CRM Companies 2009: Sage

For years, Sage former Sage Software formerly Best Software formerly SalesLogix was perplexing. They had a good product in SalesLogix for the small and midsized world - especially the lower to mid -end of that. No one doubted its functionality. They had a strong partner program - in fact as far back as 2000, their partners drove 86% of their SalesLogix revenue. They were attempting to provide some thought leadership in the SMB world, though I can’t say a lot. But some. All in all, they had been a player since the late 90s in CRM - and they’ve always been to some extent since. But there was something…off…. about them. It was never that hard to figure out what was wrong. Their strategies in the past had been somewhat pedestrian. They suffered an occasional serious misstep. They even attempted to play in the enterprise world at one point, though they dropped that and its architects within about a year of the idea. But at the high level, this ordinary strategies and a lack of vision - or at least, even an obvious vision - led them astray. For one, it kept them pitching ACT! as a CRM application. For another, it hurt their channel strategies because partners began to compete against themselves, actually pitting SalesLogix against their other CRM product, SageCRM in demos. Not only did I hear about this from others several times, but I actually saw it. It also kept their technology architectures a generation behind pretty much all the time. Not a good formula for success in a world where CRM was both rapidly maturing and then rapidly changing. As an example, when the world was moving to SaaS, they hung in there with client/server and threw up a sort-of on demand product that was clearly half-hearted. But something changed dramatically in the last two years or so with the emergence of innovators and visionaries like CRM General Manager Dave Van Toor. First, they made an really good architectural choice, that while different from the contemporary standard choice, a service oriented architecture, was still on the money for SMBs. That would be REST or what is now called WOA - Web Oriented Architecture. Their line of argument for that stinks - SOA is bad, use REST (see their otherwise very interesting Sage CRM 2010 Strategy doc) - but their choice is good. REST is the same architecture that its being used as you’re viewing this web page. Its simple and familiar and standardized - and perfect for the SMBs. For a good detailed definition of REST, see this one. But just a good architectural choice is not the only reason I have them in this list. They’ve also seen the CRM 2.0 world and embraced it at multiple levels. In SalesLogix 7.5, they’ve built in significant wizards for handling multiple tasks such as the import of leads to make life easy; they’ve got the means to create and use mashups, and an interesting timeline visualization that can be customized to view both internal data/events and external events, among many other improved and Web 2.0 features. They’ve developed an attractive mobile SalesLogix for the Blackberry application that uses location in an interesting way, with “who’s nearby” feature that allows you to find out which clients are in the same vicinity as you, in case you want to go visit them, I presume. I’m not sure of the actual value of that particular feature, which, while cool, doesn’t really account for the fact that unplanned client visits of the “sure, drop by because you just called me up” nature, don’t often happen, but the application as a whole is very good. Additionally, when they released the new versions of their CRM products earlier this year, they were able to offer something that is becoming increasingly important in the business world - anytime, anywhere connectedness - even if you’re disconnected. This is is easily the best part of their current CRM applications strategy. The customer gets a choice of on premise or on demand (their other CRM product, SageCRM, has a hosted version SageCRM.com) The experience can be hybrid (on premise mixed with on demand) and can be connected, disconnected or mobile. What distinguishes this particular part of the strategy is their idea of Context Aware Services - which lead to their anytime, anywhere workforce awareness which when you break it down is device awareness, user awareness, network awareness. Finally, in a move to clarify vision and strategy, they’ve shed the idea that ACT! is CRM. That is LONG overdue. Dave Van Toor announced on his blog that he is no longer going to have ACT! as part of his portfolio - “just” SalesLogix and SageCRM. Rightfully. This is what I mean. No longer a generation behind, this is going to make the formidable Sage, with a total (including its accounting packages) of 5.5 million customers and 15,000 employees and $2.3 billion in revenue - even more formidable in 2009 in the CRM market space they’ve carved out. Finally, Sage is talking ’bout my generation. Its about time.