Salesforce
Salesforce is much more than just a CRM solution…..
Okay so we got this email last week from Sage with the “Salesforce” logo and a headline…”Meet the CRM that helps you run your whole business”.
First thoughts on this are not printable!
As a Sage CRM Dev partner investing in a visit to Summit this email presents challenges for us and for the Sage CRM business partners. The issue is not that Salesforce is taking over and Sage CRM is being closed (that’s NOT happening) but its the perception issue. If you read the email carefully (who does that?) you will see
“As the world’s #1 CRM solution, Salesforce gives you all that and complete integration with cloud accounting solution Sage Live on the world’s most trusted cloud platform.”
I put the bold on Sage Live. It is not there in the text. It should be in my opinion.
So let us clarify things as they appear to us…
Sage Live is built on one of the Salesforce app platforms. The agreement (I assume) is that for Sage to do this they must push Salesforce as their CRM solution for this app. (anyone from Sage or Salesforce should feel free to correct me…I will publish anything you send)
The other thing that they may have agreed is that Sage no longer sell Sage CRM as a standalone product. Right now, as I understand it, Sage CRM is to be part of the core ERP products (300/200/X3 etc) and will be bundled with those going forward. In reality this is not much of a change as this is what a lot of the partners have been doing anyway. Sage CRM** itself will be integration focused with those products also.
In terms of these core Sage ERP products, Sage CRM is the best choice as you get the integration out of the box and you get a platform to manage your business. I have often thought of Sage CRM as a platform first. For example we use it to manage our product maintenance. This is a custom entity we created and also expose via our portal to our partners/re-sellers. We have customers that
use it to manage customer warranties, agreements, contracts etc.
Hope this addresses some concerns and I look forward to meeting our partners and customers in Chicago next week!
** Referring only to Sage CRM on-premise