CRM Blog

A Quick Look at your CRM Data

All CRM Comparison results always lead to the reconciling fact that all CRM solutions have 2 major aspects relevant to its CRM Data. These must be considered in choosing the software that’s right for your business. Business data information is very crucial in a business’ daily operations. It is where decisions are based on the current and future direction of the company. It is with this idea that makes these two aspects all the more important. The first aspect is the customer database. It is used by all companies to gather information and details about their customers, their needs, purchasing history, and trends that will plot future marketing plans. Without a doubt, these features spell out the utmost importance of this aspect. The second aspect of CRM data is its object relationships between accounts, contacts, opportunities, and all other customer records.

CRM Data in the Hands of Salesforce.com

The good thing that happens when you compare CRM solutions is that you get to realize the most important things that matter for your business. Your CRM data is one aspect that comes to the limelight. For backup purposes, Salesforce.com only provides a flat data dump system to its customers that are void of any critical object relationships. This makes it very unreliable whenever a client decides to analyze data whenever offline or simply store backup data, both of which are very important tasks in an operation. It becomes more untrustworthy because of the fact that this situation would unable the client to have free access towards their own data.

CRM Data under SugarCRM

Luckily, comparing various CRM software programs will lead you to better alternatives. Apparently, SugarCRM has been proven to have provided its clients with a full database backup of its total data with all the object relationships intact. By using Sugar On-Demand, clients get to enjoy a daily dose of database backup system that can be restored in a client’s own database. This is very important, considering the common practice of businesses to install programs such as Sugar in their own data center. This means that they will have unlimited access to their own data.

What’s the Big Deal?

Having a stable backup with unlimited access is a very big deal! A business would never survive without a sound contingency plan. And if you must conduct an objective CRM Comparison survey, you should consider this aspect very thoroughly. Ponder on the fact that a business online utility must serve its operations very efficiently. And that is one fact that you must never take risks with.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Evaluation

Click here to access and download our Free Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Analysis.

Topics addressed include:

1. Salesforce.com vs Microsoft CRM
2. Pros and Cons of SaaS vs On-premise CRM
3. Crucial User Adoption Factors
4. Total Cost of Ownership of Microsoft CRM

Free SugarCRM 6 Assessment PDF

Click here to access and download our Free Sugar CRM 6 Evaluation PDF.

With this document, you will be able to identify the key enhancements within Sugar CRM.

Topics addressed include:

1. Calculated Fields
2. Favorites and Favorites Dashlet
3. Twitter and Social Media integration
4. Reporting (filtering, scheduling)
5. User interface improvements (there are many!)
6. Sugar Mobile 1.0 details
7. and much more.

Free ACT! 2011 Evaluation and Feature Review

Click here to access and download our Free Sage ACT! 2011 Feature Evaluation and Review.

With this document, you will be able to identify the key improvements within ACT! 2011 as well as ACT! 2010.

Items addressed include:

1. User interface enhancements
2. Social Media
3. E-Marketing, Mail-Merge and Online Surveys
4. Sales Opportunity redesign
5. Flexible Reporting, Dashboard and OLEDB interface
6. Advanced Outlook Integration and Invitations
7. Advanced Outlook Sync for Contacts and Calendar
8. Simplified Importing design
9. Smart Tasks (Workflow)
10. Advanced Lead Management and Importing
11. Administrative improvements
12. and much more.

Free TCO Calculator for CRM Projects

Click here to access and download our Free CRM TCO Calculator Tool.

With this tool, you will be able to identify the key TCO line items that are relevant for any CRM implementation. We have also included data for comparing CRM software systems such as Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix and more. You will be able to view the 3 Year and 5 Year Total Cost of Ownership for both SaaS (Online/On-Demand) and Licensed (On-premise) pricing models.

TCO line items include:

1. Annual License/User price
2. Support
3. Hardware (incl. Server and Users)
4. Implementation
5. Staff
6. Network
7. Mobile
8. and much more.

Free Excel Tool to Compare CRM Systems

Click here to access and download our Free Excel CRM Comparison Tool.

