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SugarCRM 6.2 – Support and Case/Tickets Demonstration
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How to Prepare for New Customer Sales

Ask any online merchant and they will tell you they’re interested in generating or increasing traffic to their ecommerce website so they can increase sales.    Most will ask how they can improve their page rank on Google, Yahoo or Bing.   Merchants want to know if they should use website submission services, an article submission strategy, backlink generators, keyword analysis tools, page rank tools, link popularity tools, pay-per-click advertising, meta tag generators, robots.txt tools or all of the above.    However, before merchants focus on generating traffic to their ecommerce website they must first ensure they are prepared to service and support new customers.

Imagine 200 new customers called your business this week to inquiry about your product or service.  Would your business be ready to handle the additional sales inquiries?  Would your new potential customers be placed on hold, or worst, not be able to get through to a sales representative?  How would you track new inquiries to closure?   Assuming you’re ready to make the sale are you ready to support your new customers after the sale?  How would you handle support calls or customer refund requests?   If business increased would your merchant account provider cut you off once you reached your monthly sales limit?

There is such a thing as too much success if you’re not prepared.   SaleManager has created a new customer preparation checklist so merchants can gauge their preparedness to grow their business.

– merchants must ensure they have a phone system capable of servicing sales inquiries.  Merchants must ensure their company is ready and able to answer and respond to every call.    That means new sales opportunities and supporting current customers.   If you’re unable to respond to a sales inquiry within 24 hours you will lose the sale.   If you’re unable to respond to current customers in a timely manner you will eventually lose that customer also.  Even worst, you will lose a reference and potential referral partner.  To resolve this issue consider hiring new employees, hiring temporary workers or outsourcing to a third party call center.    As the saying goes you only get one chance to make a first impression.   Don’t blow it!

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– provides merchants with a single system for tracking all customer communication.    Implementing a CRM tool is a necessity for today’s sales force.  Use your CRM tool to capture online and telephone sales inquiries.   Implement workflow rules to route inquires to the right department of sales agent.   There are many mature open source and commercial CRM tools on the market so choose the tool that meets your specific budget and business requirements.   Open Source CRM Tools: SugarCRM Community Edition, vtiger CRM.  Commercial CRM: SaleManager On-Demand, Salesforce, SugarCRM Professional

– is an online self-service portal where customers can open help desk tickets or find answers to their questions using the company knowledgebase.   Implementing an online help desk can reduce call volumes, improve customer satisfaction and reduce overall costs.   The top CRM and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools include an online customer service portal.

– are an important aspect of closing more sales.   If your customer wanted to pay by check or American Express would you be able to process their payment?   Can your customer pay online, over the phone or via fax?   Can your customer order from their iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile or Google Android powered device?  Merchants must offer multiple payment options so customers can pay the way they want to pay.   Potential solution: The Planetauthorize payment gateway can process electronic checks and all major credit cards.   Planetauthorize also provides multi-currency support,  free website and shopping cart integration and a virtual terminal for back office and call center users.

– is a powerful feature for merchants who have a requirement to process credit card orders using multiple merchant accounts.   With load-balancing each merchant account can process and settle in a different currency providing native multi-currency support in a single payment gateway account.   Merchants can also process specific transactions using a specific merchant account.  Load-balancing removes the need to open multiple payment gateway accounts.    Never worry about exceeding your monthly merchant account sales limit again.

Once you can ensure you’re business is ready to capture new sales inquiries, respond to sales calls, track opportunities through the sales funnel, process new orders and service the customer after the sale you can turn your attention to growing your sales channel and online presence.    To be successful merchants must be prepared for growth before they grow.  Anything less will result in lost opportunities.

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SugarAngel adds Windows Desktop notification services for your SugarCRM Account. SugarAngel Free Edition is a freeware Windows App which communicates with SugarCRM and notifies you about events which take place in SugarCRM database.

SugarCRM 6.2 – Sugar Mobile Blackberry Demonstration
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Why You should Hire A PHP Programmer?

There are several programming languages and application development platforms out there that would be able to give you answers to your needs. Why do programmers repeatedly choose PHP then? Of course, it is not without reason that programmers around the world these days prefer to use PHP over any other language be it Java, C#, or ASP. PHP offers them one of the most simple and robust platforms for the development of dynamic applications. Unlike most other languages and frameworks PHP allows programmers to write both client-side and server-side scripts giving them the necessary bandwidth to innovate with available resources. Microsoft’s latest platform, Dot Net also provides developers with the same kind of freedom, but there is a fundamental difference between Dot Net and PHP– PHP is an open source platform, while ASP Dot Net is not.

