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Sage CRM Solutions has unveiled its global CRM strategy - Sage CRM Solutions 2010. The vision is a detailed and exhaustive strategy that covers products and technology development. It covers all aspects of business that Sage considers important to be better able to serve its more than 5.5 million customers. Business requirements, interoperability issues, focus on emerging Web 2.0 technologies, application of open Web standards are some of the issues covered in the comprehensive strategy guide.

The strategy aims to enable SMBs with additional capabilities that can be delivered to them on an incremental basis through 2010. Benefits for customers include faster ROI through purpose-built solutions; better productivity across the company due to Web 2.0; end to end integration; best protection for money invested through inter operable on-demand and on-premise implementation.

Sage has taken into consideration the different customer-interaction models of it customers in developing its strategies for performance enhancement. Sage has endeavored to segment its CRM offerings so that it can better address the scalability and expanded functionality requirements of its customers. This level of planning on part of Sage allows buyers to acquire custom fit CRM solutions that work best with their business. Sage hopes to help its customers achieve better customization through its extensive partner network.

The Sage approach to technology development covers common components that will facilitate a consistent user experience across the Sage solutions deployed; services-based and standards-based integration; interoperability for smooth migration; a SaaS platform that will enable on-demand or on-premise access to Sage CRM; and rich clients, web terminals etc that will enable the workforce to access data. Sage aims to fulfill customer desires concerning improved business processes, better access, and integrated web services.

Go here to download white paper that details the CRM Solutions 2010 strategy.

Verticals onDemand, which provides SaaS CRM solutions for the pharmaceutical sector, has brought forth the VBioPharma Primary Care Edition CRM application targeted at the Life Sciences organizations. This new CRM is the first of its kind in that it has been pre-validated for PDMA and the Food and Drug Administration s CFR Part 11 compliance. The call reporting and sampling system offered by Verticals onDemad comes with IQ and OQ documentation. This validation helps reduce costs and protects the company from potentially damaging consent decrees that can cost a company millions of dollars.

Learn more about VBioPharma.

Loyalty Lab’s integrated marketing platform features a stand-alone email product that enables integrated targeting, segmentation, and CRM capabilities. Businesses can send personalized and precise messages thanks to a range of data integration options. The platform is easy to deploy, in fact it is as the company puts it ‘Ready-Aim-Engage’. Marketers can use emails to create marketing messages that can be utilized in different environments such as social networks. Multi-channel integration allows marketers to follow campaign performance and tweak their efforts accordingly.

Apparently the jury is still out on the merits of SaaS as a vehicle of distributing software. In an excellent piece Galen Grumen considers actual industry examples where SaaS deployments met with varying degree of success with respect to their integration with core company apps.

One aspect that hinders SaaS integration is that SaaS providers do not offer out-of-the-box support for APIs of other enterprise applications. In other words, cross vendor integration is limited and this often leads to a scaling down of software capabilities upon deployment. It can isolate a significant portion of your other software from your CRM.

An interesting point which the article raises is that although SaaS CRM purports to be what its name suggests, in reality its capabilities are limited to functions like contact management and sales force automation. The heavy duty transaction management activities are in most cases executed by in-house software.

It looks like we are fast headed toward another convergence of technologies. According to a recent report from ABI Research traditional map-production technologies are fast becoming obsolete.

The reason is the tremendous increase in the volume of map and navigation details that can be managed only with the help of digital-mapping services. This is leading to an integration between between mapping and location-based services. An example of the significance of mapping in the navigation and location value chain is the recent acquisition of NAVTEQ by Nokia.

The upshot of all this for CRM is that you can access user generated street level maps, travel direction, and local information for geo-targeting.

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GI Insight, an integrated marketing specialist, has found that an impressive 19% of top UK companies have demonstrated their keenness to implementing CRM by appointing a dedicated Head of CRM. Is that really a measure of commitment to a cause, in government undertakings such a move serves effectively to silence detractors and to show things are moving but this is the private sector that we talk about… so I guess the increase in dedicated CRM directors over the past two years only augurs well for CRM vendors.

