Last year, the two hot customer relationship management (CRM) trends to watch - and adopt - were social CRM and mobile CRM.
CIO.com surveyed CRM vendors and analysts to get their perspectives on CRM trends in 2012 and published their results in 8 CRM Trends to Watch.
Among those surveyed was SugarCRM’s CTO and co-founder, Clint Oram. He spoke about flexibility as a trend to watch for: “As users better understand the options in delivery models, interfaces, data practices and other technical aspects of CRM, they are factoring these variables into their buying decisions." He continued, "That will give CRM applications designed for ease of integration and user self-customizability an advantage, and will leave vendors whose products come in a single flavor of SaaS scrambling to expand customer options, often through cumbersome workarounds."
The CRM Trends highlights include:
- Cloud-based CRM services continue to grow.
- It's all about the interface: CRM software should be accessible on both a traditional and mobile platform - with a customisable, user-friendly interface.
- A single place to keep all your customer data: Centralised customer data helps building quality relationships, providing better service and targeted offers.
- CRM integration with other critical business systems: to get more efficient business processes and an integrated view of the customer.
- It's all about flexibility: in CRM delivery models, interfaces and data practices. CRM applications should be designed for ease of integration and user self-customisability.
- CRM continues to go social as CRM vendors incorporate even more social capabilities into their products.
- Mobile CRM is increasingly important to support customer-facing.
- Crowdsourcing process improvements: Better understand customer expectations and prioritise process improvements by harnessing the voice of the customer.
Those CRM solutions that are flexible, social, mobile, integrated and easy to use will win the race. Which CRM trends have you implemented, or intend to implement this year?
With SugarCRM 6.4, it’s easier than ever to reach your customers.
In continual efforts to deliver the best CRM solutions that solve your business problems, reduce costs and increase revenue, SugarCRM recently launched their new SugarCRM 6.4 release. The latest release includes usability enhancements such as direct Linkedin Import event drag-and-drop, quick create and edit forms, a calendar dashlet, and in-calendar navigation using the calendar view.
What's new in SugarCRM 6.4?
- Direct import of LinkedIn contacts to quickly add your business connections to SugarCRM. Import person-type modules such as Contacts, Leads, Targets and Users.
- Calendar navigation enhancements: drag-and-drop items in Calendar for better ease of use; quick create and edit forms; new calendar dashlet; calendar view navigation and individual color-codes for Meetings, Tasks and Calls.
- New SugarCRM deployment option with Sugar private cloud powered by IBM, a premium Sugar On-Demand solution running on IBM SmartCloud Enterprise.
- Sugar Studio enhancements: UI updates and administrators can customize Users and Employees modules
What's new in SugarCRM 6.4? Watch the video below:
For more information about SugarCRM 6.4 and how to upgrade, please
contact us.
Pardot, a marketing automation software, has been named Best overall value and best ease of deployment in a recent report by market research analyst Gleanster. The “Gleansight Marketing Automation” report includes an in-depth assessment of the marketing automation industry, with a detailed analysis of the uses, challenges and benefits of marketing automation software. It concludes with grades for top marketing automation software providers in four categories:
- Ease of deployment
- Ease of use
- Features and functionality
- Overall value
In addition to being named "Best" in Ease of Deployment and Overall Value, Pardot was recognized as "Better" in Ease of Use and Features and Functionality.
The report highlights some of the major milestones surpassed by Pardot in 2011, including the release of 130 features and product improvements, integrated social media tools and enhanced integrations to CRM systems such as SugarCRM.
The full report can be downloaded on Gleanster's website.
Australian SugarCRM Gold Partner Loaded Technologies Customizes Sugar Professional for Organization Dedicated to Educating Australian not-for-profit Boards and Managers.
SugarCRM, the world’s fastest-growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, announced that the Australian Scholarships Foundation (ASF) has increased the volume of scholarships it offers by 300 percent with no increase in staff, thanks to a customized CRM solution implemented by SugarCRM Partner-of-the-Month Loaded Technologies.
The solution dramatically improves operational performance, allowing ASF to boost its application processing capabilities by a whopping 1,000 percent. In addition, Moodle, an open source learning management system, and Joomla, an open source content management system, seamlessly integrate with SugarCRM to improve scholarship application tracking.
