SugarCRM News

The good news is that companies of all sizes are starting to recognize the strategic value of customer relationship management (CRM) software. The bad news is that there’s not only a price war on, but a lot of the vendors providing CRM application software are trying to take the business direct via the cloud.

Blytheco, a well-established services provider, has been offering Sage and nothing but Sage CRM solutions for just about 30 years. But times change. As of Feb. 1, 2012, Blytheco has ended its relationship with Sage in favor of a partnership with competitor SugarCRM.

Customer relationship management vendors and industry analysts discuss which CRM trends will continue to gain strength and what new trends IT professionals need to watch.

Solution provider Blytheco, one of Sage Software's largest resellers, has joined SugarCRM's partner program and will resell the company's CRM applications under a deal disclosed Wednesday.

IBM unveiled a new retail survey that shows consumers are now willing to communicate with retailers in order to educate companies on how, when and where to approach them. The global survey indicates that consumers are willing share the following personal information with their favorite brands: media usage, demographics, identifying information, lifestyle and location.

There’s this song from, I think, the 50s that has lines that go, “What a difference a day made. Twenty-four little hours.” (thank you, Dinah Washington) In the case of SugarCRM, I’m modifying the phrase (which totally ruins the song) to “what a difference a year made. Twelve little months.”

Recruitment firm Verticality has sliced 30% off its customer relationship management (CRM) costs and improved sales leads by swapping Salesforce.com for another Cloud solution from SugarCRM.



I’ve now published the two parts of The CRM Watchlist 2012 Winners that cover the Big 4 who pretty much are going to win the award even if they are not doing so well because of their sheer size and because they have a presence in the market that is irreducible. That would be Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and salesforce.com.

The CRM landscape is shifting gears -- and it looks as though 2012 will be the year that will see investments in technologies to cash in on a veritable explosion of social media, mobile and integration opportunities.

Software as a Service offerings can be helpful to service and solution providers as well as their customers. Highland Solutions’ Scott Tabak discusses how Highland Solutions works with both SugarCRM and IBM’s SmartCloud.