A cloud solution eliminates those up-front costs associated with hosting your own hardware on-site. Rather than having a rack full of servers residing in your office, we here at ISM host and manage your entire hardware infrastructure giving you better scalability and flexibility within your organization. Michael Ferrari of ISM uncovers the true benefits to having “your head in the cloud.”

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So what is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) workflow in Sage CRM exactly? Technically speaking it’s a “set of logical rules that define the steps necessary to automate specific business processes, tasks, or set of actions to be performed on your CRM database.” We know that’s a little hard to follow, so ISM’s Michael Ferrari explains…

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Sage CRM Praised for Exemplary Marketing Capabilities, ERP and Social Media Integration, and Mobile Support

IRVINE, CA, Apr 30, 2013 (Marketwired via COMTEX) — Sage North America today announced that Sage CRM was listed as a Champion by Info-Tech Research Group in the firm’s Small Enterprise CRM vendor evaluation. Sage CRM also won the analyst firm’s Best Overall Value Award.

Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscape reports recognize outstanding vendors in the technology marketplace. Assessing vendors by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise, Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscapes pay tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category.

Evaluations weighed vendors and solutions on features, usability, affordability, architecture, viability, strategy, reach and channel. Champions receive high scores for most evaluation criteria and offer excellent value. They have a strong market presence and are usually the trend setters for the industry. Among its top marks, Info-Tech Research Group highlighted the exemplary marketing capabilities, ERP and social media integration, and mobile support of Sage CRM.

“Sage is a stable vendor with a strong partner network and solid product support,” said Anastasia Shteyn, consulting analyst, Info-Tech Research Group. “Sage is known for strong global reach, with a sizeable network of sales and support offices for CRM and ERP products. Sage CRM offers a host of deployment options, a modernized UI that provides a true mobile experience, and some social functionality that differentiates the product from competitors. Strengths include exemplary interactive dashboards, which provide secure access to various user groups and strong mobile capabilities (e.g. dedicated apps for tablets and crossbrowser HTML5 support).”

Sage CRM also received the highest Value Score, providing the most bang for the buck of the products that were evaluated and earning it the Best Overall Value award. The Value Score indexes each vendor’s product offering and business strength relative to its price point. Shteyn said, “While maintaining exceptional vendor credentials, Sage CRM takes social seriously and keeps a modest price tag. Sage CRM has the lowest TCO on the market and offers the most bang for the buck, including a comprehensive feature set, usability, and architecture.”

The full Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscape for CRM Suites for Small Enterprises is available to download here. For more information about Sage CRM, visit SageCRM.com or call 877-938-9910.

About Info-Tech Research Group With a paid membership of over 30,000 members worldwide, Info-Tech Research Group (www.infotech.com) is the global leader in providing tactical, practical Information Technology research and analysis. Info-Tech Research Group has a 14-year history of delivering quality research and is North America’s fastest growing full-service IT analyst firm.

About Sage Sage is a leading global supplier of business management software and services for small and midsized businesses. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs more than 13,500 people and supports more than 6 million customers worldwide. For more information about Sage in North America, please visit the company website at NA.Sage.com. Follow Sage North America on Facebook, Facebook.com/SageNorthAmerica, and Twitter, Twitter.com/SageNAmerica.

Copyright2013 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc. or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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With a choice of editions and deployment options, Sage CRM has a solution that can meet the individual needs of your business and accelerate your business growth, starting right now.

Learn More About Sage CRM

What is CRM? Find out in 5 Minutes.

Is your sales team asking for something to help them get leads from your website and manage their pipelines? Are your marketing teams looking to have a tool that allow them to segment their target list and have full ROI tracking on leads? Is customer service teams asking for tools that allow them to see what products and contracts your customers have? Take 5 minutes to find out how.

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Thinking about upgrading to Sage 100 ERP 2013? The new release boasts an impressive array of enhancements that are designed to improve productivity, such as the new Visual Process Flows. These graphical, job-oriented diagrams provide a visual representation of your business processes, simplify system navigation, and help you perform daily tasks quickly. Let’s take a closer look at this helpful new feature.

What Are Visual Process Flows?

Process Flows provide a visual representation of your workflow process, as well as a launching point for the screens and tasks required to perform each process in Sage 100 ERP. These workflow diagrams can be customized by department or for each individual user.

