Archives For SugarCRM

Sweet Tweets of the Week (5/13-5/17)

anshua —  May 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

We’re bringing the top Sugar highlights from the Twitterverse right here to the Sugar blog every Friday. Hear what Sugar fans tweeted this week! For more, join the conversation and follow us @sugarcrm

Sonja Fridell tweeted, “SO enjoying the @collabspot @gmail – @sugarcrm integration. Doing all #CRM work with it”
https://twitter.com/Sfridell/status/335025970379624448

Sean Myers tweeted, “Great trip to San Francisco. Thank You @sugarcrm for the invitation and @DocuSign for a really cool conference.”
https://twitter.com/seanpmyers/status/334767649294782465

DrupalCon tweeted, “We’re grateful for the support from our Silver sponsor @sugarcrm and cannot wait to see you in Portland! http://sugarcrm.com”
https://twitter.com/drupalcon/status/334582985716281344

Eligeo CRM tweeted, “We’re halfway through Switch to Sugar month! Check out our blog for resources for making the switch to @SugarCRM http://bit.ly/switchtosugar”
https://twitter.com/eligeo/status/334747814619926529

Jordon Moss tweeted, “This is possibly my new favorite thing about @sugarcrm! @AtcoreSystems #AllThingsAtcore #AllthingsPink #PinkSugar pic.twitter.com/O5hHbGswYZ”
https://twitter.com/jordanmoss_13/status/335391779253792769

Have a Sweet Friday!

Best,
Anshu Agarwal
VP of Marketing

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Join SugarCRM at IBM Smarter Commerce in Nashville!

mschneidersugar —  May 14, 2013 — Leave a comment

Next week, SugarCRM will be sponsoring and exhibiting at the IBM Smarter Commerce event in Nashville May 21-23. The event is a great ibmsmartercommercegathering of business leaders from around the world, with a focus on improving customer-facing processes and technologies to enhance the buying experience.

SugarCRM supports the core Smarter Commerce business processes of Buy, Market, Sell, Service, including integrations with IBM’s Cross-channel campaign management solutions, Cognos and Connections, all of which enhance you organization’s effectiveness and improve your sales cycle.

SugarCRM and IBM have similar views on enabling customer centricity inside our clients’ organizations, as evidenced by our well-aligned messages during SugarCon in April.

To learn more about how SugarCRM supports IBM Smarter Commerce, or if you’re attending the event and would like to schedule time with SugarCRM executives on site, stop by Booth E-18 or visit HERE.

We hope to see you in Nashville!

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Sweet Tweets of the Week (5/06-5/10)

anshua —  May 10, 2013 — Leave a comment

We’re bringing the top Sugar highlights from the Twitterverse right here to the Sugar blog every Friday. Hear what Sugar fans tweeted this week! For more, join the conversation and follow us @sugarcrm

Kenny Ray tweeted, “@sugarcrm Looking forward to learning about your product at #tek13”
https://twitter.com/kennyray/status/331768144777588737

Jason Eggers tweeted, “I love using it. Syncs docs and more. RT @sugarcrm: Learn about Rolustech’s Gmail Plug-in…Sugar App of the Month! http://bit.ly/Zgu2wT”
https://twitter.com/eggsurplus/status/331804664104353792

Mirco Mueller tweeted, “We won again with @sugarcrm and @Share2B against http://salesforce.com and chatter :) #crm #ESN #SocialSales #SocialBiz #enterprise20”
https://twitter.com/mller_mirco/status/332396514771095554

Peter Niemeyer tweeted, “Thank you @carm_torres and the entire @IBMCCMad crew for making @sugarcrm look good! Here the winning workshop-group pic.twitter.com/vUZq0zoLlP”
https://twitter.com/NiemeyerPeter/status/332633750376689665

Have a Sweet Friday!

Best,
Anshu Agarwal
VP of Marketing

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Visit SugarCRM at DocuSign Momentum 2013 next week!

anshua —  May 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

“Keep Business Digital” – That’s the theme for DocuSign Momentum 2013 and as a strong advocate for digital technology, SugarCRM is a sponsor!

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Date and Location: May 14-16, San Francisco, The Westin St. Francis

Here’s where you can find us at the event:

–Visit us in our booth to see how DocuSign’s eSignature solution for SugarCRM gets contracts back faster and closes more deals.

–Join SugarCRM CTO and co-founder Clint Oram during his presentation: “Digital Meets CRM” Wednesday, May 15th from 4:00-4:45pm. Here’s a glimpse into what you’ll learn:

Traditional wisdom leads many companies to bring in technology too late and at exactly the wrong time. In this enterprise efficiency thought leadership session, learn how today’s successful companies are putting digital technology at the beginning of their customer relationship business planning rather than the end. By building digital strategies and processes from the ground up focused on the delivering the right information at the right point in time with a customer, companies can build more strategic, efficient and lasting relationships with their customers.

For more information and to register, visit the website: http://momentum.docusign.com/

Check out Martin Schneider’s blog post about SugarCRM making the digital leap.

See you in San Francisco!

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Two Innovative Views of Customer Centricity Took Center Stage at SugarCon

mschneidersugar —  April 15, 2013 — 1 Comment

I think most of us here at SugarCRM are still catching our breaths after an amazing week in NYC. SugarCon 2013 was an awesome four days of great keynotes, discussions, customer stories, training sessions, evening events…simply put – it was our best event to date, and we are already dreaming scon13up ways to make SugarCon 2014 even better.

