April 5, 2007
By Colin Beasty, (former) Associate Editor, CRM Magazine

SugarCRM Has an I on Mobility

SugarCRM and iEnterprises, a wireless CRM provider, today announced Mobile Edge for SugarCRM, a wireless extension for SugarCRM users. Mobile Edge will make SugarCRM available on BlackBerry smartphones and can be purchased through SugarExchange, SugarCRM's marketplace for community-built applications and extensions. Mobile Edge allows customers of SugarCRM Professional and SugarCRM Enterprise whose mobile employees are equipped with BlackBerry smartphones to access CRM data. The solution uses an open standards Web services interface to integrate with the two SugarCRM product lines and gives customers the option to choose between a hosted or on-premise deployment. Salespeople can leverage customer contact, lead, and pipeline data, while field service personnel can access, open, and close service tickets while on-site. Both companies should benefit equally, says John Carini, iEnterprises chief software architect, as Mobile Edge for SugarCRM is Sugar's first client-based wireless application and iEnterprises' first CRM open source application. While the company started with Blackberry, Carini says iEnterprise is currently developing a version of the application that will operate smoothly with the Windows Mobile Client for use on other PDAs and mobile devices, which he says is a key to his company's success. "It's important to build applications that fit the particular device," he says, such as building the application around the BlackBerry's trackwheel. Whether somebody standardizes on one device or another shouldn't have an impact on the sales process, according to Leslie Ament, an independent customer intelligence analyst. When considering wireless solutions, Ament says it's important that companies consider the right tool set, as a recent Aberdeen report found that 63 percent of companies surveyed said selecting the right tool set is incredibly important. "I say tool set because there are three key components to the deployment of mobiles sales solution: the networks, the CRM or SFA systems that the salesperson is working from, and the handheld devices themselves. But it does have an impact on whether they're seeing the information in a native format, in other words if they see the information just like it appears on the CRM system." Related articles:

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