About the Author: Ron Buchanan is a BrainSell Sr. Technical Engineer. He’s a certified Sage SalesLogix master developer and has recently been thrust into the world of SugarCRM. Ron recently attended a SugarCRM code sprint. This is his take on Sugar as a company and platform.
SugarCRM is OPEN!
To me, one of the biggest differentiating factors between SugarCRM or say SalesForce or NetSuite is that it is an OPEN architecture. So OPEN , that the product managers of SugarCRM invite over 50 developers from around the world to participate in what they call the SugarCRM CodeSprint. There are three CodeSprints planned already during the first 6 months of 2012 ( in Belgium, the US and the UK).
In the last session I attended, the theme was “The First 30!” A sprint to improve the perception of SugarCRM in the first 30 minutes a user touches the product and the first 30 days the user tries the product. The goal… to create features than can enhance the user experience.
During the CodeSprint and the opening session, the partner sponsor and developers create lists, lists and more lists. These lists are of the good, the bad and the ugly. Features within the product that are lacking functionality, features that need improvement or features that enhance the product. The numerous list items are boiled down to an actionable project list.
Within TWO DAYS, with the developers working almost 24×7, they immerge from their sessions with fully operational enhancements to be included in the next general release of the product.
So why the excitement? It’s my opinion that no other CRM provider is doing this in a manner that SugarCRM is developing. And because the other CRM systems are not built on Open Architecture, the feature functionality availability will never come at the speed of SugarCRM!
The next SugarCRM CodeSprint session theme is “Spring Cleaning”… I can’t wait to see what develops!!
BrainSell is please to announce their acquisition of The CRM Connection, the second Colorado acquisition that BrainSell has made this month. The CRM Connection (www.thecrmconnection.com) joins BrainSell with a plethora of CRM expertise, including ACT!, SalesLogix and SugarCRM. We’re super excited to welcome The CRM Connection into the BrainSell family!
“We are very excited to have joined the BrainSell Technologies team,” said The CRM Connection’s Managing Partner John Kaufman. “Our clients and alliance partners will all benefit from the additional resources and software solutions they provide.”
Current CRM Connection customers will continue to receive the same caliber of support from their existing contacts. However, customers will also benefit from BrainSell’s extensive team of Sage ACT!, Sage SalesLogix and SugarCRM engineers, as well as ERP and marketing experts if they choose to increase sales with cutting edge technology like Marketing Automation and integrated ERP.
“This is a win-win acquisition,” said BrainSell President and CEO, Jim Ward. “BrainSell brings onboard a top reseller of Sage ACT!. Heck, they ended 2011 as ACT!’s 11th largest selling reseller in the U.S. They also have SalesLogix expertise, which is a fantastic added resource to our top SalesLogix team. On top of that, The CRM Connection recently added SugarCRM into their portfolio, which brings perfect synergies to BrainSell’s portfolio and helps our rapidly growing SugarCRM practice keep up with demand. Put that together with our two acquisitions of ERP partners this past month in Colorado and we have a fantastic western region team.”
The CRM Connection is based out of Denver, Colorado, but they also have offices in Michigan and New York.
BrainSell wrapped up their 2011 webinar year with a BANG today! We reviewed the SugarCRM apps world and also revealed BrainSell’s personal top 5 favorite apps.
So here’s the good stuff… Drum Roll………
BrainSell’s Top 5 Add-On Apps of 2011
InsideView: A great social data mining tool that’s now built into Sugar v6.3. Free and paid versions
Qontext: Defining SocialCRM, and compared to SalesForce.com’s Chatter app. This is a super rich collaboration tool that you can even invite clients to contribute to. Free and paid versions
EchoSign: Get documents signed electronically by clients and logged in Sugar automatically!
