SugarCon Attendees: Tweet for your chance to win an iPad mini, sponsored by NextPrinciples!

mremedios1 —  April 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Going to SugarCon next week? We hope you’re as excited as we are and ready to share your experiences on Twitter! Tweet about the conference with the #SugarCon hashtag and you’ll be entered to win an iPad mini, sponsored by Sugar partner and Social Analytics leader, NextPrinciples.

Guidelines to enter:

  • Follow @sugarcrm and @nextprinciples on Twitter
  • Tweet about SugarCon using the event hashtag #SugarCon
  • Must be physically present at the conference
  • Contest begins Tuesday, April 9th and ends Wednesday, April 10th at 4:30pm
  • NextPrinciples and SugarCRM employees are not eligible to participate

The iPad mini will be awarded to a contest participant with the highest “Influencer” score, based on the highest volume of tweets and retweets. The winner will be announced during the App Throwdown in the Grand Ballroom on Wednesday, April 10th from 4:30–5:30pm. The prize can be picked up at NextPrinciples’ sponsor booth, #207.

This contest is supported by the powerful social analytics and engagement platform provided by NextPrinciples. Visit nextprinciples.com/sugarcrm to see for yourselves.

Tip: Use our mobile app to tweet by sharing status updates or checking in to events on Twitter! Download the SugarCon mobile app here.

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Meet the App Throwdown Contestant: Blake Robertson with Callinize

John Mertic —  April 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

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 ):

Blake Robertson is an avid member of the SugarCRM Developer community.   Blake Robertson started developing SugarCRM addons for the needs of his company Alertus Technologies for which Blake is the CTO and cofounder.  When he’s not developing next generation mass notification hardware/software, he enjoys working on open source projects. Most notably, he maintains YAAI an open source telephony integration between SugarCRM and Asterisk. Blake presented YAAI at the 2012 SugarCon AppThrowdown.  Since then, it’s become SugarCRM’s most widely deployed Telephony integration.

Callinize integrates your phone system and your CRM revolutionizing the way you’ll make and take calls.  Know exactly who’s calling before you pick up the phone.  Make calls without typing in digits and leave call notes without having to first search for the contact.  Where most CTI solutions are designed for Call Centers, Callinize is designed for SMBs.  Features such as our google chat inspired call note taker and smartphone apps bring the power of a call center to everyone..

What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?

I’m going to be presenting the most exciting and novel features of Callinize.

How often do you receive a call and have NO idea who it is? We all have. Callinize solves this problem. Callinize is an app that connects to your company’s CRM, pulls important customer information, and displays this information for all incoming calls on your mobile phone. During the call you can launch into our app that displays more actionable information and the ability to save notes.

What about your application do you feel brings something unique or different to the Sugar ecosystem? 

It’s the first CRM Telephony integration which works on a mobile phone.   CRM Telephony integrations have been primarily utilized by “Call Centers” or forward thinking companies that want to improve company productivity.  One of the biggest limitations of traditional telephony integrations is you had to be tethered to your desk / in front of your computer.  People just don’t work that way anymore! We’ve traded being tethered to our desk to being tethered to our mobile phone. Fortunately, the power of a call center now fits in the convenience of your pocket.

What is the biggest takeaway you hope the audience takes away from your presentation?

I hope that next time they get a call on their mobile phone and don’t recognize the number they’ll think of Callinize.  We bring the abundance of information in your CRM to your finger tips wherever you are.

And for those struggling to get CRM adoption throughout their company… if you provide your employees with tools like Callinize which take the chore out of getting information into and out of the system, your adoption will happen much more naturally.

What is the most exciting aspect of being a part of the Sugar App Throwdown?

Last year I presented yaai, the open source telephony integration, which is the foundation of Callinize.  The AppThrowdown really launched yaai’s userbase which in turn has attracted a community of developers from around the world.  Most notably, I met Callinize’s co founder, Patrick Hogan, right after my presentation at sugarcon.  We’ve been working together ever since and we wouldn’t be in this years AppThrowdown if it wasn’t for him. Looking forward to meeting other people to collaborate with and launching Callinize!

Looking at the other App Throwdown submissions, which one looks the most interesting and why?

I’m definitely interested in the harvest integration the campaign improvements!  Campaigns continue to be a pain point in my company.  It’s too hard for a sales person to use.