This is why PHP takes the cake every time. The open source platform means there are programmers from around the world working on the source code, regularly coming up with brilliant innovations and all of it is accessible through the platform. Microsoft’s ASP.NET is also an extremely stable platform, but then it does not give programmers the kind of freedom that they get from PHP. With PHP they can tweak and change the way applications perform according to their visions, and this aspect never ceases to excite developers. What’s more? Almost all of the present content management systems are built on PHP and a MySQL base. These content management systems like Drupal, Joomla, Magento, osCommerce, WordPress, etc have revolutionized the way the Internet is being used, and almost everybody these days is turning to these systems to develop their website. While these platforms are user friendly you have to hire a PHP programmer to take complete advantage of the promised potential of the system.

It is not at all surprising that a major portion of the IT outsourcing work that is channeled to India every year is in the field of PHP development. There is a burgeoning industry segment in India that works to provide global standards in PHP application development. Developers in India keep themselves up to date on the latest in PHP development and customization and constantly come up with innovative solutions on the PHP base that redefine the way applications are developed and give businesses the leading edge over their rivals. What makes the PHP services rendered by the Indian industry segment absolutely unputdownable is the cost effectiveness of the service. Indian companies are constantly competing among each other to provide cheap services for the world market to hire a PHP programmer. This environment provides an alluring option for businesses in the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) segments to get started on their automation projects that they were unable to take up due to budget issues.

Indian companies provide a remarkably useful dedicated hiring service, which allows companies to hire  a PHP programmer, WordPress developer India, oscommerce developers, sugarcrm developers, etc, on extremely flexible terms of hiring. From these platforms it is possible to hire a PHP programmer on full-time, part-time, or hourly basis. With the dedicated hiring platform most companies can now claim their share of the PHP advantage!

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I’ve migrated and upgraded my LAMP Virtual Hosting

I haven’t been happy with my hosting provider 123-reg for a while:  For both my own Drupal website service and SugarCRM service the limitations of the virtual hosting package offered by 123-reg had started to niggle me.

Speed of applications loading is so important:  And having to wait 20-30 seconds for applications to load up wasn’t good!   I can appreciate that virtual machine environments have to do their thing, but it doesn’t stop the feeling of frustration as you wait for the application to load:  Imagine how my clients would react!

Why don’t you have “shell” access? was a question I was repeatedly asked by my system administrator.  Not being able to configure and setup stuff at the Command Line stopped me delivering more advanced hosting services – I wasn’t happy.

Support was another touchstone of “wanting to be treated as I want to treat my clients”, and having to accept email based canned responses wasn’t good.   When I needed support, I needed support, not “that’s answer 5-H from the knowledge base”…

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And wanting a Service Level Agreement to underpin my SugarCRM cloud computing service wasn’t too much to ask was it?  Apparently it is with 123-reg….

As an internet consultant, what also galled me is that 123-reg failed to understand that my questions were opportunities to up-sell me with additional services.  Not once did it register in their auto-provisioned world that here was a customer wanting to take their hosting to the next level…

So As Jason Fried says in his excellent business book, Rework, “Scratch your own itch”:  I decided to take the plunge and migrate my LAMP hosting to a higher quality, professional hosting service provider.  I selected Gladserv through personal recommendation.

But I was pretty unimpressed when I was informed by 123-reg Support that the DNS TTL is set to 24 hours and could not be changed. That caused me all kinds of customer service challenges as it meant my services needed tobe down for 24 hours whilst the domain names were updated…   (I ended up doing the SugarCRM migration on a Bank Holiday and website migration in sync with planned downtime)

The rest of the migration went according to plan, including moving my IMAP email using Mozilla Thunderbird,  and at all times I had the reassurance of a real support consultant from Gladserv on the end of the phone and email to ensure all went smoothly.  

