Deconstructing CRM Platforms for Growth
With the declining economy many CRM providers are offering separate parts their popular platforms to give clients cheaper ways to manage their relationships, and in the process they are creating systems that will surely continue growing after the recession.
Earlier this year, Sugar CRM launched the on-demand Sugar Express, which offered sales, marketing and support features, as well as price points for up to five and ten users per year. Operating on SugarCRM’s Open Cloud computing platform, Sugar Express is great for small businesses, but still offers enough bells and whistles as to be an economical solution for bigger businesses looking to cut back.
Salesforce.com is also following the small-business lead, and recently deconstructed its CRM platform to offer small businesses with one of the platform’s most touted convenience: contact management. The Contact Management Edition stores and manages contacts accounts in the cloud for a humbling $9 per user per month. It integrates with email systems to track conversation, and runs pre-configured and customized reports.
These simple sparks could set a new blaze in the industry—the Content Manager Edition will also be automatically available with integration with Google Apps (including Gmail), and is thus even more than a small-business CRM solution. A partnership with Google will provide Salesforce.com with a portability that will definitely put pressure on other CRM providers to develop comparable platforms.
[…] five users, which is comparable to the pricing of similar products offered by other companies. Both Salesforce and SugarCRM released contact managers for small business users this year, and though both offer impressive CRM platforms, it’ll be interesting to see how […]