Clearwave unveils product to enhance call screening

FORT COLLINS – Having a telephone filing cabinet at your finger tips now is as easy as clicking your computer mouse button.Thanks to a new software called Intellect, telephones and computers can unite as one to form a partnership of complete organization.
Clearwave Communications Inc., a 3-year-old Fort Collins software company, “has spawned a new generation of software for home or office use by providing customers with control over telephones that parallels or exceeds service they would get in an office staffed with clerical people answering the telephone,´ said Jeff Emmel, president of Clearwave.
Clearwave was started by three entrepreneurs with 50 years’ combined experience in technology and business. Emmel offers experience in engineering and marketing; Scott Lamons, director of product development, has extensive experience in developing software and hardware; and David Leary, a founder and director, has 15 years with Hewlett-Packard Co., started two successful companies and has served as a board member of two corporations.
Clearwave’s founders saw a business opportunity to create Intellect as a result of higher power in desktop computers, new controllable features in the telephone network, and a significant shift in the work force into small and home offices.
“I started using Intellect at home to establish more control over the phone calls I was getting from various agency’s – it has really helped me organize my day,” Leary said.
It is a very effortless, useful system that enables people to organize and prioritize their day, Emmel said.
Some of the various benefits Intellect provides to its users are:
n Screening calls, answering only the calls they want.
n Displaying notes from past conversations before a call is answered.
n Returning calls with the click of a button.
n Selecting priority calls for forwarding to a cellular phone or another location. Nonpriority callers are asked to leave a message.
n Recording all calls (outgoing and incoming) even if the caller does not leave a message.
n Rapid dialing speed.
“Intellect is an invaluable telephone and time-management tool for anyone who uses a telephone,” Emmel said.
Evelyn Hubbert, an eight-year employee of Hewlett-Packard, said she would be lost without Intellect.
Hubbert, who has now used Intellect for three months, said, “It reduces the time 50 percent that I would normally spend searching for numbers and looking through phone books to find a name or number.”
For anyone who has spent valuable hours looking up phone numbers or trying to find that little slip of paper with a name and number, the recording of all phone calls and rapid dialing enables everyone to be far more efficient, Emmel said.
Intellect has become a very valuable tool to the small-office/home-office sector of the work force.
Many of these people can’t afford to hire a support staff. Therefore, the computer becomes their secretary and receptionist, Emmel said.
Intellect is developed to make individuals in small office/home offices more productive and professional, Leary said.
It is also becoming more common for employees of corporations to operate without clerical support to screen telephone calls, he said.
” I receive phone calls in my department at Hewlett-Packard 24 hours a day, and so Intellect helps to organize and prioritize those calls,” Leary said.
One of the challenges facing Clearwave is that bringing awareness and visibility of the product into the mainstream takes funding, Emmel said.
Clearwave has accomplished a tremendous amount with the help thus far of seed money and loans.
However, to accomplish long-term goals, Clearwave is seeking $1 million in financing by offering for sale common stock at a price of $80 per share, and in the future offering public stock options.
Currently, Intellect is being marketed to the public as well as businesses.
In an effort to reach the estimated 15 million small office/home offices, Clearwave is making its product available through several retail software channels at a price of $79.95.
Various outlets for the product would include: Hello Direct, Egghead Software, Software Etc., Babbages’s, and Barnes and Noble.
For corporations interested in purchasing the software, Clearwave has made it available through phone manufacturers and the World Wide Web, where it can be downloaded for a 21-day trial period.
Clearwave is also initiating plans with local telephone service providers to market the product.
In fact, most Intellect customers already subscribe to Caller-ID, Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, Call Waiting with Caller-ID, and Voice Messaging to take full advantage of Intellect.
The more a customer wants Intellect to do for them, the more billable service they order from their telephone company, Emmel said.
“The Voice Mail and e-mail that I use to retrieve messages and phone calls can be very disorganized, and Intellect helps to sift through the more important calls first,” Hubbert said.
Clearwave is establishing a strong foundation, depending on what the market is ready for, to drive technology and media from the telephone through the computer into people’s workplace and homes, to create greater efficiency and better organization, Emmel said.
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