SugarCRM and IBM partner will deliver a social CRM experience for users via IBM's LotusLive collaboration suite.
ORLANDO, Fla.
--
SugarCRM, a provider of CRM
software, has announced a new integration with the
IBM LotusLive collaboration suite.
This
announcement is the first in a series of offerings following SugarCRM joining
the IBM Global Alliance Portfolio as a cloud-solutions provider, said Larry
Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, in an interview with eWEEK at the Lotusphere 2011
conference here.
"The
integration of LotusLive capabilities with SugarCRM provides a powerful set of
tools for all of our users," Augustin said in a statement. "Now, sales and
support professionals can connect directly with prospects and customers in an
instant, helping to provide higher service levels and shorter sales cycles."
SugarCRM demonstrated
the integration with LotusLive at its booth at
Lotusphere
2011. The LotusLive integration with Sugar provides sales, marketing and
customer support professionals with a fully integrated user experience; all the
power and flexibility of LotusLive File Sharing and Online Meetings is
accessible within the Sugar application. Moreover, since LotusLive and Sugar
are cloud-based solutions, no software installation is required.
The
integration between SugarCRM and LotusLive enables Sugar users to:
manage
meetings at the account, contact, opportunity and support-case level;
access
LotusLive directly from the Sugar Shortcut Bar;
launch
Web and audio meetings directly from the Sugar user interface; and
attach
notes and documents to a Sugar record, and share them with customers via
LotusLive.
"The
integration between LotusLive and SugarCRM is a no-brainer," said Clint Oram,
co-founder and chief technology officer at SugarCRM. "The simple fact is that
everyone working with customers today can benefit from simple, intuitive Web-based
tools to better connect and share information. Sugar and LotusLive together
does just that."
As a member of
the Global Alliance Portfolio in the Cloud Solutions area, SugarCRM will work
with IBM to provide integrated cloud solutions between SugarCRM and a number of
IBM offerings.
The LotusLive
integration is targeted to be generally available to all SugarCRM users later
this spring.
"This
integration came out of nine months of us working with LotusLive and out of the
hope that Sugar could be a valued solution that we could marry with LotusLive
and complement that," Oram told eWEEK. "We bring the sticky factor, and they
bring the social factor. LotusLive enables us a social tie-in to CRM. It's all
about solving business problems."
In addition,
Oram said that although other vendors are making plays in the social CRM arena,
"The LotusLive team has really taken the hype out of social business. There is
no need try to be like Facebook. What I need to do is enable a customer on
Facebook to interact with a company if that customer likes interacting on
Facebook. Our strategy is to enable a user to use the existing mechanism they
use. That's where you get the real value out of social CRM."
For more
information, and to receive a free trial of Sugar 6, visit
http://www.sugarcrm.com/lotuslive.
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