Here at SugarCRM we have been fortunate enough to have built up a sizable and strong performing sales organization based on the simple concept of not spending a lot of money. In the early days, SugarCRM was a cool new PHP-based solution, and a phone number on a web site. In a sense, that model has proven scalable. There are a lot of additions to the sales cycle, and of course the product has gotten more robust - but the basic tenant is still the same: sell efficiently.

Nowadays, the SugarCRM product itself is being used in ways that streamline the sales processes of many different types of sales organizations. The economy, and the simple fact that fuel and travel are only going to become more expensive makes virtual selling more and more of an imperative.

Sugar has worked with some great partners to enable this type of sales environment. One of the coolest integrations I’ve seen so far is one performed with DimDim. The combined toolset gives sales teams all the CRM features they need to manage accounts and data, coupled with communication tools to reach, collaborate and sell to anyone, anywhere.

The world is becoming virtual, and integration between solutions is getting easier (thanks to the growing movement towards open source) and there really is no reason for any inside sales teams not to have great web conferencing and video tools at their fingertips. VoIP and other factors drive the costs out of the equation even further.

Perhaps some organizations will still feel the need to fuel large, inefficient enterprise sales forces. But for the smaller and (in my opinion) future-minded sales organizations, these types of integrations have to be part of the SFA or CRM picture.

Looking over my blog roll, a lot of my marketing-related feeds are reviewing the results and relative success of the retail holidays we just saw. Black Friday and our new little retail pseudo-holiday - Cyber Monday. What?

Black Friday is an established concept - a tradition if you will, and one I’ve avoided for all of my adult life. It has roots in brick and mortar retailing, and the advent of the holiday season.  Fine…whatever…

So, not to be outdone by actual tradition…the e-commerce marketing brains came up with…Cyber Monday, where online retail outfits offer specials, sales, etc. to compete with traditional retail operations.

Yawn…

For one thing - the great thing about online retailers is that time and geography go out the window…why have a big “sale day” when you can have a sale anytime? Also, by simply miming the brick and mortar world, what differentiation are you making?  What’s the benefit if the “experience” of holiday shopping, attacking the malls for bargains, etc. is lost in cyberspace?

Secondly, hasn’t e-commerce capabilities advanced to the point where personalized marketing can be a reality? But no, instead the e-tailers of the world just said “Cyber Monday.” Why not create crafted, relevant segmented campaigns to the right kind of people that DO NOT want to shop in busy stores. I, for one, would love to get an email with great offers reinforcing the fact that I am skipping the crowds for my holiday shopping.

I just think Cyber Monday is a step backwards, not forwards, when it comes to retail marketing and the online experience.

We are still seeing huge interest and uptake of Sugar 5.1 thanks in part to the very cool updated mobile capabilities. With the growing acceptance of the mobile web browser as the de facto interface for mobile business apps, coupled with the iPhone becoming increasingly “enterprise ready” the SugarCRM mobile story is complete and rolling strong.

But given the fact that people are still not 100% connected to the network 100% of the time (planes, dead spots, etc.) there is still the need for offline CRM access.

A lot of people confuse offline access (or Offline Client as it is usually called in product form) with mobile CRM. The two are different. For one, offline access can mean you are using your laptop to access your CRM system while not online, where mobile CRM tends to mean use of CRM functionality via a mobile device (though not always).

But more important, when using a true mobile CRM system you are directly accessing the server, eliminating any possible data synchronization issues while on the go. With offline client use, there is still the issue of the changes you make to your data are independent for the master record sitting in your master version of the CRM system. (Think of it this way - if you’re on a plane altering records, and someone with access to them is changing the same records at headquarters - later on the change record history will have to be accessed if any contradictory changes have been introduced to the record.  This is a moot point with mobile CRM.)

A lot of CRM provider tend to mash these terms together when selling a CRM product. it is pretty easy to create a data sync offline client, but a truly “live” mobile version that is device agnostic, deploys instantly and can be customized - that is another concept altogether.

For some of us, the difference between mobile and offline CRM is clear, but others may make CRM deployment decisions without this knowledge and find themselves without needed functionality or having to do an expensive customization down the road.

The iPhone: Making CRM cool since 2007…

Just saw this little nugget from Pew Internet Project on the ZDnet blog by Alex Moskalyuk:

While working Americans largely hold positive views about the role of information and communications technology in their lives: 80% say these technologies have improved their ability to do their job; 73% say these technologies have improved their ability to share ideas with coworkers; 58% say these tools have allowed them more flexibility in the hours they work…

Interesting…now, why haven’t web applications penetrated 80% of the SMB space yet?

We’ll get there eventually

I am back in the office after a welcomed Thanksgiving break back east…It is always good to see family and such, but I think this Thanksgiving there is a lot more “being thankful” going on across the US. All too often we take for granted our situations so this year seemed a reminder of sorts…

During our holiday conversations, everyone remarked at the low gas prices, making holiday driving even less of a headache than usual. People seemed happy to be using gas, a far cry from the recent astronomical prices…but I hope that the dip in prices doesn’t make people forget the overarching issues and the need to “go green” in general…

On the flight home I was thinking about green CRM - what can make a CRM initiative more green?

In general, the web-based nature of Sugar is a lot more efficient than some older systems - so going with a web-based model is a good start. Smaller businesses can also opt for On-Demand or SaaS solutions, further lessening the amount of energy used inside the organization.

For larger businesses, reducing the number of data centers in the organization can create a serious cost savings but also major reduction in energy use. SugarCRM’s Data Center Edition (DCE) can help here, eliminating inefficiencies by creating a central deployment, maintenance and management scenario for multi-site complex CRM deployments. Also, use of energy efficient Netbooks versus fully equipped laptops can save energy as well.