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Meet the App Throwdown Contestants: Sean Myers and Vince Puente of Endeavor

John Mertic —  April 2, 2013 — Leave a comment

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 ):

Endeavor:  Sugar’s only CPQ (Configure Price Quote) Partner.  We help companies sell more products and services by making the quote to order process fast, easy and accurate.  Formed in 2000 and located in Dallas Texas.

Sean Myers:  CoFounder & CEO

Vince Puente:  Sales Executive

What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?

Endeavor is presenting a CPQ process highlighting Mobility, Integration and Cloud.  In order to compete and win, sales people must respond quickly in all areas of the sales cycle.  With EndeavorCPQ, Sugar customers can be assured that their sales people and partners will deliver perfect quotes, no matter how complex, within 5 minutes of getting the request.   Because EndeavorCPQ is integrated with Sugar, Opportunities are updated and Forecasting is on demand and accurate.

What about your application do you feel brings something unique or different to the Sugar ecosystem?

Endeavor is the only CPQ company that has a direct integration with Sugar.  With its cloud based offerings and mobile delivery, Sugar customers can now provide all sales agents, resellers and partners a quoting portal that they need to sell more stuff.

What is the biggest takeaway you hope the audience takes away from your presentation?

EndeavorCPQ will help you Sell More Stuff by becoming easier to do business with.

What is the most exciting aspect of being a part of the Sugar App Throwdown?

The opportunity to compete with other vendors to demonstrate what is possible with Sugar to drive more business value.  Also, the format of the Throwdown fosters a fun environment at the end of a great week.

Looking at the other App Throwdown submissions, which one looks the most interesting and why?

Colosa – EndeavorCPQ automates the quote to order process for companies producing significant ROI with revenue and productivity gains.  Colosa has two Process Management products that we can’t wait to learn more about and we envision working with them.

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Meet the App Throwdown Contestant: Aaron Wine of Epicom

John Mertic —  March 29, 2013 — Leave a comment

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 )

Epicom is one of Sugar’s leading North American gold partners and is located in Austin, TX. We focus on complex Sugar deployments, customizations, and integrations. I joined Epicom as a software engineer in 2011 and in January 2013 assumed my current role of Customer Advocate where I reach out to our current customers and keep them informed on best practices, perform training opportunities, help solve minor issues and offer solutions to client specific business issues.

What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?

I am presenting Epicom’s solution for integrating SugarCRM with FedEx.

What about your application do you feel brings something unique or different to the Sugar ecosystem?   

Epicom’s FedEx application allows Sugar users to maintain a handle on high volume shipping issues, in terms of product tracking, expenses and customer service.

What is the biggest takeaway you hope the audience takes away from your presentation?  

As I tell all the customers I work with, the main takeaway in dealing with Sugar is that no matter what issue you are having; YES! There is a solution with Sugar no matter what you are doing.  In this case, you can see how easy it is to now track packages and customer orders with Sugar.

What is the most exciting aspect of being a part of the Sugar App Throwdown?

I am very excited to see how I perform in a speaking engagement after spending 17 years as a computer nerd behind a keyboard.  I’ll either have an entertaining couple of minutes describing the FedEx application or I’ll freeze up, curl up in a ball and ask for my mother.  Either way, it should be very interesting.

Looking at the other App Throwdown submissions, which one looks the most interesting and why?

I’m looking forward to seeing Colosa’s ProcessMaker.  I’m always on the lookout for quality third party tools to help my customers.

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On FoxMeyer, and why forcing a “big bang solution” can kill your business

John Mertic —  March 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

I was sitting in a talk today here at the PHP NE Conference, where the presenter Fabrice Bernhard was setting the story on why it’s time to migrate that decade old PHP4 app into one leveraging a modern framework like Symfony. His key focus was the “how” to do that migration from a legacy and homegrown application structure, advocating away from the traditional methodology of a side-by-side rewrite, leaning more towards the concept of “progressive migration”, where you replace individual components over time. The former approach tends to be hampered by the additional labor of maintain two systems with no easy transition from the old system to the new. But the more important thing is that progressive migration gives a better sense of progress, giving a better sense of control in the transition

Case in point, is the story of FoxMeyer Drugs’ and their failed SAP implementation from the mid 90s. It’s an interesting tale to read, and one that’s all too common; people buying into a technology direction without thinking about the pieces and processes that can make it successful. Look at the big fails along the way, which hampered their success.