“SugarCRM absolutely supports our 300% increase in scholarships offered,” notes Amy Lyden, CEO for ASF. “We simply would not be able to deliver these results cost effectively without the automated solution we’ve implemented.”
The ASF negotiates with accredited education and training providers to provide free or discounted executive management, mentoring, and training programs to not-for-profit (NFP) boards and managers. The foundation began operations in 2008 and, as the demand for its service grew, ASF needed a system that could automate scholarship application processes, manage the sales pipeline, and support cost effective marketing and segmentation.
To achieve its objectives, Lyden consulted Mark Tallis, Director of Consulting for Loaded Technologies, an Australian SugarCRM Gold Partner. “When we started talking with ASF, we saw their problems in two areas,” explains Tallis. “One was managing the sales pipeline, and Sugar was ideal for that. The second was managing the application process—taking applications online, evaluating and short-listing them, awarding the scholarships, and so forth.”
The first phase of the Sugar solution focused on the sales pipeline. “There were a lot of contacts and relationships on both sides of the scholarship equation that needed to be managed,” says Tallis. Lyden elaborates, “Prior to Sugar, we collected data in a Word document, which we had to print out. There was no standard assessment system. And there was a lot of manual sorting.”
Although highly customized and integrated with applications like Joomla and Moodle, ASF’s Sugar solution enables volunteer and part-time staff to get up to speed quickly. With Sugar, ASF has been able to:
- Increase application processing capability 1000 percent
- Achieve a 300 percent increase in scholarships offered with no additional staff
- Eliminate the expense of a third-party email marketing vendor
- Streamline communication with applicants and educational partners
“The ASF solution shows how well Sugar connects with other open source technologies,” remarks Tony Hughes, Managing Director, SugarCRM Australia Pty Ltd. “And Sugar’s solid performance metrics and cost savings really support the foundation’s mission.”
Based on Loaded Technologies implementation of SugarCRM at ASF, the firm won Partner of the Month in January 2012. Each month the program recognizes a Sugar partner that has delivered significant measurable results to a customer.
For more information on the ASF success story with Loaded Technologies, please visit the SugarCRM case study.
View the full press release
Loaded Technologies’ outstanding SugarCRM implementation for ASF earns accolade from SugarCRM.
Australian SugarCRM provider Loaded Technologies has been awarded partner of the month for January, 2012 by SugarCRM, the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company.
Loaded Technologies earned the partner of the month honors due to the outstanding results achieved by its client Australian Scholarships Foundation (ASF) with SugarCRM. ASF and Australian SugarCRM’s partner Loaded Technologies deployed SugarCRM Professional to track and manage ASF’s educational partners and scholarship applicants.
“Loaded Technologies has been our trusted partner from uncovering our specific needs, to implementing the right solution to support our objectives and providing industry best practice and ongoing support”, said Amy Lyden, Chief Executive Officer of ASF. “We achieved a milestone this year with the new integrated CRM implemented by Loaded Technologies”.
ASF has improved management of the sales pipeline and application process, streamlined communication with applicants and educational partners and achieved the following return on investment:
- Increased application processing capability by 1,000 percent
- Delivered a 300 percent increase in scholarships offered with no additional staff
- Eliminated the expense of a third-party email marketing vendor, saving $1,000 annually.
"SugarCRM absolutely supports our 300% increase in scholarships offered. We simply would not be able to deliver these results cost effectively without the automated solution we’ve implemented” said Amy Lyden, CEO of ASF.
For more information on ASF’s success story with SugarCRM and Loaded Technologies, please read the case study “ASF Boosts Scholarship Volume by 300 Percent with No Staff Increase” and ASF’s Chief Executive Officer’s testimonial for Loaded Technologies.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications continue to deliver significant return on investment (ROI), with an average benefit of $5.60 returned for every dollar spent, according to a recent Nucleus Research analysis.
Companies continue to invest in CRM systems, enabling them to drive greater sales and customer service productivity, improve marketing effectiveness, and reduce customer support-related costs.
Nucleus based its research on 70 CRM case studies and noted that while most large and many mid-sized companies have made at least one CRM investment by now, there’s still significant ROI opportunity for further investment.