So I’ve now successfully migrated all my services and am looking forward to developing my Web Apps cloud computing offer.  And reflecting what Jason Fried says in “ReWork” – “I think you’ll love it because I love it”…

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Effective PHP Solutions for E-commerce Websites

For internet marketers, PHP solutions have become akin to manna from heaven, as they take advantage of the language to manage and run interactive and engaging websites, easily and at very affordable rates. Today, most of the small and medium sized business enterprises, running ecommerce sites depend on various types of PHP solutions like PHP custom solution, PHP SugarCRM solution etc for their website development

PHP is a server side scripting language that can help developers to create appealing and attractive dynamic websites. It has multiple benefits and advantages, giving developers lots of rooms for innovation and creativity to develop interesting websites. Any webmaster with a basic knowledge of web technology can use various PHP solutions like PHP custom solution or PHP SugarCRM solution to automate their company websites

PHP solutions have set certain benchmarks by introducing many advanced ways of making websites that are more interactive and attractive than the static ones. Implementing/using PHP solutions offer many benefits, as it has introduced modern dynamic websites in lieu of the boring static websites. It can:

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• Enhance the look and feel of a site, making it bright, lively and vibrant
• Enable webmasters to monitor and track the visitors’ activities
• Get/Obtain direct feedbacks from customers regarding its products or services
• Allow marketers to send emails or newsletter to subscribers that interest them
• Be installed easily on any computer, regardless of the configuration
• Drive and direct traffic to the website, quick and easy
• Allow users to upload their images on the website
• Incorporate media files like video, audio or multimedia to the web pages
• Cut costs, as webmasters don’t require big budgets to make use of the written scripts

Other than the benefits listed above, there are solid reasons behind the use of PHP solutions for web application development.
• It’s a free open source technology that can be utilized on all platforms, running seamlessly on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and various other UNIX platforms.
• It has a huge community support system that guides and assists users, when they come across any problem or difficulty
• It ensures that the architecture of the application is scalable and robust
• It has application frameworks like Zend and Cake PHP that has been proven and tested for rapid application development
• It has lots of resources for web development, such as forums, blogs and freeware scripts

Small and medium scale enterprises should start looking for web development companies that provide PHP solutions like PHP custom solution and PHP SugarCRM solution to boost their business growth. In fact, taking PHP solution for web development is the best bet to stay ahead of the pack in the highly competitive online market.

Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, with Stepfane Fermigier, Nuxeo
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Integrate Drupal with Sugar CRM today!

Drupal being a powerful platform to develop rich and interactive websites has really changed the way people perceive web development. With social networking platforms gaining prominence, it’s no surprise that Drupal Application Development Company will remain the most sought after keyword amongst webmasters in the open source space.

It is recommended that web masters Integrate Drupal with Sugar CRM as it can work wonders for their websites. By connecting Drupal and SugarCRM, webmasters can give users the right to login and edit their profiles and view the kind of leads that are being generated by the website. There are a wide variety of vendors who offer Drupal Solutions and some of the services they offer are enlisted below:

•Drupal CMS Development and Customization
•Drupal Template and Design development
•Drupal Extension Development
•Drupal Application development and maintenance
•Drupal Theming

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As a web master, if you undertake Drupal SugarCRM integration you can easily convert, replace or revamp any Drupal site with a simple control panel. In addition to this, when you integrate Drupal with SugarCRM you can use your existing Drupal site for capturing leads through registration, subscription and similar such user-generated actions. At present only 1% of websites in the world use Drupal and is one of the best knowledge management and collaborative tools available on the net. Be it a small blog or a corporate or government website Drupal offers all possible options that are an integral part of all content control systems like RSS feeds, menu-control, customer account upkeep and registration.

Before going in for a full-scale integration, you should select the right Drupal Application development company by doing a thorough google search and checking your references as well. You might get references about other Content Management Systems like Sitefinity, Coremedia, Brunner, Lotus Internet Content Material Management but if you are looking for a web development tool that you can use as you scale up your business then Drupal would prove to be the right choice. Its extensible and modular architecture with numerous plug in modules and components that can be integrated to increase the functionality of a website prove very useful for users.

Moreover, the browser based interfaces which Drupal offers proves very useful for publishing and organizing the content that will appear on the website. Drupal with its “Discussion Forum Module” helps visitors to connect with each other as users can easily send messages to each other with the help of a website. Such features help webmasters to convert their websites into a social networking platform quite easily. Another notable advantage of Drupal is that proves very effective in creating multi-lingual websites, something that is vital for corporates who operate beyond geographical boundaries and also for domestic companies who want to address regional markets.