The Sage 100 ERP 2013 release includes a number of key pre-built processes as well as an easy to use tool that allows you to design your own custom workflows. Customizing Visual Process Flows makes it easy for new users to learn Sage 100 ERP and helps existing users complete tasks that are performed infrequently, such as year-end processing. They also allow you to model diagrams that reflect your unique business processes.

Improving Your ERP Experience

With some ERP systems, it’s easy to lose yourself in the complicated web of menus, wasting valuable time searching for the tasks you need to perform your job function – but not with Sage 100 ERP 2013. The primary goal of the new Visual Process Flows is to allow you to quickly identify job-specific tasks and launch screens without searching through the tree of menu items and icons. Even though you can customize the tree of icons to limit what a user can see based on his or her role, usability studies conducted by Sage revealed that customers were still spending quite a bit of time searching for the correct screen to launch for a given task.

Process Flows also make it easier to visualize how individual tasks relate to the overall business process. So in this case, a picture is worth a thousand hours of productivity.

See It In Action

Visual Process Flows are … well, a visual thing. So you might want to check out this Visual Process Flows overview video on YouTube to see exactly how it works. Even though the video is using Sage ERP X3 as the demo system, it’s the same Visual Process Flow engine that’s built in to Sage 100 ERP.

Need help figuring it all out? Be sure to contact us with any questions about Visual Process Flows or upgrading to Sage 100 ERP 2013.

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New to Sage ERP Intelligence Reporting?

Since support for FRx has officially ended, a lot of Sage 100 ERP customers are using Sage Intelligence for the first time. So we wanted to provide you with a summary of all the important enhancements added over the last several months, along with some online resources, user guides, and demo videos that are handy for both Sage Intelligence “newbies” and experienced Sage Intelligence users.

More Intelligence in Sage 100 ERP

Over the last year, we’ve seen significant new features and enhancements to Sage Intelligence including additions like Reporting Trees, Report Distribution, and the Report Designer Add-in.

Reporting Trees allow you to create a visual model of your company reporting structure without changing any underlying financial data. It’s perfect for companies that have a hierarchical structure in which departments (or other business units) report to one or more higher level units.

New Report Distribution provides fully unattended scheduling and report delivery to a file, ftp site, or email address.

Lastly, the recently-introduced Report Designer Add-In gives you even more control over all aspects of report design and layout for companies that have complex, customized reporting requirements that can change on the fly. The add-in features simple drag-and-drop Excel financial formulas.

Additional Sage Intelligence Resources

There are a variety of free resources available online to help you take full advantage of the built-in business intelligence reporting features in Sage 100 ERP. Here are just a few:

Sage Intelligence Knowledgebase
A collection of helpful articles and downloadable resources to help resolve any support issues.
Access the Knowledgebase >>>

Tips & Tricks
Subscribe to Sage Intelligence Tips and Tricks and get helpful report writing and Excel tips along with useful how-to articles delivered right to your inbox on a monthly basis.
Intelligence Tips Delivered to your Inbox >>>

Quick Reference Guide
Everything you need to know about Sage Intelligence in one convenient place.
Download the Quick Reference Guide (PDF) >>>

Report Designer How To Series
Learn all about the new Sage Intelligence Report Designer in this series of helpful how-to videos on YouTube.
Launch the Videos >>>

Contact us with questions or if you need help getting started with Sage 100 Intelligence Reporting.

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Sage CRM – In the Cloud or On-Premise?

You Have Options with Sage CRM

If you’ve been considering Sage CRM but still wondering which version is right for you – in the cloud or in your server room – this article can provide some helpful insight.

Sage CRM Cloud

Sage CRM Cloud is ideal for companies that want to get up and running quickly or have limited in-house IT expertise. Since it’s in the cloud you don’t have to worry about managing servers and workstations, and nightly database backups are performed automatically.

On the financial side, there is no hardware or software to purchase so the up-front costs are minimal. Essentially you’re “renting” Sage CRM, paying monthly for the use of software-as-a-service (SaaS).

