Meet the App Throwdown Contestant: Christian Wettre of W-Systems
Editor’s Note: As we get closer to SugarCon, we wanted to introduce all of the contestants to this year’s App Throwdown, sponsored by SugarOutfitters. Over the next 2 weeks, we’ll have interviews from each of them on what they are showing for the Throwdown, helping you learn a bit more about it.
Bio ( Yours and the Organization you are representing ):
W-Systems is a SugarCRM Gold Partner covering the metro New York market space. We have a strong development practice and enjoy the freedom offered to us to create solutions for our customers using the SugarCRM open source toolkit. We have subject matter expertise in Financial Services, Real Estate, Publishing, Professional Services and Manufacturing industries.
Christian Wettre is the president of W-Systems and will be presenting the solution with Ionut Tonita who is a lead developer.
What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?
We are presenting a module for SugarCRM that allows any user to quickly communicate unique or templated messages to selections of Contacts, Leads or Targets. We automate the creation of fully trackable email campaigns in SugarCRM.
Our solution makes sending a mass communication message as easy as sending an individual email. Our application works in the background to do all the work of setting up a campaign, organizing target lists, creating tracking URL’s, saving email templates and queuing up email.
The user gets a full email marketing package with delivery and interaction tracking that is easy to use and requires minimal training.
What about your application do you feel brings something unique or different to the Sugar ecosystem?
Our application for Sugar extends out powerful communication capabilities to every Sugar user where otherwise marketing campaign execution has required the skills of trained marketers. We take a fairly complex workflow in SugarCRM and simplify it to the extreme. We open up email campaign management to the general user population without the need for third party toolsets.
What is the biggest takeaway you hope the audience takes away from your presentation?
We hope that the audience will see that a partner and professional developer can take the SugarCRM package and add new functionality that fits seamlessly into the platform. This is the promise of SugarCRM and it is the reward to those who invest in it.
What is the most exciting aspect of being a part of the Sugar App Throwdown?
The exposure to a large audience is rewarding. We all take pride in what we are doing and is exciting to present it to the community and to our peers. A little friendly competition and idea sharing is motivating to all of us.
Most of our solutions are only known by ourselves and to our customers. It is fun to showcase our work to a broader audience.. We look forward to receive feedback and critique. With an open ecosystem such as SugarCRM we are looking to contribute our ideas and code to the community. Sharing is good for the SugarCRM product, customers and partners.
Looking at the other App Throwdown submissions, which one looks the most interesting and why?
We are admirers of Epicom’s work. They put out very elegant solutions for SugarCRM so we look forward to seeing their FedEx integration. Blake Robertson’s Callinize application looks like a universally useful mobile application that I would like to use myself.