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Sage Group Launches Global CRM Initiative and Rebrands CRM Product Family
The Sage Group, plc announced the launch of a new global CRM organization to drive the company's CRM business around the world. The company also announced new branding that will be adopted worldwide for its comprehensive line of CRM products, underscoring the strength of the company's leadership in providing CRM software to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Worldwide, Sage serves more than 2.5 million registered users and 38,000 corporate customers of its ACT!, Sage CRM, and SalesLogix products. The new global CRM strategy is a first for Sage, whose business has been built on the strength of regionally based products that are designed to meet the local needs of SMBs.
Sage Group Chief Executive Paul Walker stated that the creation of a global CRM organization is an important step in Sage's long-term growth, allowing it to fully capitalize within the CRM market on its existing advantages in products, local service capabilities, and customer base.
"No other vendor today reaches small and medium-sized businesses with the breadth of product selection that Sage offers," said Mr. Walker. "CRM is not bound by the taxation and jurisdictional necessities of accounting products, enabling it to cross boundaries easily. We have a unique opportunity to use our leading global position, expertise and resources to bring effective CRM solutions to SMBs worldwide."
Dave Batt, who recently joined Sage as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Global CRM heads up the new organization that includes product strategy, product research and development, and product marketing resources. Mr. Batt is a long time CRM professional, with significant experience both within industry using CRM solutions and with CRM vendors including Microsoft, Oracle and Siebel.
"Sage is unique in its strict focus on business applications for SMBs," said Batt. "That makes Sage people true SMB experts. Our expertise and global presence with leading share of business applications in so many markets makes Sage the player to emulate. It's my goal to drive our existing leadership even further with a comprehensive approach that builds the individual strengths of Sage CRM products into a stronger whole for our customers around the world."
The Sage CRM products, each of which was named as a market leader at the CRM Magazine 2005 Market Leaders Awards, will be delivered with a new common branding program that includes:
* Sage CRM Solutions, and the tag line Freedom of Choice, branding for the entire family of Sage CRM products; http://www.sagecrmsolutions.com
* ACT! by Sage, customer and contact management for individuals, small businesses and business workgroups; the innovative product that created the CRM category with its launch in 1987; winner of the CRM Magazine Market Leader Award in Sales Force Automation, and Customer Interaction Solutions 2005 Product of the Year; http://www.act.com
* Sage CRM, configurable, full suite CRM for small and medium-sized businesses, winner of a 2005 CRMGuru Summit Award and a ContactCenterWorld Member 's Choice Award for Best Global CRM; http://na.sagecrm.com
* SageCRM.com, the only on-line CRM service that is also available for on-premises deployment; outranking all evaluated hosted CRM services and named Editor's Choice in the Network Computing September 1, 2005 comparative review of the leading hosted CRM services; http://na.sagecrm.com
* Sage CRM SalesLogix, customizable, full suite CRM for small and medium-sized businesses and small enterprises, named by Gartner Inc. along with ACT! as market share leader for small businesses (1). http://www.saleslogix.com
CRM industry analyst Sheryl Kingstone with The Yankee Group comments that Sage's portfolio puts the company in a unique position. "CRM is rapidly becoming a key ingredient of SMB operations," said Kingstone. "Developing a coordinated global approach to CRM puts Sage in a better position to capitalize on its global reach and seasoned portfolio to serve SMBs with different options."
Sage CRM Solutions offer attributes that are especially designed for SMBs, providing them with significant freedom of choice, including migration opportunities to more advanced functionality in the family as business needs grow, choice in hosted and on-premises CRM, individual user and workgroup capabilities, integration with mobile devices, integration with accounting, a global channel of CRM solution providers, and an extended channel of more than 22,000 reseller partners with expertise in the business management processes that CRM interfaces with.
The announcement of the global CRM initiatives coincides with announcements of the impending launch of Sagecrm.com in the UK and France, and Sage CRM in Germany, and Spain. Sage CRM and Sagecrm.com are the latest additions to the Sage CRM Solutions global family of products, supporting the company's strategy of providing SMBs with broad choice in their business application selections. Sage CRM is offered for both on-premises and online use, enabling businesses to choose the deployment form they require. The product is written with a Web architecture and provides two way integration to back office accounting.
"Three of the most important aspects that SMBs look for in business applications are selection, integration, and local service," said Denis Pombriant, Managing Principal of CRM industry analyst firm Beagle Research. "Sage's portfolio, integration strategy and extensive partner channel provide them with key competitive advantages. Sage's strategy correlates extremely well with SMB needs."
(1) Worldwide small business CRM software applications market. "CRM Software Applications Spending by SMBs on the Rise," Gartner, Inc., January 15, 2004, Topolinski and Close. 20.10.2005, Sage Software
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