With this tool, you will be able to identify the key similarilites and differences between 9 of the top CRM systems, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage SalesLogix, GoldMine, Sage ACT!, Pivotal and more.

Comparison Topics include:

1. Key CRM Features
2. Pricing (Licensing, etc..)
3. Available Modules (e.g. SFA, Marketing, Service, etc)
4. Feature Details (Sync, Call Center, Quoting, E-commerce, Lead Management, Security, Workflow, and much more.
5. Hardware and Network support (Microsoft, Linux, etc…)
6. Industry/NAICS

Nationwide CRM Consulting and Training

With locations throughout the United States, Accent Gold Solutions is able to provide CRM training, consulting and implementation service whereever you are. Please contact us to find out the best way to get your CRM project underway. Remember, step 1 is to figure out what your business requirements are, and step 2 is to select the proper CRM system for your individual needs.

Being certified in various CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage SalesLogix CRM, Sage ACT!, SAP CRM and more, we are confident we can advise you as to the proper CRM software to fit your business.

Whether you are in Charlotte, North Carolina or Memphis, Tennessee, we can get your CRM solution designed, implemented and trained so that your users will love it and use it. We define our success by your CRM adoption rate. So call us to get started!

Microsoft CRM 2011 Review Webinars

Join us for our webinar series as we explore the points outlined below – and hope to provide you valuable insight about this top-rated CRM solution. We hope that our comparison with Salesforce.com will help you on in your CRM evaluation.

Search terms for Compare CRM:

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SugarCRM 101 Tutorial

Sugar’s objective is to guarantee that any sugarcrm tutorial is simple enough to be understood by the ordinary user. It doesn’t matter what configuration is selected because each of them delivers a complete experience for the user. These CRM designs are as follows:

• Sugar® Community Edition – an open source, developer-centric free download.
• Sugar’s Commercial Subscriptions – Sugar® Professional™, Sugar® Corporate™, Sugar® Enterprise™, and Sugar® Ultimate™. These are designed to help companies of any size by offering unmatched cloud computing flexibility.

SugarCRM Reviews

In fact, SugarCRM has been getting a lot of positive reviews from highly regarded publications lately, such as CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, and eWeek. Its apparent user-friendly characteristic, flexibility, and open design have been gaining a lot of attention besides a growing trend for any sugarcrm tutorial. In an article by J.P. Connelly for eWeek magazine, SugarCRM has been lauded for its flexibility and fierce competitiveness, despite its close resemblance to Salesforce.com, the cloud-based titan.

SugarCRM is proud to highlight its features that compliment its On-Demand Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) option. These features include its capacity to run on the leading cloud-computing platforms that include Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Sugar’s partner and customer on-premise clouds. These features offer choices to the user that has never been paralleled and the power to control data and deployments.

SugarCRM’s Edge

According to its blog press release, what sets SugarCRM apart from its fierce competition of CRM vendors is their architecture. Conventional CRM vendors create different product lines when offering users a choice between an on-demand and an on-premise solution. As expected, the on-demand solution would make use of a 10-year old multi-tenant SaaS architecture and the on-premise solution uses much older, 20-year old client-server architecture. SugarCRM boasts of an entirely different architecture which employs a modern multi-instance database structure wherein each customer has a dedicated database of their own. All these are being simplified in any sugarcrm tutorial available. Sugar apparently runs on a variety of databases, hardware platforms, and cloud environments. If so, this will benefit the user greatly in terms of freedom and control. It becomes a mutual benefit when SugarCRM gets more improved focus and higher quality software. This is because the developers do not have to preserve various engineering efforts for varying deployment models.

On a creative perspective, SugarCRM presents a look and feel that is modern and up-to-date with the latest applications of the generation. This is what attracts customers to a CRM and generates more active use. Perhaps this is what makes them a formidable competition. Any user would be led to try out an available sugarcrm tutorial over the web. But the question is: can they truly live up to this hype?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Evaluation

Click here to access and download our Free Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Analysis.

