Technology Advisors, Inc.

After this Wednesday, March 31, 2010, SugarCRM will no longer provide customer support, maintenance patches or bug fixes for Sugar 5.1.0.

Check the End of Version plan to learn about the upcoming End of Version dates.

This update contains a few bug fixes and a slew of improvements to the email functionality.  "The Emails module has been redesigned to improve usability and performance. New features have been added and existing features have been enhanced or removed."

The following features have been added or enhanced:

•  A new Quick Compose form provides the ability to quickly compose emails from other records, such as accounts, without leaving a List View or a Detail View. You can access this form outside of the email client by clicking on any email address or by clicking the "Compose Email" button in the Activities sub-panel of a record's detail view.
• The Address Book has been redesigned to make selecting recipients for emails easier. You can easily identify and select email recipients from related records.
• The Search form for finding imported emails has been expanded, and now includes the following fields: Subject, From, To, Date From, Date Until, Relate To, Assigned To, Attachment.
• The Settings window in the email client has been redesigned for ease of use.
• The Mail Account tab in the Settings window has been redesigned and simplified for ease of use.
• The Folders tab has been removed and a Folder management section has been added to the General tab.
• Inbound Email setup has been redesigned to make it easier for administrators to create group mail accounts.
• Administrators can configure outgoing mail accounts for users.
• A "Send Test Email" button has been added to test outgoing email settings.
• Error messaging has been improved for invalid and incomplete mail account settings.
• The user interface has been enhanced so that viewing, importing and sending emails can be done within the email client, without accessing additional views in the Emails module shortcuts menu.
• Users can assign the email record to another user during and after import.

You can read the full release notes on the SugarCRM website here.

Knowledgesync is an Alerts and Workflow solution for numerous business applications. A few of the more basic uses are:

• Business activity monitoring for events customers want to know about.
• Business Process automation. Automatically deliver confirmations, quotes, thank you emails, etc.
• Alerts for warnings regarding issues with clients.

How can these items be accomplished? Here is a short list of some basic capabilities:

• Triggered emails based on events in a database or email inbox.
• Web dashboards using html with graphs, etc.
• Deliver crystal reports via email as a pdf on a schedule.
• Trigger crystal reports sent as a pdf to a group of people.
• Inbound email marketing
• Triggered updates integrating several databases or applications.

Off the top of my head, I can see several very good uses for this application within Technology Advisors for the Customer Advocate position.
Such as:

• Automatically send pdf ticket reports to customers.
• Send alerts to the Customer Advocate and Support about issues that need to be followed up for a customer.
  • Tickets, Contract Status, etc.
• Alert emails to Customers and the Customer Advocate
  • Tickets opened & closed.
• Alerts to the Customer Advocate
  • Ticket without an updated for 7(3?) days.
  • Customers the Customer Advocate has not contacted in the last 30 days.

These basic functions would not take long to setup, but could save our users several hours a week in effort. Not to mention avoiding headaches from issues that might slip through the cracks otherwise.

Best of all, SalesLogix users can download a free 30 day trial at http://www.sageknowledgesync.com. For best results, I would advise our customers to work with Technology Advisors to make sure the trial is beneficial and used to its fullest potential.

Entrepreneur.com has an article up on 5 Simple Ways to Show Customers You Care:

1. Share Your Knowledge
2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt
3. Reward Customers
4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event
5. Do Good

It's a great article and I recommend you check out. Here is my take on how you can apply these points to your own business.

1. Sharing Your Knowledge.  Social CRM is here.  As has always been the case, with it you can manage your e-mail newsletters.  You can now also manage your incoming and outgoing Social CRM communications with applications such as Twitter or Facebook.

2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt.  Without a CRM application, how will you be able to keep track of all of your correspondence with your customers.  Newer CRM packages have the ability to integrate with all forms of communications.  Fax, Email, Snail Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc.

3. Reward Customers.  With the proper CRM application you can track Campaigns where you use Coupons, Gifts, Events, Targeted Mailers, Phone Calls, Social Media, etc.

4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event.  Customer Appreciate Events or User Groups are a great way to keep your name in a customers mind.  With CRM you are able to invite your customers or potential customers to the events, track registrations and report on attendance and survey results.

5. Do Good.  Doing good is a great thing, but how will your customers know about it if you aren't able to track and effectively communicate your "good."

Using newer CRM products goes far beyond just a giant electronic Rolodex of names and phone numbers.  With a properly setup CRM application and trained user base, you should be able to manage your complete customer experience from prospect to repeat business.  And then some.

We are pleased to announce Jason Nassi, Sr. Director, Product Management at SugarCRM will be joining us for the CRM Acceleration event on Thursday. Jason will present the SugarCRM 2010 and Beyond Roadmap and be onhand to answer questions.

Register Now for CRM Acceleration!

Thursday, December 10
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Park Ridge Country Club
636 N. Prospect
Park Ridge, IL 60068

Join Technology Advisors as we demonstrate what it takes to ensure success at our CRM Acceleration event. 

End user adoption is one of the key elements in gaining the most value out of your CRM investment. By following a few best practices, companies will quickly see the benefits of that investment.

Learn how to:

• Utilize the proper techniques to achieve a successful implementation and the greatest end user adoption
• Integrate CRM with other business systems
• Move data in and out of your CRM system

This interactive event will provide you with a solid strategy to achieve a successful CRM implementation and increase user adoption early on in your implementation process to see results right away.

Don't miss this chance to accelerate your company's growth with the value of Sugar.

Thursday, May 14 @ 11am - 12pm EST

This webcast is open to Scribe customers and the public. It will cover the newly released Web Services Adapter for Scribe Insight and Scribe Insight Enterprise. The webcast will include a feature overview and several demonstrations of the Web Services Adapter enabling integration to Dynamics AX, Microsoft SharePoint and 3rd party commercial web services.

Register Now

The Scribe presenters for the webcast will be:

Bob Sturim - Vice President, Products

John Gravely - Vice President, Marketing and Product Marketing

Lou Antonucci - Vice President, Sales

Tomas O'Brien - Product Manager