Another question that pops into my head is that what has prompted the big companies to commit to CRM. Now am not saying that the GI Insight report is biased in any way but getting information on the state of preparedness, the manner in which these companies went about their preparation, their prime objectives for pushing for CRM and other such points would be of considerable interest and could throw light on what different industries perceive to be their strong points and weak points regarding CRM and their expectations from CRM.

Managing Director, Andy Wood explains why the research can be taken as an accurate measure of companies’ commitment to CRM thus “Since one-off CRM technology costs can be written off and ongoing senior people costs cannot, a company that puts CRM into the title of one of its senior managers is making a real statement of commitment to CRM. In many cases, measurable return on investment has to be proved before a company will appoint a Head of CRM into a senior directorial role (regardless of whether this is an internal promotion or external hire).”

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Everton Football Club has added TALENT Sport all-in-one ticketing and CRM system in an effort to update its customer facing and ticketing technology.

The famed Premier League Club got to test its new system, implemented to very tight time scales in October, in a big game when Everton played Liverpool. According to Andy Ward who heads ticketing at the club the system enables them to execute ticket-office processes faster, get more ticket sales online and it offers more opportunities to the marketing and sales department of the club.

Everton has witnessed an increase in online ticket sales and club supporters can now access the best seats at the most sought after games online. Earlier, the diehards had to book tickets via postal applications or at the bx office.

Read more.

It’s an interesting thought and I am not aware of very many verticals untouched, except perhaps the semiconductor industry. The trend for sometime has been toward offering industry specific solutions as the thinking over the past 5-6 years has been that the horizontal market has played itself out.

The big ones Oracle and SAP have around 25 verticals covered. These include Automotive, manufacturing, government, insurance, travel, retail banking, energy, healthcare, travel, financial services, high-tech, etc. Within the sectors covered, there will surely be a few industries that are as yet untapped, for example is there a CRM for the retail of books. Its not big business and it has its own unique processes so maybe its too much of a pain to go through pre-customizing a CRM solution for this business.

Surely, an enterprising SaaS player could dig up a few vertical niches that are not huge but capturing a few of them can give a vendor a good foothold to branch off later. Comments invited on CRM verticals as yet untapped.

Here’s something that I have always thought about and it seems am on the same wavelength as Shane over at ITWorldCanada. The issue here is regarding the importance that we need to accord to CRM products and in my opinion also how new a thing is CRM. Sure, the term is not more than a couple of decades old but as a stratagem CRM has existed as long as business and trade has been there.

So, the question to ask is what is it that makes a CRM endeavor a success? How much of it is the software and whether do you really need CRM software at all? To the latter question, lets say we do need the software but how do we then account for the astonishing rate of failure with CRM deployments.

The vendors are never going to agree that its the product. If it is the methodology then perhaps it means that companies are investing too much faith in the software and not bothering to get right the human aspect that involves intuition, lateral thinking, brilliant sales, good follow-ups, obtaining information from data and using it and other such skills.

It is strange that such a crucial aspect of CRM, the human angle, fails one CRM project after another. Its ironical that companies have many aspects of CRM well covered before they go in for a CRM deployment only to see things spiral downward later.

Looks like a likely partnership between two companies with catchy names. SugarCRM, which is one of the premier open source CRM developers out there has helped Geeks on the Way offer improved call center services. Geeks on the way, by the way, is a technology support firm based in Western Canada.

The self-proclaimed geeks provide technical support to residences and small offices and have had around 45,000 calls handled till date. When we consider that its 45,000 calls with 20,000 unique customers serviced then we know that these geeks are running a well-co-ordinated unit.

SugarCRM has helped the geeks to manage increasing call volumes more effectively by providing an integrated voice and CRM system. The open source technologies has made it easier for the geeks to integrate the call center environment with other technologies such as mapping technologies and the result is superior service and timely attendance to calls. Call handling time has been reduced drastically from 2-3 minutes to around 20 seconds. The open source SugarCRM
architecture also fits in nicely with the Geeks expansion and growth plans.

Clearly, Sugar has won over the geeks at Geeks on the Way and the company now plans to extend SugarCRM to other departments; it has already integrated Sugar with its accounting and e-commerce systems.