Centric CRM changed its name to Concursive Corporation. The name change reflects the rapid evolution of Concursive's products beyond CRM functionality. The corporate name change coincides with the release of a brand new version of the company's flagship product, Concourse Suite 5.0 (formerly Centric CRM), and is accompanied by the addition of a host of community and collaboration-oriented technologies to Concursive's portfolio of applications.

Concursive believes that the requirements for customer relationship management solutions have evolved beyond simple one-way communication between an organization and an individual customer that characterize earlier generations of CRM technologies.

Today, organizations must find ways to engage with customers in an online community environment, in which all parties participate on an equal footing. Rather than focusing solely on aggregating massive amounts of data about customers, Concursive offers a unified solution for all front office activities, tying together websites, content management, social networking, and many channels of customer communication. It recognizes and embraces the always on, always connected world that is the signature feature of our age. It incorporates Web 2.0 technologies to enable much richer many-to-many interactions between companies, their customers and other communities of interest.

The company reflects the evolution of both the market and its products in its new name which depicts the coming together of people and groups. The name, from the word 'concourse,' also reflects a public forum for meeting, debate and collaboration, and a place where connections are made.

Correspondingly, Concursive continues to extend its product portfolio to include an array of Web 2.0 technologies that will help organizations to engage, network and communicate with their customer communities.

In particular, Concursive's recently-announced TeamElements application enables organizations to incorporate discussion forums, wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, issue tracking, trouble-ticketing, project management, document management, and federated search into their customer management activities. In the future, Concursive applications will also include features that allow customers to tag, rate and review content.

Michael Harvey, executive vice president of Concursive, said, "The rise of the 'participatory internet' is dramatically changing the way businesses interact with their customers and vice versa. We have been quick to embrace Web 2.0 tools; to realize the importance of the corporate website as a portal to pull communities of customers and other stakeholders together; and to understand how new technologies affect businesses of all sizes."

"Our mission remains the same as ever: to help organizations acquire, service and retain their customers, and we are developing our product set accordingly," he added. "The boundaries between CRM, websites, enterprise applications and transaction systems have blurred and will never be distinct again."