SugarCRM 2.0 Release Completes Core SFA Feature Set as Open Source CRM Applications Leader Increases Offerings
Adds Key Modules Including Quotes, Price Lists, Advanced Lead Management, Calendaring and Team Selling Rivaling Proprietary Solutions
CUPERTINO, Calif. (October 25, 2004) –
SugarCRM Inc., developer of the world’s fastest growing open source customer relationship management (CRM) application built on a pure LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform, is now shipping Sugar Sales and Sugar Sales Professional 2.0. The additional functionality gives users an enterprise-class CRM software platform at a fraction of the price of comparable proprietary, closed source CRM products. Since its release in July, Sugar Sales has gained a leadership position in the commercial open source CRM software category with over 50,000 downloads, while Sugar Sales Professional has gained traction in a large number of companies that require a more advanced feature set.
New Features in 2.0
The new quotes and price list module, available in Sugar Sales Professional 2.0, allows a salesperson to access and manipulate comprehensive data about product pricing and generate a customized quote that is assigned to an opportunity. The quote can then be saved in the Adobe Portable Document (.PDF) format for content integrity, universal accessibility, and easy distribution to the customer. This unique product offering is unlike any other CRM application available today — where other solutions require external software integration to accommodate this product request.
Both Sugar Sales and Sugar Sales Professional offers additional lead management capabilities enabling users to track leads generated from marketing programs, external communications, or directly through an inbound customer inquiry and then directly to the sales pipeline. The improved lead management capabilities also offer a web integration module that automatically imports leads from a web form and tracks the lead origin. The lead management allows sales to assign multiple leads to a single opportunity for a complete view of inbound activity. This provides a concrete way of measuring the efficacy and return on investment of marketing and advertising efforts throughout the sales cycle, and the multiple influences that occurred to attain the opportunity.
Sugar Sales Professional has also added team selling functionality that allow sales teams to work on leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities in a completely secure environment, with access to customer and sales lead data assigned and limited to authorized team members.
In addition, both Sugar Sales and Sugar Sales Professional include Web- based calendaring for easy tracking of sales appointments; automatic email alerts for new sales assignments; customizable home pages allowing each user to gain direct access to his or her preferred features, tasks, reports, and lists; and an expanded number of pre-defined and dynamic reports.
“Sugar Sales 2.0 is a major new functional release that rivals offerings of more expensive, closed source, proprietary competitors,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. “Sugar Sales 2.0 includes 100% of the most critical features that sales professionals rely on.”
“TBOiServices, Inc. selected Sugar Sales Professional after thoroughly researching CRM vendors because it was open source, scalable and secure,” says Bill Mann, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer TBOiServices. “We have customized Sugar Sales Professional to fit our industry needs which makes us the first HR compliance assistance integrator to comprehensively manage the employer, agent/broker, and insurance carrier data together in one CRM tool.”
Licensing and Availability Sugar Sales is available under an open source software license, while the additional features in Sugar Sales Professional are available under a SugarCRM commercial license. For an annual fee of $239 per user, SugarCRM gives subscribers a perpetual license to Sugar Sales Professional, 12 months of new application updates as well as installation assistance; trouble ticketing; global weekday phone/email-based technical support (9AM-5PM Pacific time); and full production support including patch and fix distributions.
SugarCRM’s roadmap for its Sugar Sales products can be viewed at http://www.sugarcrm.com/home/SugarCRM_Product_Roadmap/51/. To demo, download or purchase Sugar Sales Professional, call the SugarCRM sales line at (408) 873-9872 or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com or email us at contact@sugarcrm.com
About SugarCRM:
SugarCRM provides commercial open source customer relationship management applications for companies of all sizes worldwide. SugarCRM was founded in 2004 by three Silicon Valley CRM professionals with over twenty years of experience spanning marketing, application design and engineering. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California and can be reached by email at contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit the website www.sugarcrm.com.
Source: SugarCRM