Topics addressed include:

1. Salesforce.com vs Microsoft CRM
2. Pros and Cons of SaaS vs On-premise CRM
3. Crucial User Adoption Factors
4. Total Cost of Ownership of Microsoft CRM

Free SugarCRM 6 Assessment PDF

Click here to access and download our Free Sugar CRM 6 Evaluation PDF.

With this document, you will be able to identify the key enhancements within Sugar CRM.

Topics addressed include:

1. Calculated Fields
2. Favorites and Favorites Dashlet
3. Twitter and Social Media integration
4. Reporting (filtering, scheduling)
5. User interface improvements (there are many!)
6. Sugar Mobile 1.0 details
7. and much more.

Free ACT! 2011 Evaluation and Feature Review

Click here to access and download our Free Sage ACT! 2011 Feature Evaluation and Review.

With this document, you will be able to identify the key improvements within ACT! 2011 as well as ACT! 2010.

Items addressed include:

1. User interface enhancements
2. Social Media
3. E-Marketing, Mail-Merge and Online Surveys
4. Sales Opportunity redesign
5. Flexible Reporting, Dashboard and OLEDB interface
6. Advanced Outlook Integration and Invitations
7. Advanced Outlook Sync for Contacts and Calendar
8. Simplified Importing design
9. Smart Tasks (Workflow)
10. Advanced Lead Management and Importing
11. Administrative improvements
12. and much more.

Free TCO Calculator for CRM Projects

Click here to access and download our Free CRM TCO Calculator Tool.

With this tool, you will be able to identify the key TCO line items that are relevant for any CRM implementation. We have also included data for comparing CRM software systems such as Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Sage CRM, Sage SalesLogix and more. You will be able to view the 3 Year and 5 Year Total Cost of Ownership for both SaaS (Online/On-Demand) and Licensed (On-premise) pricing models.

TCO line items include:

1. Annual License/User price
2. Support
3. Hardware (incl. Server and Users)
4. Implementation
5. Staff
6. Network
7. Mobile
8. and much more.

Free Excel Tool to Compare CRM Systems

Click here to access and download our Free Excel CRM Comparison Tool.

With this tool, you will be able to identify the key similarilites and differences between 9 of the top CRM systems, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage SalesLogix, GoldMine, Sage ACT!, Pivotal and more.

Comparison Topics include:

1. Key CRM Features
2. Pricing (Licensing, etc..)
3. Available Modules (e.g. SFA, Marketing, Service, etc)
4. Feature Details (Sync, Call Center, Quoting, E-commerce, Lead Management, Security, Workflow, and much more.
5. Hardware and Network support (Microsoft, Linux, etc…)
6. Industry/NAICS

Nationwide CRM Consulting and Training

With locations throughout the United States, Accent Gold Solutions is able to provide CRM training, consulting and implementation service whereever you are. Please contact us to find out the best way to get your CRM project underway. Remember, step 1 is to figure out what your business requirements are, and step 2 is to select the proper CRM system for your individual needs.

Being certified in various CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage SalesLogix CRM, Sage ACT!, SAP CRM and more, we are confident we can advise you as to the proper CRM software to fit your business.

Whether you are in Austin, Texas or Montgomery, Alabama, we can get your CRM solution designed, implemented and trained so that your users will love it and use it. We define our success by your CRM adoption rate. So call us to get started!

Microsoft CRM 2011 Review Webinars

Join us for our webinar series as we explore the points outlined below – and hope to provide you valuable insight about this top-rated CRM solution. We hope that our comparison with Salesforce.com will help you on in your CRM evaluation.

Search terms for Compare CRM:

• sugarcrm tutorial pdf
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We often get asked about which simple CRM tool best integrates the sales process for Sales Reps. We can recommend ACT, Microsoft CRM and SugarCRM as the best CRM software tools available for Sales departements. This blog will focus on how Sugar excellently handles the Sales Process for users.

First of all, Sugar empowers Account Management. While ACT is contact-centric, (which might be preferable, depending on the environment), SugarCRM is Account-centric and thus provides and excellent overview of a Key Account. The Account view displays information regarding all involved contacts, leads, influences, opportunities, activities, histories, quotes, projects, and contracts.

