Sage Unveils Global CRM Strategy

Sage Customer Relationship Management Solutions, part of the Sage Group plc, has unveiled its global CRM strategy in an effort to guide development of its CRM product line which includes Act! by Sage, SageCRM and Sage SalesLogix. The strategy, dubbed "Sage CRM Solutions 2010," targets distinct business requirements; creates inter-use among Sage's CRM products; applies open Web standards to enable a connected front and back office; and incorporates Web 2.0 technologies. "We've been working on this for about a year," Larry Ritter, senior vice president of product management and marketing for Sage CRM Solutions, told WebCPA. "We really wanted to say let's take our time and even though we have success in the market, let's try to articulate some longer term vision so we can maintain the momentum. Now is really the outgrowth of the efforts over the last year." To support the strategy, Sage is implementing what it termed a "holistic" technology approach that includes the following: * Common components to provide a consistent user experience, workflow, data access and analytics across the Sage CRM product line; * Services-based integration to help organizations manage end-to-end business processes with standards-based integration to back-office applications; * Interoperability to enable organizations to more seamlessly migrate from one CRM application to another as their business evolves; * A software-as-a-service (SaaS) business platform will allow Web-based or on-premise access to any Sage CRM Solutions product; * An ability to incorporate Internet and Web 2.0 services, allowing customers to add Web-based business functionality to their CRM products; and, * "Anywhere workforce awareness" that will let users access their applications from any location. "What we see when you look at a lot of that end-to-end experience customers have interest in, CRM becomes like of a nexus point in that," Ritter said. "Every company has sales and marketing and service and support teams and pretty much every company has some type of a back office that they are working on. The more we can kind of step forward and identify ourselves certainly not as only players, but as leaders in that space, we think that's good." For more information regarding the Sage CRM Solutions 2010 strategy, download a white paper at www.sagecrmsolutions.com/products/collateral.