New Sage Software CRM Solution Earns Top Position in the Partner Relationship Category

The CRMGuru Summit Award for CRM Solution Excellence follows a year-long study by CRMGuru that gathered input from CRM customers, users and partners. The online survey accumulated nearly 2,500 responses between June 2004 and May 2005, with winners in each category determined by the highest rating in the CRMGuru CustomerThink Relationship Quality Index (CRQI), a composite score from zero to 100. Forty percent of the CRQI score was derived from the CRM solution ratings and 60 percent calculated from questions about customer satisfaction, loyalty, project success, and return on investment. Solution ratings included seven factors weighted by their loyalty impact based on functionality, ease of use, ease of implementation, service and technical support, technology platform, total cost of ownership, and vendor resources and stability. Sage CRM earned the top score in a special category that included only input from partners, such as resellers, integrators and consultants. A detailed report will be available in July at the CRMGuru.com site (www.crmguru.com).

“Small and mid-sized businesses demand local expertise to ensure their business applications work at their best,” said Jim Foster, executive vice president of Mid-Market Business Units with Sage Software. “Sage Software has worked closely with the business partner community for more than 20 years to deliver that expertise. This award recognizes our clear leadership in providing CRM solutions that are right for small and mid-sized businesses, delivered with the local touch they demand.”

“This year's CRMGuru Summit Award recipients are setting a great example for other vendors by practicing the principles of effective CRM,” said Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corporation, and founder of CRMGuru. Noting that 60 percent of each CRM solution’s overall score was based on relationship health indicators, and not just software functionality, Thompson added, “Successful relationships involve more than just software features and functions. I commend Sage Software for its strong channel partner relationships for the Sage CRM product–a key ingredient for success in mid-market CRM.”

Sage CRM is full-suite, configurable CRM software for SMBs that is available both as a hosted service at SageCRM.com and for on-premises deployment. Sage CRM gives SMBs the ability to move between from either hosted and to on-premises implementations as business needs dictate, keeping all online data and customizations fully intact. Sage Accpac CRM provides bi-directional front office/back office integration with ACCPAC Advantage Series accounting and operations management software.

In addition to Sage CRM for small and midsized businesses (SMBs), Sage Software also offers SalesLogix for small enterprises, a full-suite, customizable CRM software that provides an easy-to-use, integrated and fully customizable suite of sales, marketing, customer service and support automation solutions to address their unique workflow processes and vertical industry needs, and ACT!–with over 2.3 million registered users–the market leading contact and customer management product that is the defacto standard for helping people organize, access and manage their comprehensive customer details in a single, integrated solution.

Sage Software offers its CRM and other business management software solutions through a network of more than 6,900 business partners throughout North America, and through 21,000 Sage Group business partners around the world.