Pardot Marketing Automation / Olark Online Chat: Pardot is a marketing powerhouse that has a very rich integration with Sugar. Olark is on here with Pardot because you can link Olark’s online chat service with Pardot’s lead scoring. Then that info goes into Sugar. All of your chat sessions are scored and saved in the all systems! Paid versions only
InBox25: For Sugar users who aren’t ready for marketing automation, InBox is a super easy way to simplify email marketing in Sugar and provide integrated, rich metrics. We love it! Free and paid versions
I’ll be presenting with Kevin Goldstein from Pardot. We’ll go over basic features that you should look for in a system, like a sturdy CRM integration. I’ll also share what BrainSell has done internally with marketing automation to boost our sales more than 20% last year.
Sneak preview: When someone comes to www.brainsell.net and fills out a form, they’re added as a lead in the marketing system, we can see when they come back and they get points added to their lead score. When that score hits 75, they get added to SugarCRM automatically and a salesperson gets an email/to-do to call them. I know every time that person comes back to the site. It’s totally changed our sales process.
Below is a screen shot of my action on the BrainSell site. You can see that every move has been tracked. Points get added to my lead score as I hit the site, and drip marketing actions take place. All on their own.
Today, Sage North America announced 49 achievers of the Million Dollar Club award. BrainSell Technologies was named a Million Dollar achiever for the fifth consecutive year. BrainSell also earned President’s Circle for 2011.
Million Dollar Club achievers are leading sales producers among Sage business partners representing a host of segment-leading brands, including Sage ERP, Sage Timberline, Sage SalesLogix, SageCRM, Sage Abra HRMS (human resource management system), Sage FAS Fixed Assets and others.
“We’re excited to have achieved such healthy Sage sales in a down economy yet again,” said BrainSell President and CEO, James Ward. “Sage is a cornerstone of our business and we look forward to further success with their diverse product line.”
BrainSell is differentiating themselves in the market place by offering multiple business applications, which benefit clients in distinct ways. A new specialty for BrainSell is Marketing Automation for Sage products, as well as inbound marketing coaching. BrainSell clients benefit from their expertise in CRM, ERP/accounting and marketing. Visit www.brainsell.net/blog for cutting edge information on everything technology.
In January 2012, President’s Circle 2011 award recipients will receive further recognition from Sage at an executive retreat at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the most dynamic destination resort on the eastern seaboard from January 26 through January 29, 2011.
Click here to view the entire press release on BrainSell’s Sage Million Dollar achievement.
Click here to view the entire press release on BrinSell’s President Circle achievement.
iTnews, a tech publication out of Australia, recently released their analysis, ‘Which Clouds Play Nice.’ We were please to hear that SugarCRM was named number one on their CRM scorecard, with Salesforce.com a close second.
Things iTnews took into account:
Can I get my data in and out freely?
Does it integrate natively with other systems?
What third-party integrations are available?
Can I write code to integrate with it?”
The ‘Which Clouds Play Nice‘ analysis has a wealth of information and is a must read for any IT decision maker. “We were humbled and pleased to learn that SugarCRM came out on top of the CRM Scorecard, when compared to salesforce, Oracle on Demand, Microsoft Dynamics, RightNow and NetSuite,” wrote Sysmans in a blog article last week.
Come learn from IBM, SugarCRM, BrainSell and peers in the Social CRM space about how to make your business a Social Business—capture customer data, engage in customer conversations and supercharge your internal processes through the use of Social CRM and a portfolio of Cloud-based services.
When: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 8:30 am – noon
Where: IBM Office - 404 Wyman Street, North Entrance, Waltham, MA 02454
Attend and you’ll get: a free breakfast and a chance to win an Apple iPad!
Attendees will:
Discover the Social Media Channels your customers are using
Engage with customers in meaningful ways
Capture customer data from Social Media in CRM
Drive revenue and build brand reputation
See how you can use Sugar and IBM in the “A day in the Life of Sugar” demo
Learn how you can collaborate in the Cloud, and deliver scalable, security-rich e-mail, web conferencing, and collaboration solutions
These events are happening around the country, there could be one in your neck of the woods too. Check it out!
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