  • Communication between the warehouse staff and executives was non-existent. The warehouse staff didn’t see how they fit into the big picture, and fought against the implementation at every turn.
  • Poor scoping on performance requirements. The system implemented was drastically slower than the previous one, and had no way to deal with growth.
  • Not having the right people in place to execute the project, including leaning on a consulting firm with little experience and high turnover
  • Big change in scope and focus of the project part way thru, which caused huge cost overruns.
  • But most of all, the blind arrogance of pushing thru an aggressive timetable without room for the setbacks and adjustments that happen along the way.

So what’s the lesson here? Here are a few things I think are important to consider in any large-scale project…

  • Every user in the proposed system is a stakeholder in the implementation. Enterprise applications traditionally have been designed with management’s needs in mind, putting the end-user’s needs after that. Efficiency with technology is gained by empower users and removing barriers, and this must be accomplished with any new system rollout.
  • Keep iterations small and deliver often. This enables the organization to realize benefits along the way, enabling you to measure results and react easily. This also enables you to pivot the project along the way to deal with business need changes.
  • Good leadership is a project’s greatest asset. I was reading an article recently around why innovation fails in organizations, and the general theme was that poor leadership and short staffing ( both in headcount and skill abilities ) causes more projects to fail than anything else.

So if you are looking to implement a new technology in you organization, whether it be CRM, ERP, or something else, remember one thing: successful implementations are a healthy combination of technology and people; without both successes are difficult to achieve.

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Meet the App Throwdown Contestant: Brian Reale of Colosa

John Mertic —  March 27, 2013 — 1 Comment

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 ):

Brian Reale is the Co-founder and CEO of Colosa.  Prior to founding Colosa in 2000, Brian co-founded Unete Telecomunicaciones (www.unete.bo), a long distance voice and data carrier in South America that Mr. Reale founded in 1997 and sold in 2000 to IFX Networks.   Brian also co-founded the company Spotless in 2006, an entertainment technology company where Mr. Reale continues as an outside Director.

Brian graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 1993 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in linguistics in Ecuador in 1994.

Colosa is the developer of ProcessMaker, a leading open source Workflow and BPM software suite that makes it simple for companies to automate form-based approval driven processes and interconnect existing company systems. Colosa is headquartered in New York and has a partner network spread across 30 countries and on five continents. Hundreds of commercial customers including several Fortune 100 companies rely on ProcessMaker to run their processes. ProcessMaker is available in 17 different languages and our open source version has been downloaded over 500,000 times.

What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?

At SugarCon 2013 we will be introducing Colosa’s latest solution, ProcessMaker – SugarCRM Edition.  For the SugarCRM Edition of our ProcessMaker Business Process Management software, we rebuilt our software from the ground up as a SugarCRM loadable module.   This new product functions entirely in SugarCRM and consists of a full BPMN 2.0 process designer and an ultrafast workflow engine.  It will allow companies to visually design their workflows that force users to get approvals for certain types of actions such as giving a price discount or changing a contract template.  It can also be applied to complex lead assignment and routing.

At the throwdown, we will create a workflow in less than a minute by dragging and dropping icons onto the canvas.  We will then execute the workflow by routing the request from one user to the next in order to get an approval.

What about your application do you feel brings something unique or different to the Sugar ecosystem?

BPM + CRM is a very powerful combination, and it makes SugarCRM significantly more competitive for large enterprise applications.   Large SugarCRM enterprise customers often have a requirement where they need to ensure that users perform a process the same way every time or they want to require users to get certain types of approvals before performing certain actions in SugarCRM   Imagine a scenario where a client wants a sales person to get a manager’s approval anytime the sales person wants to close an opportunity with a discount of greater than 15%.  Today, there is no way in SugarCRM to enforce this type of approval process.  With the addition of the ProcessMaker BPM Module we can now visually create this process, automatically route the record to a manager when discount > 15% and then lock the record from certain edits until it is approved by the manager. This is just one example of  the power of BPM when added to CRM.

Now just think of SugarCRM partners and customers today that are building major platforms such as Call Centers, Automotive Management Applications, Medical Records Management Systems, E-Government platforms and more on SugarCRM.  All of these applications today require lots of programming of complex workflow rules and logic hooks.  With a visual BPM designer and workflow engine inside Sugar, this work becomes orders of magnitude easier.

