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SugarCRM Introduces Sugar Suite 4.0
SugarCRM Inc., provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced the beta release of Sugar Suite Version 4.0. Guided by customer and community input, Sugar Suite 4.0 introduces powerful new functionality such as advanced reporting and customizable dashboards, campaign management, workflow management and access control, email processing and enhanced lead sharing.
"Sugar Suite 4.0 is designed to meet the needs of our community," says John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. "They asked for deeper functionality across marketing, sales and support, customizable reports for better analysis, and greater administrative control to manage the information flow across an organization. We thank them for their support in making Sugar Suite 4.0 the most robust release in SugarCRM's history."
Sugar CRM's Rapid Innovation with Community Support
Sugar Suite 4.0 marks the seventh major release for SugarCRM in the last 20 months. This pace of innovation is driven by the SugarCRM community of 3,000 developers and 10,000 members, which provides product direction, testing, translations, and modules to Sugar Suite. With over 300 commercial customers, and 400,000 downloads of Sugar Suite, and an application translated into 30 languages, Sugar Suite is the most popular commercial open source CRM solution on the market today. Sugar Suite 4.0 offers complete CRM functionality, flexible deployment options and an open architecture that allows companies to customize, deploy and integrate SugarCRM much more efficiently than proprietary software vendors.
BZ Results, a leading provider of marketing and sales solutions to the automotive industry, played a leading role in providing product direction and testing for the workflow management and access control functionality contained in Sugar Suite 4.0. "Sugar Suite 4.0 has my entire organization excited from front to back, as it represents a real community effort in which we could actively participate," says Rob Lackey, CTO of BZ Results. "The feature list feels like the SugarCRM development team raided my Christmas wish list. Workflow automation, customizable dashboards, enhanced lead sharing; every feature fulfills a demonstrated need. The advanced campaign functionality alone replaces an equivalent $10,000 outsourced investment. We are amazed just how dialed in the SugarCRM team and community are to business demand, as they deliver strong products to market with astonishing speed."
Sugar Suite 4.0 Delivers Broader and Deeper CRM Functionality
Sugar Suite 4.0 enhances and extends functionality across sales, marketing, service, collaboration, reporting and administration. Key additional functionality in Sugar Suite 4.0 includes:
* Advanced Reporting -- Quickly design and display custom reports from any Sugar Suite module in a variety of formats, including line, bar, or pie graphs. Customizable reports allow users to tailor Sugar Suite 4.0 to meet the unique requirements of their individual role.
* Customizable Dashboards -- Provides a "cockpit" view of business performance as it happens. Users receive personalized, real-time information on their Sugar Suite dashboard and can drill down on areas of interest to take action.
* Workflow Management -- Automate and control how information flows through your organization. Streamline critical business processes like lead assignment based on qualifications, cases based on customer importance, and marketing responses based on customer profile.
* Access Control -- Allows information to be shared or restricted based on user credentials. Permit users to view but not edit records -- and own selected modules within Sugar Suite without administrative rights.
* Campaign Management -- Develop, test, launch, and measure lead- generation activities with a heavy emphasis on email marketing. Manage subscription lists, suppression rules, and target group segmentation with the Campaign Management functionality.
* Inbound Email Processing -- Reduces costs by automatically converting emails into customer cases -- and incorporating escalation rules and queue management for load-balancing customer support.
* Enhanced Lead Sharing -- Automate the transfer of leads generated from marketing automation into the sales pipeline with one simple click to ensure proper follow up.
* Mail Merge -- Increase marketing efficiency by automatically populating CRM data into pre-defined Microsoft Word templates for direct mail programs.
* New Themes -- Continue to delight the SugarCRM user base with new user interface themes that can incorporate customer branding.
Sugar Suite 4.0 Community Preview and General Availability
Sugar Suite 4.0 is currently available to review on the Community Preview, a demo instance of the application with the new functionality for the general public to test and experience. The Community Preview is accessible to all at: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/products/40-preview.html .
The Beta release of Sugar Open Source 4.0 is currently available at http://www.sugarforge.org/download . The general availability release of Sugar Open Source, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise, will be available on December 16th, at http://www.sugarcrm.com .
Flexible Deployment Options to Fit Your Business
Like previous generations of the product, Sugar Suite 4.0 offers flexible deployment options so users are not forced into how their CRM system is managed. Sugar Suite 4.0 is available on-premise, hosted and appliance-based versions depending on user needs. Users can easily move between deployment options as their CRM needs change.
On-Demand
With Sugar On-Demand, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise can be accessed as a hosted application, eliminating in-house software installation and maintenance costs, starting at $39.95 per user monthly.
Appliance
Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise are also available in the Sugar Cube, a ready-to-deploy, stand-alone server that has Sugar Suite and all supporting software installed and optimized. It also includes implementation and remote back up support to get up and running quickly.
On-Premise
Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise are available for $239 and $449 per user per year respectively, for an on-premise deployment. Subscriptions include full access to the source code, 12 months of application updates, installation assistance, trouble ticketing, global weekday email-based technical support (9am-6pm Pacific time), and full production support including patch and fix distributions. 13.12.2005, SugarCRM Inc.
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