General Consultant Discussion

And in other news today - for the 100th year in a row - CRM is projected to be the next big killer product that everyone scrambles to adopt.

From the story - CRM on pace for $13 billion .... well isn't Salesforce a $ 2+ billion company? That's nearly 20% of the CRM market...

I just don't get the ERP comments. The billion dollar question is what percent of that ERP revenue is complete new system replacement vs. ongoing maintenance and add-on modules. In the lower mid-market, I just see such an absolute desert of viable opportunities its alarming. Sure there is one here or there, but overall, I'm not seeing it and neither are out 6 other offices. Net new name volume across all of them is down probably 70% year over year. I just closed a small one today (NAV for financials replacing Peachtree), but nothing to build a business on. Who here, except those that a) Are part of CPA firms getting firm referrals b) live in an energy industry state like TX or OK are seeing a good year in Net New names and how do you define good?

Gartner does good work, but their definitions leave me cold sometimes. That $13B CRM number likely includes license, maintenance, related hardware and implementation services. Certainly you must include hardware if you want to realistically compare SaaS. The article is miserable about defining important details, but usually when Gartner talks about ""enterprise"" it means ""F1000 or bigger."" So the SMB market we see is probably not even in the study. And yes. new business is crappy now.

I hear CRM is big in Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_(phrase)

I hear CRM is big in Irvine.

Unfortunately Irvine doesn't actually USE any of their CRM products...

Actually Sage is internally standardizing on Sage CRM for marketing and sales activities. It's taking a bit of time but they are getting there.

Why they are not using SalesLogix or at least having Peter Wolf as their consultant is a mystery.

Does Irvine actually use ANY Sage product?

Sage CRM

Which office?

Irvine but others as well. I have been told by multiple sources that they are standardizing on it. Some offices are already up and running and some are in the works. I believe Sophie's group has been using it for quite a while.

Peter, have they made available any technical details on how they are integrating it to SAP?

Nothing specific. I believe they are moving to Sage CRM Cloud so integration will most likely be manual.