Authors: Danny Estrada

On the first day of the New Year I ended up in the Northeast to spend all day with a client that came to us last year from another reseller.  We have a significant number of these customers and we hear from companies like this several times every month.  One of the reasons many people come to work with us is for the expertise we carry in not just ERP but also areas like CRM (Customer Relationship Management).  Sage has a range of options for CRM products and they are all integrated to various ERP applications.  In addition, there are also some options for 3rd party integrations between various Sage products that have been around for years.

The holiday time is definitely when people do a lot of reflecting, resting, spending time with family and reloading for another run at the “brass ring”, or whatever their big goals in their work and professional life happen to be.  The one thing I find very interesting every year is how many completely 'disconnected' emails asking me to have a happy holiday season from people or companies that I have not spoken with or talked to all year.  Being in the CRM game for quite a few years I took some time to analyze what’s happening here and the possible effects to my relationship, or lack thereof with many of these organizations.

Over the past couple of weeks here in the Northeast we have started to get reminded about the impending weather that we get hit with right around the time the holidays come and the ball drops in Times Square.  How bad it will be is anyone’s guess, but we had snow in October this year if that is any indication. Al Roker or Sam Champion I am not but I can tell you that every year I sit down with some executives of companies after that fact telling me that they wish that they could have done something to shelter themselves from taking a hit to revenue whenever the weather brings them to a standstill.  One executive fixed his problem last year by moving his company and himself to Florida.  But, if that’s not in the cards for you, there are several things that you can do to keep up productivity whenever your staff (especially sales staff) is affected by the weather.  I thought I would share some of what my customers have told me in recent years related to their CRM capabilities.

This week we are very fortunate to be hosting a Sage CRM Bootcamp here in our New York City office. Sage Software is fully committed to investing in their partners and has sent some of their key architectural and development resources from Dublin to spend time working with the some of the most seasoned Sage CRM partners in North America. This session has been very exciting so far because Sage is not just talking at us but talking with us.  Anyone that has read anything about software development and releasing technology that works in a “real world” environment understands the importance of feedback.

Yesterday Nucleus Research, a renowned technology research firm, had a press release stating that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications have a $5.60 return for every $1.00 invested in CRM.  Those of us in the industry that are intimate with implementing CRM have seen how customers can benefit greatly from the right approach to using CRM as a strategic tool for operational excellence within many firms.  The major shift that we are now seeing is that firms are no longer trying to decide whether or not CRM has value and more interested in how to leverage the technology for the biggest benefit to the organization.