One aspect of Sage CRM Cloud to consider is that it does not integrate with your Sage 100 ERP system. Therefore, you wouldn’t experience the workflow and data sharing benefits we’ve discussed in previous newsletters of connecting your sales and marketing activities with back-office accounting and operations in one single system and database.

Sage CRM On-Premise

Implementing Sage CRM On-Premise is all about control, ownership, and integration. Not only do you benefit from the built-in integration between Sage CRM and Sage 100 ERP, you also have the flexibility to integrate Sage CRM with other software applications you might be using to run your business like Microsoft Exchange Server, a computer telephony system for customer support, an e-commerce shopping cart, industry-specific or 3rd party applications, and more.

While Sage CRM Cloud has some customization capabilities, Sage CRM On-Premise provides advanced customization that allows you to modify the software to conform to your processes and work exactly the way you need it to.

Lastly since you purchase and own the software, you’re up-front costs are higher while the total cost of ownership over time is lower. Plus, some companies prefer to maintain control of sales and customer data at their own location.

The Power of Choice
While Sage CRM offers two very different deployment options, both offer the full range of modules including sales, marketing, and customer service. In fact, the features and functions are nearly identical. And no matter which route you choose, rest assured that you won’t be locked in because you can migrate between cloud-based Sage CRM and on-premise Sage CRM at any time!

Be sure to Contact Us with your questions or to discuss using Sage CRM at your company.

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Contact ISM for a $200 Off Promo Code Before You Register. Contact spalumbo@goism.com For More Information

Sage Summit is the largest gathering of the year for Sage customers and business partners. And like nowhere else, it will help you become more productive, push the envelope, see what’s working for others, and bring a new energy to your workplace.

What to Expect

• Discussions on the most talked-about trends
• Opportunities to see and touch new technologies in the Expo
• Best practices to help you master your Sage solution
• One-of-a-kind collaborative activities that make networking fun
• Expert guidance from the kind of people you don’t run into every day

Why Attend

The trajectory of your career and your business is often determined by how well you understand and use technology. Sage Summit is the one place you can go year after year to stay at the forefront of it all. Join us and put yourself ahead of the technological curve. Plus discover tips and best practices that will help you master your Sage solution.

See New Products

Be among the first to see and explore the newest technology available for your industry.

Develop Professionally

Earn continuing professional education (CPE) credits—up to 34 for partners and 18 for customers.

Go to the Source

Learn from the experts—the people who implement, support, and develop Sage solutions will host many sessions and networking events.

Bring Home Best Practices

Learn tips that will help you work smarter and faster, starting the very next day.

Push the Envelope

Learn how technology can move your business ahead. See how it’s already being done.

Exchange Ideas at Sage City

Hear what’s working for others in your industry and learn to adapt your organization’s approach.

Create Professional Relationships

Grab breakfast, lunch, or a drink and make connections that will help you throughout the year.

Bring New Visionary Energy to Work

Get exposed to new ways of thinking, working, and doing.

Keep Up to Date on Trends

The most talked about tech trends for 2013—including cloud, mobility, and analytics—will be spotlighted.

Have Fun and Let Loose

After a full day of learning, you’ll need some downtime. Sage Summit offers plenty of ways to relax.

Have a question for us about Sage Summit 2013? Send it to us here:

Part of our complimentary Lunch-n-Learn Series:

How can you leverage Sage’s flagship customer relationship management tool with your Sage 100 ERP solution? Join us April 17th to learn how.

But at this point you may be asking yourself, is ERP and CRM integration really necessary? The simple fact of the matter is that for many businesses, especially those with a high volume of sales transactions, the benefits are almost immediately noticeable. Integrated ERP and CRM systems allow your company to fully track and engage in customer transactions, from the very beginnings of the lead phase to a closed sale, every step of the way.

Here are just a few reasons integrating your ERP and CRM systems will benefit every aspect of your business:

1.Integrated marketing campaigns and follow-ups ensure investment return is tracked and maximized.

2.Increase your sales wins through better organization and contact tracking by using the in-depth dashboard, opportunity, forecast and lead management tool.

3.Integrate contact and account information, ensuring billing and shipping addresses are consistent with sales and support information.

4.Increase customer retention and loyalty by empowering them with self-service features.

5.Improve quality of customer service calls with well-informed and empowered staff.

Register now to save your spot for April 17th.

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