Software: OmniPilot aims to further integrate the Web with client sales and marketing

South Florida CEO, May, 2005

When the Internet first started giving companies an opportunity to get their messages out to the masses, many didn't know how to use it. Their Web sites were basically one-page advertisements or electronic fliers, says OmniPilot chief operating officer Chad Roll.

Fort Lauderdale-based OmniPilot makes software that enables companies to create and customize their Web sites, add date-sensitive material, send and manage e-mail marketing lists, generate reports from those lists and build a current and prospective customer database out of the information culled.

"We feel the Web site is the 800-number of the digital generation," Roll says. "We want it to be a dynamic business asset instead of a liability."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Some of the world's largest marketers use the company's Lasso Web developer software to create data-driven Web applications, such as electronic catalogues. Roll says OmniPilot's 10,000 customers include companies such as Apple Computer Inc., The Walt Disney Co., Fedex Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Viacom Inc., and United Parcel Service Inc.

But it is small to mid-size businesses, says Roll, who can perhaps benefit most from the Omnipilot's offerings. He says the company's Quick Web Pro allows them to compete with larger firms by combining the power of the Internet with marketing. The idea is that Quick Web Pro becomes a company's central point of interaction between marketing and sales.

Philip Coady, vice president of sales and marketing for Plateau Systems, a software company based in Arlington, Va., used Quick Web Pro with his previous company, Bridge Stream. Bridge Stream used the software to quickly send out customized marketing e-mails. He says those e-mails lured readers to respond, rather than send the message directly to the trash bin, and got faster response than traditional e-mail solicitations.

"What this allowed me to do was intelligently go out to market," Coady says. He plans to use the software at Plateau Systems as well.

Omnipilot, founded in 2002, is owned by Fort Lauderdale-based marketing firm Starmark International, which was ranked No. 43 on the 2003 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately held companies in the US. Starmark spun Omnipilot out as a separate company, which currently has 20 dedicated employees., and Roll plans a rapid expansion of his sales staff to grow the business. "We could have 100 employees by the end of the calendar year," he says.