications for student athletes and college coaches."

The intelligent Ifbyphone application first calls the athlete's designated number and then dials the college coach's phone--keeping the student athlete's number private.

This powerful combination of JumpForward's SRM solution and Ifbyphone's platform eliminates time spent searching for college coaches' phone numbers and allows high school athletes to focus more on contacting the coaches--while being assured that the privacy of their phone numbers is preserved.

Calling college coaches is by far one of the most critical communication steps within the collegiate athletic recruiting process. Many collegiate athletic affiliations, such as the NCAA, require that phone calls placed to college coaches be made only by the high school athlete and not by marketing or agent recruiting services. Since the initial relationship between a college coach and athlete has to be built over the phone, JumpForward provides high school athletes and parents with a powerful recruiting tool and eliminates the costly marketing or recruiting services.

To guide high school athletes through phone conversations they have with college coaches, JumpForward provides a calling question bank of more than 60 questions a high school athlete may want to ask the college coach. This feature also allows athletes to save responses and notes from their calls with coaches.

Ifbyphone's Shapiro said the agreement with JumpForward is the latest of several his company expects to reach to expand distribution channels for its applications. Other potential partners can click on www.Ifbyphone.com to learn more about the company's partnership programs.

About Ifbyphone

Ifbyphone is a hosted telephone application platform company that provides small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) an easy means to increase their customer conversations and drive sales--without the high cost and complexity typically associated with building interactive voice response systems. Leveraging Ifbyphone's extreme usability, web developers, interactive marketers and customer service professionals can quickly create everything from simple Click-to-Call links on Web pages and e-mail to sophisticated call-routing and interactive-marketing solutions-transforming telephones into powerful tools to increase leads, improve sales and enhance customer experience. Ifbyphone's solutions are available directly to SMBs and through a network of direct marketing resellers. For more information, click to speak to a sales professional or visit the Ifbyphone Web site.

About JumpForward

Headquartered in Chicago, JumpForward is a team of former NCAA and NAIA athletes and former NCAA college coaches dedicated to leveraging the power of the internet to deliver one of the most innovative on-demand sport-relationship-management (SRM) solutions designed specifically for athletes, high school athletic directors, club teams, and college coaches. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.jumpforward.com

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