While there were tons of highlights, great moments, sound bites, press coverage, etc. coming out of the event, one trend became clear. SugarCRM has aligned with some innovative and insightful partners – all of us with similar visions of helping create more customer-centric organizations. Perhaps one of the most profoundly aligned companies in our ecosystem is IBM.

Our aligned visions took center stage on Tuesday April 9, as Larry outlined our vision for “Every Customer, Every User, Every Time” and how our product and services are working towards making that a reality for every Sugar customer. Then, following behind Larry’s message, Steve Laughlin, Vice President for Smarter Commerce for IBM’s Global Business Services unit, talked about the empowered customer era and told the 1000+ attendees how IBM is helping to make enterprises more adept at personalizing interactions and the customer lifecycle in general.

And then, on Tuesday, Tamara Duncan, client advocacy executive at IBM, talked about the importance of customer centricity on a panel led by Terry Jones, founder and former CEO of Travelocity. In addition to the main stage, IBM executives also presented two standing-room only sessions: one on social selling by Christopher Lamb, IBM Program Direct, Social CRM, and another on modern marketing tips by Chris Benedetto, Product Marketing Leader, Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM). In addition, SugarCRM solutions architect Charles Hicks presented an integration overview between SugarCRM and IBM Cognos BI to a packed house. It was refreshing to see two seemingly different companies in strong agreement when it comes to creating great customer experiences.

That alignment in culture and vision is already paying off. During the event, SugarCRM announced a key customer win with Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG, a leading supplier of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems. Sennheiser made the decision to go with Sugar due to the usability of Sugar and product flexibility, but also due to Sugar’s deep integration with IBM technology and products.

Coming away from such an amazing event, we are reminded of how strong an ecosystem we have, anchored by some heavy hitters like IBM. What’s more, it is even more invigorating knowing our vision for our customers’ success are so well aligned.

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Sweet Tweets for Sugar 7

mremedios1 —  April 9, 2013 — 1 Comment

Today at SugarCon, we proudly announced the preview of Sugar 7!

Twitter was bursting with awe and excitement as Sugar CTO Clint Oram and CPO Lila Tretikov unveiled Sugar 7 live on-stage from the Grand Ballroom of The Waldorf Astoria New York. Here’s a recap of tweets from the analysts, customers, and partners that experienced it firsthand:

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Meet the App Throwdown Contestant: Jeff Bickart with NEPO Systems

John Mertic —  April 5, 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 ):

Jeff Bickart provides the architectural, technical direction and delivery for the solutions being developed for NEPO Systems. Prior to joining NEPO, Mr. Bickart was the Director of the Advanced Technology Group for TerreStar Networks, Inc., providing advanced application prototypes and proof of concepts for their services. His responsibilities included the Web 2.0 software development both for browser based solutions and mobile solutions. Mr. Bickart previously was the Director of Engineering for Visitar, Inc., a provider of SugarCRM and telecommunications solutions hosted in a SaaS environment. He has also held various engineering positions with Sun Microsystems. Mr. Bickart holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.B.A. from George Mason University. You can read his blog at sugarcrm-dev.blogspot.com

NEPO Systems is a SugarCRM Gold Partner that provides premium hosting, support and module development for SugarCRM. Supporting commercial and Federal clients across the globe, NEPO Systems helps our customers with strategic Sugar consultation, implementation and maintenance that are aligned with the unique requirements and business objectives of each of our clients. We deliver high-quality, integrated solutions for traditional Sales Force Automation, Marketing Automation and Customer Support, as well as a variety of custom solutions utilizing the powerful SugarCRM framework.

What are you presenting at the App Throwdown?

Based on an initial client request, NEPO developed an integration with a popular SaaS time tracking application (Harvest), which has since been deployed in multiple Sugar instances (including our own). This simple, yet powerful integration can help professional service organizations more effectively track their employees time, manage billing and ensure that contractual obligations and SLA’s are being met. Our demonstration will show how companies can keep track of an employee’s time and generate invoices for their customers without ever leaving the Sugar environment.

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

Our application isn’t designed to demonstrate a specific uniqueness in its function, but rather to show off the flexibility and ease of the Sugar framework and the power of a real business application. This integration was developed within a couple days time and demonstrates the power that can be obtained by integrating two cloud-based applications.  This application is a powerful tool whose business is to provide professional services to its customers by helping companies to better manage time, costs, service contracts & SLA’s and billing, all directly from within Sugar.

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

The takeaway should be twofold. First, that companies who manage professional services organizations and need the ability to more effectively manage their employees time (for whatever reason), recognize that there is a best-of-breed integration that exists in the market today. And second, that Sugar should be viewed as a flexible platform that can be leveraged well-beyond the traditional CRM functions (e.g., “this is not your fathers CRM”).

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

We believe that this is a great venue for showcasing what a powerful tool SugarCRM can be for all different types of companies and users. Hopefully these brief 3-minute “demos” will help other Sugar users spark some creativity on how of how they can improve their own business processes and more deeply embed Sugar within their organizations.

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

We are looking forward seeing the Callinize application and its direct integration into a smartphone is a killer concept.

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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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