Secondly, Sugar’s opportunity process is a breeze. Updating the Stage and Status of an Opportunity can be easily customized and more easily implemented by users. Need custom fields? Sugar’s got it.

Need workflow or automation in your sales process? Sugar’s got that built in. Once an event or meeting has occurred, it is now listed as a history item. Updating the status of an opportunity to “Closed Won” automatically updates the probability to 100%. This then affects the pipeline, which in turn simplifies reporting analysis for sales management.

Need Opportunity security? No worries. Sugar allows for simple or highly complex security models. Need to hide opportunities or accounts from certain users? No worries. Just create your teams and roles at the outset. Then limiting access for each new employee or sales rep is a 5 minute process!

Do you need a personal demo for this fantastic Open Source CRM solution? Then please call us for a free presentation. Our goal is to review with you your options. And our hope is that in the end you will feel well advised and look to us for further knowledge, training and services.

Do you need a demo or review of Sugar as an online CRM software (windows CRM application vs web CRM software)? Do you have questions regarding the pricing model (Licenses, Software as a Service SAAS CRM) and feature differences between the free/community edition and the  paid (professional, enterprise) editions? Are you interested in a SugarCRM upgrade or in need of a download to install SugarCRM 6? No worries! Just give us a call! We’ll help you understand just how powerful this web based online customer management tool can be as a hosted sales CRM software - especially in an Open Source or Call Center software environment.

Do you need a review of how SugarCRM as a web based CRM compares to Sage SalesLogix (Cloud) CRM, vTiger (Open Source CRM) or Salesforce.com (on Demand CRM) - or the differences to hosted MS CRM? Are you concerned with understanding free online CRM Software and your options? Do you have questions regarding how the world of online CRM, website CRM  and cloud CRM in a locally hosted CRM environment? Do you need clarity regarding CRM lead generation tools or CRM maintenance and support (incl. CRM Help) plans? No worries! Just contact us!

Search terms for Compare CRM:

• crm sales process
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Sugar 6 is open. This means that Sugar is already integrated with the sites and tools you need on a daily basis – like Linked In, Twitter, InsideView and Hoovers.

Do you need Lead Generation? Sugar’s got it! Do you need to easily pull in or import data from Lead Sources? No worries. It’s built in.

Sugar also syncs with Microsoft Outlook (2003/2007) so that all information and meetings can be stored within Sugar to speed up the search process.

This empowers users to quickly create activities for new leads and then convert new leads to opportunities. Does your team run better on CRM Sales Automation, Workflow and Alerts? It’s all built right in!

For a free demo of how easily this works in the day to day environment, give us a call. We are confident that Sugar 6 has the features and you need.

Do you need a review of Sugar as an ondemand CRM software (windows CRM application vs web CRM software)? Do you have questions regarding the pricing model (Licenses, Software as a Service SAAS CRM) and feature differences between the free/community edition and the  paid (professional, enterprise) editions? Are you interested in a SugarCRM upgrade or in need of a download to install SugarCRM 6? No worries! Just give us a call! We’ll help you understand just how powerful this web based online customer management tool can be as a hosted sales CRM – especially in an Open Source or Call Center software environment.

Do you need a review of how SugarCRM as a web based CRM compares to Sage SalesLogix (Cloud) CRM, vTiger (Open Source CRM) or Salesforce.com (on Demand CRM) - or the differences to hosted MS CRM? Are you concerned with understanding free online CRM Software and your options? Do you have questions regarding how the world of online CRM, website CRM  and cloud CRM in a locally hosted CRM environment? Do you need clarity regarding CRM lead generation tools or CRM maintenance and support (incl. CRM Help) plans? No worries! Just contact us!

Search terms for Compare CRM:

• crm that integrates with Linkedin
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Who is Accent Gold? Check out our Prezi-tation! Tim Priestley made this recently for our ACT 2011 Roadshow. It highlights the following:

1. our Core Values
2. our CRM solutions
3. our focus on business processes
4. our cutting-edge knowledge in the world of Mobile CRM.

Ever wondered what we look like? Check out our pictures?

Now check out the action pictures!