As CRM vendors deliver more social, mobile and analytics capabilities, and with the rise of cloud CRM reducing cost while speeding up the deployment, organisations have an opportunity to gain even more returns from CRM.
CRM is a good bet for both top-line benefits and bottom-line savings. Nucleus found that the overall financial value the CRM projects studied in their analysis delivered 63 percent direct benefits, such as cost savings or avoided hires, and 37 percent indirect benefits, such as increased productivity or greater customer retention.
The team at Loaded wishes you and your loved ones a merry Christmas and a wonderful new year 2012. We hope you have had a successful year and are planning for a prosperous 2012.
Loaded Support during the Break
Please note Loaded Technologies’ office will be closed from Friday 23rd December at 3pm and will reopen on Monday 9th January at 8.30.am.
Please contact the support team on 02 8282 2900 for any emergencies during week days, and email itsupport@loadedtech.com.au if you think you may require assistance during week ends.
May you have a relaxing holiday break and a great start to the new year.
Best regards,
The Loaded Team
In Part 2 of the Sales leadership series (see Part 1: Sales and marketing convergence), Tony Hughes, Managing Director of SugarCRM Australia and New Zealand reveals how to drive business alignment and take control with sales tools.
Sales tools are essential for productivity but focus on CRM, Close Planners and effective Qualification. Using tools is however not a substitute for thinking strategically and executing effectively:
Pardot Marketing Analytics’ integration with GoodData provides marketers with the actionable insights they need to track the effectiveness of their marketing activities.
Pardot partnered with GoodData to deliver the new marketing reporting tool, which includes customizable dashboards and easy to build charts and graphs.
"Marketers are living in a new reality," said Adam Blitzer, co-founder and COO at Pardot. "Fuzzy concepts like branding are less important; data-based decisions matter most. Our new reporting and analysis tools allow marketers to make informed decisions in real time, while tracking performance for all their campaigns from a single, easy to use platform."
The reporting tools, which are free to Pardot clients, allows marketers to:
- Make informed decisions in real time while tracking performance for all campaigns from a single, easy to use platform
- Automatically send reports at specified times to internal and external audiences
- Quickly and easily create reports to track lead volume, lead activity and revenue generated from a given campaign, as well as content consumption popularity over time
- Visibility into not only the source of each opportunity, but also the top marketing activities influencing those buyers.
See the slides below to get more out of marketing analytics with Pardot and GoodData:
Your CRM contains critical data about your company and clients. Strengthening SugarCRM security is vital to preventing unauthorized access and information from being stolen.
Why? Because traditional, static passwords present potential security vulnerabilities for your organisation.
Do you know who is accessing your sensitive information?
Hackers are building increasingly sophisticated technologies to perpetrate web-based applications attacks, including shopping carts, forms, login pages and dynamic content.
Firewalls, SSL and locked-down servers are useless against web application hacking. Attacks launched on ports http/https, go straight through the firewall, pass the operating system and network level security protection, and go right in to the heart of your application and corporate data.
Most commonly used attacks are password brute force, SQL injection, Cross-site scripting, Cross-site Request forgery. To prevent such attacks expensive "Intrusion Detection systems" can be deployed in your entreprise network but are irrelevant when your application is hosted with a 3rd party provider.
Free solutions also exist, but can be incomplete, obsolete and complex to deploy and maintain overtime.
Strong authentication designed for SugarCRM
Loaded Technologies has developed security modules specially designed for SugarCRM to ensure your CRM data is protected no matter where your application is hosted. Security modules such as SugarCRM two-factor authentication, a security process in which the user provides two means of identification, drastically reduce the risks of attacks.
Our solutions prevent from these types of attacks, providing extra layers to your application to protect your confidential data 24/7, regardless where your application is hosted for a fraction of the cost of alternative security solutions.
If you are concerned by protecting your data, contact Loaded to learn more about our SugarCRM security modules.
SugarCRM security modules highlights:
- Specifically designed for SugarCRM
- Runs everywhere
- Your critical data is protected 24/ 7 and regardless where your application is hosted
- Affordable - Fraction of the cost of alternative security solutions
- Rapid and easy deployment
- Managed by our Security team