We are just at the beginning when it comes to Green CRM. I just hope we continue to make further strides, and quickly, when it comes to driving energy costs and inefficiency out of the CRM system…

I’ve been speaking with a number of SugarCRM customers over the past week who are leveraging our Professional and Enterprise versions in ways we could have never imagined…as partner relationship management (PRM) solutions, customer interaction hubs linking industry-specific practices and departments together, and even as desktop metadata hubs, so to speak, pulling data from legacy CRM applications to give end-users a fresh, modern user interface. In short, leveraging a CRM application as a platform into which the needs and processes of the company can be built.

But what I don’t understand is how any of these customers could have accomplished these objectives with the many black-box/API-based solutions that exist in the world today, or the verticalized products that the Oracle’s of the world offer. For that matter, I don’t think I’ve ever come across a SugarCRM customer, big or small, that’s ever used our product out-of-the-box. Plenty of CRM providers talk about their solutions being “CRM platforms,” but it seems that these “platforms” exist only in the context of their own product offerings and capabilities.

How is a customer suppose to build out a custom-built modules and functionality for say contracting and billing or surveying and equipment allocation to customer sites, and link that with your traditional case management functionality via closed-source APIs? Or back-end integration with legacy, mainframe billing systems for partner alliances?

One perfect example of that is Healthscreen, a SugarCRM customer that Martin mentioned in a blog from last week, and who will be presenting their use of SugarCRM in a Webcast tomorrow. The move by proprietary-based vendors to adopt more “open” policies towards community-driven development and feedback and a willingness to allow more access to the code base is certainly a step in the right direction, and a necessary one. Because as we’ve seen from our own customer base, offering businesses the shear flexibility to build these platforms based off of core functionality will be the standard by which all good CRM offerings will be measured by.

Along the same lines of Martin’s comments about Twitter, Web 2.0 and how these technologies are limited only by the user’s imaginations, I came across a report released today by Forester analyst William Band.

The title, CRM 2.0: Fantasy or Reality? How Trail-Blazing Companies Are Implementing Social Customer Strategies, truly speaks volumes, because for many businesses, Web 2.0 is still very much a concept, as opposed to a proven-technology with hardened business value.

Vendors have certainly caught on, as Web 2.0 has become the next “sliced bread” of CRM functionality, but it seems that businesses are still struggling with the mindset involved with deploying and utilizing these tools effectively.

The reasoning, I believe, is because for many businesses, CRM is still very much a two-way, or even one-way, interaction between themselves and their customers. As Band points out in the report, the social Web is forcing CRM initiatives to move beyond this two-way relationship and begin to digest the simultaneous interactions that customers…particularly younger consumers…have amongst themselves.

In short, CRM is evolving from its roots of being a transactional-based system focused on optimizing customer-facing processes to a system of truly interactive, real-time interactions that leverage technology meant for collaborative and social connections with customers.

I am getting the hang of making podcast, and its actually pretty fun…

Check out the second installment of the CRM Outsiders Take of the Week (or TOTW for short)…

I’m off to the east coast to commisserate with family over what will probably be another embarrasing nationally televised Eagles loss to what used to be a sure-fire W.

Have a great Thanksgiving to all those in CRM-land…I’ll be back with my regularly scheduled blogging on Monday.

I have to admit I am still trying to find the appeal of the generic use of Twitter (my tweet name - if that’s what they call it - is still mschneider718 by the way). I like how easy it is to blog a sentence or two and send it out to the world…but unless you have already built up a strong nation of followers…you’re pretty much babbling away into a small box on a screen…

So, how can the technology behind Twitter become useful? Well, of course once you build up a strong following, you can tweet en mass or to individuals. But how can CRM peroviders and CRM consumers utilize this technology in a meaning ful way?

I think Twitter technology can work in two ways - and these are for internal and external use. One - an embedded Twitter-like panel inside the CRM system can act as an alerts and notifications, or simple update feed for all users in the systems, or for specific teams. The great thing about this - is that the network of “followers” so to speak is preexisting - the CRM user base are the followers.Look for some very cool capabilities like this in SugarCRM very, very soon (if this was a movie critique site - I guess that would be called a spoiler…).

The other model allows customers to submit thier Twitter names to the company, which is stored in the CRM system. Then, the customer can opt to recieve updates via Twitter. For example, a change in status of a service issue, or a reminder that a payment or other servie is due (a nice reminder to get your oil changed, for example) can easily be pushed out via Twitter, or SMS, or email, creating a true multi-channel customer service machine.

We are very much at the beginning here - but the great thing about these new web technologies is that they are light, easy to integrate and limited only by the users (and CRM provider’s) imaginations…

One of the slogan’s around the SugarCRM partnership with BT Business is “Do What You Do Best.” The idea is that with web-based applications and other bundled services from BT, small businesses don’t have to think about their IT and other operations - instead they can focus on competitive differentiation.

In a talk to go over an upcoming webinar we’re doing with Selling Power magazine, I was part of a discussion with one of our newer customers in Canada called Healthscreen. I won’t go over all of the things the firm does - you can log on to the webcast for that story. But in essence Healthscreen works with doctors in Canada to help them optimize their businesses and their operations that are not covered by Canada’s nationalized health care.

So, like with BTs mantra - SugarCRM is being used by Healthscreen to enable doctors - who think about healing sick people not about revenue optimization - to be more efficient in their operations.

As much as it sounds repetitive, I am always impressed by the way SugarCRM users take the product and run with it. Compared to most traditional B2B SFA tools, SugarCRM is taken and made to work in so many cool and innovative scenarios.Sugar really is an interaction platform, not just a package of CRM applications.

I can’t wait for the webcast to learn more…