Longstanding Partnership Paves the Way to Reach
More Customers as the Combination Unlocks the Value of a Company’s
ERP and CRM Data
SugarCRM, provider of the award-winning intelligence-driven
sales automation platform, today announced it has acquired sales-i,
a leading provider of a revenue intelligence solution that helps
businesses maximize their revenue and profitability. Terms of the
deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition comes nearly a year after Sugar announced a
partnership with sales-i to improve business-to-business (B2B)
sales performance by delivering AI-powered revenue intelligence
that leverages the data of a business's enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system and CRM. This combination provides businesses
with actionable insights that improve sales, marketing, service and
support, resulting in greater revenue and higher levels of
retention.
“We are bringing together two great companies with complementary
products, a shared vision for customer success, and experience and
expertise at using machine learning, AI, and generative AI to
unlock the value of front-office and back-office data,” said Craig
Charlton, CEO of Sugar. “This combination delivers actionable,
intelligent sales strategies that will improve revenue, maximize
profitability, increase customer satisfaction and produce more
efficient sales people.”
Paul Black, Founder and CEO of sales-i, added, “The partnership
of sales-i and SugarCRM has enabled companies to gain unrivaled
insights into their customer buying behavior. Together, we’ll
expand our capabilities and accelerate development processes that
will benefit customers and create a significant market impact.”
“The current business focus on margin and the increasing
adoption of subscription and usage-based pricing models are
changing the economics of business,” said Stephen Hurrell, Research
Director in the Office of Revenue at ISG’s Ventana Research.
“Relying only on CRM data sells account management short. Upselling
and cross selling to the same customers is more profitable than
finding and selling to new customers, but it requires a fuller
understanding of your customer gained from building and sustaining
a long-term relationship. This new announcement from SugarCRM seeks
to address this need across many types of industries and
enterprises.”
While many businesses have plenty of sales data, the challenge
is sifting through large volumes of data to find cross-sell or
upsell opportunities, or simply make sure existing customers meet
their buying commitments.
To address the challenge, the two companies have been working
together, with sales-i serving as a sales revenue intelligence tool
that captures product, price, quantity, and frequency insights from
the customers' enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system.
The tool is able to share data with the SugarCRM solution, and the
pair provides customers with specific insights on the trends
between the organization and the customer at their fingertips.
The combination will allow the combined company of more than 550
employees worldwide to help customers unlock the value of their ERP
data. Some core benefits include:
- Allowing customers to see, interpret, and act on their own
customer data using the power of artificial intelligence (AI)
- Serving as an intelligent account management system that will
support companies that have large-scale management
requirements
- Letting customers outmaneuver new competitive threats by
unlocking the value of their existing data, while reducing
churn
- Delivering actionable insights that increase sales and
marketing efficiencies and effectiveness at a lower cost
There are additional benefits as well. Sales-i customers will
benefit from being part of a global company that will enable them
to do business anywhere in the world. They will also be able to
seamlessly leverage more advanced sales, marketing, and service
automation, helping them grow sales even more efficiently. SugarCRM
customers will have the opportunity to unlock the rich sales data
stored in their ERP systems utilizing the revenue intelligence
capabilities of the sales-i solution.
As a result, both customer bases will benefit from the combined
investment SugarCRM and sales-i have made in AI, machine learning
and generative AI technologies. This will enable Sugar to deliver
innovative intelligent solutions more quickly.
Customers have lauded the Sugar and sales-i partnership. Beth
Freeman, Executive Vice President of FSIoffice, an independent
office supply dealer in Charlotte, N.C., said one of the biggest
benefits of the Sugar-sales-i integration is increased sales
efficiency.
“Integrating sales-i with SugarCRM has been a game-changer for
our team, putting valuable sales insights right at our fingertips,”
said Freeman. “I love that we can combine soft data (such as
customer interactions) with hard data (such as purchase history) to
better serve our customers' needs. We are also more efficient,
targeted, and effective in our outreach since sales-i unlocks
insight into buying behavior and, in turn, prompts our sales team
in Sugar with specific product placement suggestions. It saves us
so much time, especially as we onboard new salespeople.”
In February, sales-i was named a winner of a 2024 SugarCRM
Partner Award based on partner performance, customer outcomes, and
commitment to Sugar’s product and service standards.
To learn more about the news, register for the webinar on
Wednesday, May 29, at 8 a.m. PT/11a.m. ET/4 p.m. BST.
About SugarCRM
SugarCRM offers software solutions that help marketing, sales,
and service teams reach peak efficiency through better automation,
data, and intelligence so they can achieve a real-time, reliable
view of each customer. Sugar’s platform provides leading technology
in the sales automation, marketing automation, and customer service
fields with one goal in mind: to make the hard things easier.
Thousands of companies in over 120 countries rely on Sugar by
letting the platform do the work. Headquartered in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Sugar is backed by Accel-KKR.
For more information about SugarCRM, visit:
www.sugarcrm.com.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240521347649/en/
Media Contacts: Erin Lutz Lutz Public Relations and
Marketing (for SugarCRM) erin@lutzpr.com 949.293.1055
Sarita Kincaid Vice President, Corporate Communications,
SugarCRM sarita.kincaid@sugarcrm.com 408.913.2090