Wizard Systems

Sage CRM named Challenger by leading independent analyst firm Ovum

We are pleased to announce that Sage CRM has been awarded the rating of Challenger on the Ovum Decision Matrix for CRM.

Sage North America announced yesterday that Sage CRM was awarded the rating of Challenger on the Ovum Decision Matrix for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The assessment highlighted Sage CRM social and mobile capabilities as well as integration with Sage ERP X3 as key features.

According to Ovum, solutions identified as challengers in the CRM space have good market positioning and are being sold and marketed well by the vendors. The products offer competitive functionality and a good price-performance proposition, and should be considered as part of the technology-selection process.

Here are the principal findings from Ovum’s report:

 “Overall, there is little to argue about Sage CRM's applicability in the target market. Analysis of survey results indicate that Sage CRM is widely recognised in the sub- 1,000 employee market, both in EMEA and North America.”

 “Sage's target market rates ease of use as a critical requirement, and the company has done much to both simplify the application and deliver a more compelling user experience with a focus on mobile devices (tablets and smartphones).”

 “Sage CRM's feature set and roadmap align well with contemporary CRM requirements, such as social and SaaS.”

 “The development of the Sage CRM/Sage ERP X3 integration on Sage's standard technology platform, SData, provides the potential for SME organisations to develop a more transformational CRM capability.”

The Ovum Decision Matrix for CRM evaluates leading tier-one CRM solutions for enterprises and identifies the leaders and challengers in the CRM solutions market. Evaluation criteria includes a technology assessment: solutions must include product features that Ovum identified as being required by a CRM solution; a customer satisfaction assessment: solutions were ranked by respondents (not vendor supplied) who were either current or previous customers; and a market impact assessment: analysts used data collected through primary and secondary research to determine a vendor’s global market impact.

Ovum is a leading independent analyst and consultancy firm specializing in global coverage of telecommunications, software and IT industries.

 

It's here! Sage CRM 'Business Collaboration powered by Yammer'

'Business Collaboration powered by Yammer' is an internal social networking and collaboration tool that allows employees to discover conversations and collaborate in real time around such things as, opportunities, leads and support cases directly within Sage CRM version 7.2.

To use 'Business Collaboration powered by Yammer' simply create a yammer account using your business email address. It's free to join and it only takes a few seconds. Once your Yammer account has been created you're instantly part of your company's yammer network and you can start collaborating! 
 
Once installed the component allows you to:

•View and post to your own yammer news feed from within Sage CRM
 
•Aggregate company specific stories and communications within Sage CRM
 
•View and post to a company’s own news feed from within Sage CRM
 
•Specify a string to search for specific messages and communications from within Sage CRM
 
•Post private (inbox) messages to other users within your network
 
•View and respond to your own private (inbox) messages
 
•View a list or users who you follow, or who are followed by you, within your network
 
•Add a Sage CRM note for any message you post against a company within Sage CRM

 

For more information on Sage Upgrades or the latest version, 7.2, please contact Wizard Systems.

 

Sage CRM 7.2 released with new collaboration tools and mobile access capabilities

The release of Sage CRM 7.2 delivers a host of exciting new features and enhancements that help you leverage the latest trends in mobility, Social CRM, and business collaboration. Mobile and Social CRM adoption continues to rise globally and in recognition of these key trends, Sage CRM 7.2 brings with it greater Social CRM capabilities with Sage CRM for Facebook and enhanced mobile functionality with two powerful sales apps for the iPhone and Windows 8.

New features include:

• Improve teamwork with a collaboration tool powered by Yammer (the private/internal social networking tool for organisations from Microsoft)
• Sage CRM native apps for the iPhone and Windows 8 provide mobile sales teams with real-time data (even if they are out of coverage)
• Sage CRM for Facebook: Instant information about your customers and prospects using Social CRM
• Improvements in the Report Writer with interactive graphs
• Sage CRM and Sage ERP X3 Integration (access to quote, order, invoice and sales credit information from Sage ERP X3)

If you're a Sage User you must have a 'Maintenance Contract' to access latest versions.  Please contact Wizard Systems for more information on Sage CRM 7.2 or how to install the new features.

Download Sage_CRM_v7 2_release_document (a very detailed document on the release and new features)

 

Sage CRM 7.2 offers small and mid-sized businesses new and improved ways to increase employee productivity and enhance customer relationships through Social and Mobile CRM

Sage UK has today unveiled a host of new Social, mobile and  business collaboration features for its leading global SMB CRM solution, Sage CRM, that will empower sales, marketing and customer service teams to better engage with colleagues and customers. Sage CRM 7.2 to be released in April brings mobile deployment on iPhone® and Android® smartphone and tablet devices, greater Social CRM capabilities with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and employee collaboration and knowledge exchange powered by Yammer. These new features enable easier collaboration and increased productivity both inside and outside the organisation to maximise the flow of critical customer and business information, enabling better decision making and greater collaboration across teams.
 
The latest version of Sage CRM has been designed to support busy, growing businesses who want to foster internal collaboration, increase sales team productivity and drive business wide efficiency.
 
The enhanced mobile suite includes two new mobile Apps for the iPhone® and Windows 8, which provide mobile sales teams with real-time data to help them manage their business relationships, even when out of coverage. Sales teams can now use these dedicated Apps to access their key opportunities, appointments and tasks. Additionally native phone integration with the iPhone enables them to map appointments and track key customer communications.   
 