What is the biggest takeaway you hope the audience takes away from your presentation?

The ProcessMaker BPM designer and engine that we are offering for SugarCRM opens up a world of new Enterprise opportunities for SugarCRM.  With ProcessMaker SugarCRM now has a full BPMN designer and engine which puts SugarCRM ahead of other CRMs that have historically beat Sugar when it comes to better process power such as Pegasystems, BPMOnline, and SalesForce – all of which have BPM engines and designers in their products.

What is the most exciting aspect of being a part of the Sugar App Throwdown?

SugarCRM is riding a great wave of success these days.  You’ve got some great top leadership, lots of momentum, and lots of buzz.  The Throwdownn is a way for us to both help generate more excitement and be part of the excitement.  We are specifically interested in showing that with our application SugarCRM can pick up more and bigger wins in enterprise applications.

Looking at the other App Throwdown submissions, which one looks the most interesting and why?

I like Callinize from  Alertus Technologies because it looked easy to understand and certainly seems to be useful for sales people that spend a lot of time on the road and on their cellphones.

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Building a Digital Company: when IT is too late

Clint Oram —  March 27, 2013 — Leave a comment

Building a company is fun.  I still remember sitting at my kitchen table with some friends and kicking around ideas on how to change the world by putting CRM on the desktop of everybody who ever works with a customer.  Then we took the plunge, quit our day jobs and focused every ounce of energy on starting a new kind of software company with nothing but a few laptops and the conviction that we could do it.  Exciting times.  Fast forward nine years and now SugarCRM is a global company with over 400 employees and hundreds of business partners helping our customers build better relationships with their customers.  Even more exciting times.

But translating a vision into a real business comes with its own challenges. It’s sounds like a simple recipe at a high level.  Step 1: Define your goals and objectives.  Step 2: Hire the right people to make it all happen. Step 3: Align those people around simple, yet effective processes to get the job done.  Now for the secret sauce.  Add in a dash of the right technology at the right point to accelerate the pace.

Voila!  Instant success!  Yeah, right.

Getting that perfect mix of operational execution is the challenge that all first time entrepreneurs as well as seasoned executives are faced with every day.  Am I building something people want to buy? How do I find great people?  How much process is too much process?  What do I automate first?

Here is what I see as the fatal flaw in that recipe I just outlined. I talked about adding in technology last after you have built your strategy, teams and processes.  That’s what most companies do today.  They graft on technology to manual processes in the hope that technology will help them accelerate a specific process, like distributing leads from marketing to salespeople or sending out invoices to customers.  But putting roller skates on your dog in order to speed up the nightly walks won’t necessarily work out the way you might have hoped.

A few months back Capgemini and MIT released a report called The Digital Advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry that describes how successful companies today are putting digital technology, from software to smartphones, at the beginning of their business planning, rather than at the end.  These companies recognize the power of digital technology in solving old, complex problems in new, simple ways.  By building strategies and processes from the ground up around digital technology, companies will outperform those that don’t.  Little did I know that SugarCRM has been part of the “digitrati” from the beginning.

This is where IT typically fails for a company.  What happens too often is that a company that wasn’t built around a digital mindset gets stuck on the change management problem.  People are creatures of habit.  They are adverse to change.  How often have you heard, “But that’s not the way we’ve done it before!”  Deploying technology to accelerate a process not designed for today’s modern, digital business is not necessarily the right idea.  Even worse, designing a process that simplifies your employees’ lives and ignores today’s modern, digital customer is even worse.

For instance, should you deploy an invoicing solution that automatically puts invoices in the post?  After all, stuffing envelopes is a pain for your finance department.  Or should you rather set up a billing solution that allows your customers to set up automatic payment by credit card.  Which is better?

Another example.  Should you get your sales people to move their customer spreadsheets out of MS Excel up to Google Drive for easier sharing?  Or should you deploy a CRM solution that allows your sales department, service department and customers to collaborate together on answering the customer’s questions together?

And this is when the IT department becomes so often the enemy in the business instead of the strategic accelerator that the CEO envisioned.  Putting lipstick on a pig and automating old processes one step at a time can easily frustrate everybody, from your employees to your customers.

It’s time to rethink how you approach technology in your business.  Your employees want it, your customers are demanding it.

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