Our products have a universal appeal

What kind of features are you talking about in ACT! Sage, 2010?



It is a very exciting product for us. Just to give you some highlights, what

we are most excited about is its perfect compatibility with the social media, as

this feature is built into the CRM capability. So what our clients are able to

do now is to get a more comprehensive profile of the people they are doing

business with. This social media technology brings information from social

networking profiles and tools including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google

Maps, Google News, Plaxo, and ZoomInfo, among others, conveniently into ACT!

contact records. So users can quickly collect and learn more information about

their customers and prospects.

Thomas Abraham, MD, Sage India

So for us profitability for the customers is important who gets to map the

CRM profile in a much more comprehensive fashion. The other important thing is

to completely support in terms of e-marketing tools that are available. To begin

with fifty mails in a day draws no fee, but beyond that there is a minor fee. So

there is a cost-effective integrated e-marketing tool attached. For the SMBs, it

is a great thingone integrated piece for everything that they need. And there

is a fair amount of customization capability we have built in within the

software to allow a lot of more flexibility. Besides this, it also comes with a

cockpit view of what is happening in the business, where is it going and any

other details that you might want to quickly see.

Are you optimistic about the product doing well in the market?



The response to our products has been very good in the last one year. It is

especially because lead management has become a very crucial department with the
companies, since getting leads big or smallhas been difficult during the

recession. Earlier a leakage was not taken that seriously but now every single

lead is fiercely followed up. So demand for lead management solution,

specifically in the last year, has seen good traction. Real estate, financial

institutions were good. And we have done fairly well since our products have a

universal appeal. We added UniGlobe last year.

Do you see this social media padding up with CRM as a trend?



Yes that is right. As a matter of fact, we have just scratched the surface. With
more and more companies realizing that managing leads is important, our estimate

is that the business is going to be very robust. Customer is already seeing

value. So there is still a long way to go.

How are you strategizing your channel play?



Right now, we are looking at strengthening it to create a strong partner

channel. There is a need to do this, especially after our acquisition of
Payroll, a company that we acquired last year. It is now called Sage Pocket.

Urvashi Kaul



urvashik@cybermedia.co.in