The Social CRM suite, which already integrates with key social media applications including LinkedIn and Twitter, is enhanced further with new social capabilities that allow Sage CRM teams to gain customer insights from Facebook, providing them with a complete picture of customer and prospect interactions.
 
Business collaboration across teams using Sage CRM is now possible with new social-style collaboration powered by Yammer.  Employees can now collaborate with Yammer Groups and across records to discuss and collaborate on that record. This makes business conversations concerning opportunities, leads and support cases more social and transparent, providing greater visibility for all employees
 
Other new features offered with the latest release include smarter reporting with enhanced features built to enable faster, secure, customised reports, quickly populated with the latest CRM information. Rich new graphic charts and report cloning capabilities enable users to quickly create visual reports with interactive graphs, for at-a-glance business insight and informed decision-making.
 
"Sage CRM 7.2 has been designed with social, mobile and business collaboration technology at its core, enhanced further with smart business reporting. We're confident that Sage CRM 7.2 will boost sales team productivity, foster greater internal collaboration, and deliver better business insight. Providing SMBs with dynamic business insight and customer information that is easy to report on, will make a big difference to companies looking to drive revenues, grow their business and achieve great success through exceptional customer experience, delivered seamlessly across all touch points" commented David Beard, CRM Principal, Sage CRM.
 
Sage CRM 7.2 will be available in the UK from April 2013 from Wizard Systems.

 

Nimble Integrates With foursquare!

Introducing foursquare integration with Nimble! In addition to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, you can now add foursquare profiles to your contacts in Nimble CRM to see their check-ins and mayorships!

You can also import your contacts in foursquare into your Nimble CRM database.  It's easy!

New Rich Text for emails from Nimble and New Social Profile Mapping feature

Nimble CRM now includes two new great features when you next login:

1) Rich Text Editing for Nimble's email composer

When you create a new email in Nimble, you can now bold, italicize, underline, indent, and use bullet points.

2) Automatic Social Profile Mapping

Let's say you imported a group of contacts into Nimble from Google. Nimble will search those contacts on your Facebook and LinkedIn networks - and when it's confident that it has found matching profiles, Nimble will automatically append LinkedIn, Facebook, or both profiles to the contact record.

Coming soon is a similar capability for Twitter!

If you would like a trial of Nimble CRM please let us know!

 

Advanced Search capability announced for Nimble CRM

The advanced search in Nimble helps you find contacts that match very specific criteria. The filters you create only apply to the current search. 

This functionality is located in the Contacts tab, next to the search bar on the top right of Nimble. When it is not in use, the the word "Advanced" is defaulted to grey. Click on "Advanced", and it will turn green indicating it's turned "on". Use as many filters as you want; the more filters you use, the fewer results are returned.

You can build your search criteria around:

1) Contact type - persons or companies

2) Fields with specific data using the following:

         - contains
         - does not contain
         - is
         - is not
         - is empty
         - is not empty

3) Creation date is (within or in the last) ___ (days/weeks/months)

4) Custom fields (NEW!) - for custom fields, simply scroll down in the popup box (shown below) to select a custom field (custom fields are listed at the end of the list) or type in the search box the name of your custom field. Then enter/select the value for the field so Nimble can search on it.

 

 

For more information on how Nimble can make you more social connected with your customers and business contacts, contact Wizard Systems.

 

Why it's important to integrate Twitter into your #CRM Strategy #sagecrm

Traditionally a CRM system helps you track communications like phone calls, meetings and emails, but with the emergence of the increasing use of Social Media (linkedin, Twitter etc) in business it becomes more important to track these contacts and communications also.

So CRM for many organisatons is evolving  into "Social" CRM, which CRM Guru, Paul Greenberg as long ago as 2009 defined as:

"...a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment.”

http://the56group.typepad.com/pgreenblog/

If your prospects or customers are active in social media, then you need to be there too, and a CRM solution which integrates that is a great tool to then cement the relationships you're building.

Sage CRM now has Twitter integration built in to help you 'listen, share and engage' with your business contacts. 

What's more, with Social Media Alerts and Interactions that can be stored within Sage CRM, you can automate responses:

Examples of Social Media Alerts
Twitter.com  - email when you are mentioned
Tweetbeep.com – keyword monitoring

You can also use Sage E-marketing (the e-mail marketing part of Sage) to contact those you have contacted on Twitter/Those you don’t have on twitter.

For more information on how Sage CRM can be a part of your company's social strategy, please contact Wizard Systems on 01454 316800.

Thanks to David Beard of Sage for contribitions to this article.

 

 

Nimble #CRM Webinar Friday 9th 10am UK - How to find leads on Social Networks

Nimble is a social CRM that can help you find leads, nurture them, and convert them into lifelong customers.

In this free demo on Friday 9th at 10am UK (GMT), we’ll show you:

•How to import new leads into Nimble
•How to identify new leads on social networks
•How to track social conversations and sales deals

At the end of the demo, we’ll answer all of your questions.

It’s FREE so sign up today and learn how to build deeper customer relationships using Nimble!

For more information on how Nimble can help you integrate your social media activities into your company CRM strategy, talk to Wizard Systems on 01454 316800.

 

Strengthen your business relationships with Social Discovery in Nimble #CRM

Each day, it’s hard to know where to start strengthening your relationships.  Nimble makes this easy. Every morning Nimble sends you an automatic email full of new engagement opportunities. This could be for example any Job Changes of a LinkedIn Contact of yours. You’ll also find one unified stream of all your incoming messages, requests, likes and more in the Notifications section under the Social tab.

To find out more, see how easy it is to set yourself up with Nimble with our trial.  To register, please click here.