Sage CRM SalesLogix

Harry RosenCanada’s top menswear retailer Harry Rosen, Inc. announced last year the implementation of Sage CRM SalesLogix. With the customized, web-based version of Sage CRM, SalesLogix seeks to enable customer service practices and manage marketing campaigns targeted to individual customer preferences. Harry Rosen has a past history with Sage, as the firm has also worked with Sage CRM Solutions business partner Cowley & Associates in enabling real-time Sage CRM SalesLogix customer data via mobile devices for its sales associates on the retail floor. Harry Rosen estimates show that sales revenues have grown 10% per store.

Harry Rosen selected Cowley & Associates to customize Sage CRM SalesLogix with retail industry-specific sales processes and reporting capabilities for 700 employees. The company evaluated several alternatives including Blue Martini, STS and Merchant Applications, ultimately selecting Sage CRM SalesLogix for its Web deployment, mobile device and system integration capabilities. The system allows sales associates to share data between each of the sixteen Harry Rosen stores and can segment the chain’s 500,000 customers by purchase preference. Associates also use Sage CRM SalesLogix to schedule service tasks such as suit tailoring and customer satisfaction follow-up calls. Sage CRM SalesLogix is integrated with the PCMS Datafit point-of-sale solution in assisting the company to develop intelligent marketing campaigns that target individual customers based on their purchasing preferences.

Harry Rosen’s MIS department designed dashboard views to provide management with status on each store’s and associate’s key performance indicators including sales by product category, sales associate, multiple unit sales, average sale transaction, campaign calls made and current year versus previous year performance. With a clientele of more than 7,000 customers, Sage CRM SalesLogix claims to a position as the CRM leader for small- to medium-sized businesses. Sage CRM SalesLogix is part of Sage CRM Solutions, a line of CRM products designed specifically for small- and medium-sized businesses; the line includes ACT!, Sage CRM and SageCRM.com.

Sage Software also announced earlier the latest version of its award-winning customer relationship management (CRM) solution, SageCRM v6, for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). SageCRM delivers a feature-rich and customizable suite of sales, marketing and customer support capabilities through a Web-based architecture that allows users the freedom to choose flexible deployment options including on-premises, on-demand and wireless. Version 6 introduces new user training tools including instructional feature tours and on-screen coaching, new data management features including expanded search queries and grouping functionality, and enhanced system administration capabilities.“Meaningful user experiences and tangible results guide CRM adoption,” said Elvin Monteleone, senior vice president and general manager for Sage CRM Solutions. “SageCRM remains true to this philosophy by applying a special focus on user and system administrator productivity in this latest release. Sage Software continues to deliver affordable and flexible CRM solutions that provide the multiple deployment options, feature configurations and integration capabilities our customers require to operate their businesses successfully.”SageCRM also enables bi-directional front- and back-office integration with Sage Software accounting and business management solutions including Sage Accpac ERP, as well as integrations with Sage Pro ERP, Sage MAS 90 ERP and Sage Timberline Office, in addition to a variety of third-party back-office systems.“The topic of CRM user adoption is always present,” noted Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research managing principal. “Retaining a focus on usability and training tools within CRM systems as they mature from version to version is a wise approach. Additionally, continued focus on business system integration, as evident with the Sage CRM Solutions product offerings, helps ensure that organizations have the necessary options to align their front- and back-office systems for data sharing.”

SageCRM v6 User EnhancementsA new Quick Start tab provides access to on-screen training and coaching tools including instructional videos, user preference setup wizards, feature summary captions and quick tips that assist users as they navigate SageCRM.An advanced search engine includes a redesigned interface that can now search for keywords within communications such as e-mails and phone logs. Advance query building supports “and/or” searches and allows users to specify search fields and values.New data segmentation capabilities allow users to create static or dynamically updated groups that can contain people, companies, opportunities and other data categories to better organize and automatically update records based on common characteristics.Enhanced Microsoft® Outlook® integration allows SageCRM to be used within the Outlook folder navigation pane or via a SageCRM toolbar in Outlook. A new company record can be created in SageCRM when adding a contact to Outlook, while also checking for duplicate records. Users can file individual e-mails or batches of e-mails sent from Outlook in SageCRM and attach global documents in new Outlook e-mails.SageCRM v6 Administration EnhancementsEnhanced SageCRM v6 system administration capabilities include an improved territory tree for moving records from one sales territory to another and for merging sales territories. Shared data fields and multiple records can be updated in a single step.Simplified field-level security throughout the product requires no coding and can be applied using checkboxes for granting or restricting data access for individual users, specific user type profiles and teams.SageCRM v6 also adds support for the telephony server application programming interface (TSAPI) and for computer-supported telecommunications applications (CSTA).