SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced keynotes, sponsors and the final agenda for SugarCon 2010, its global customer, partner and developer conference, April 12-14, at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California. Microsoft, Red Hat, Talend and Zend are among the industry leaders sponsoring the conference, which unites CRM customers and developers with companies and projects committed to building open business applications for the Cloud.

Keynotes

Each of the keynote presentation for SugarCon will play off the theme of this year’s show – “Evolve Your CRM”.

“Open Source and Open Clouds” – SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin will share some exciting new product announcements and welcome special guests to the stage to discuss how open source software is driving the next generation of CRM and Cloud services.

“A Family Tree for Humanity” – Author and Population Geneticist Spencer Wells of National Geographic will take us on an epic journey that spans the globe, using DNA to trace the migration routes of our ancient ancestors and revealing the incredible tapestry of human diversity created along the way.

“The 21st Century Customer Experience” – CRM Guru Paul Greenberg will outline the changing nature of doing business in the age of social media, and how your business can begin to prepare for this profound change in customer relationship management.

“He’s Back! The Real Future of Technology with Fake Steve Jobs” – Two years after bringing down the house at SugarCon, Newsweek Technology Columnist Daniel Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) returns to take on the serious questions in a playful way.

Breakout Sessions

This year SugarCon has expanded to eight breakout tracks that tackle the industry’s most important trends – cloud computing, social networking, and open source – and offer practical advice for improving sales, marketing and support operations.

The tracks are: CRM Strategy, Open Source and Open Cloud(s), Business Apps in the Cloud, Extending Sugar, Beyond CRM, Getting Social, Partner Innovation and SugarU.

Other Highlights of SugarCon include:

CRM case studies on BancVue, BMW Italy, Roxtec, FamilySearch, Thomas Cook and many more.

Over 30 presentations from C-Level Executives on the Cloud, open source, CRM and social computing. Executives from the following leading companies will present: Alfresco, Angel.com, BonitaSoft, Box.net, Canonical, DataSync, DotNetNuke, DRI, Entrinsik, Fonality, iNet Process, Ingres, IT Novum, Jaspersoft, Jigsaw, KnowledgeTree, Levementum, Makara, Microsoft, Mindtouch, Open Bravo, Omni Technology Solutions, Open Symbol, Pardot, Pentaho, Plus Consulting, Red Hat, Sonoa, Spoke Software, Status.net, Synolia, Talend, Zend and Zimbra.

A city tour of San Francisco

An evening at the acclaimed California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park http://www.calacademy.org/

Sponsors

SugarCRM would like to thank our many sponsors for SugarCon 2010, including Microsoft, Actuate, Angel.com, Box.net, DataSync, Fonality, iNet Process, Jigsaw, KnowledgeTree, Levementum, Mindtouch, Pardot, Plus Consulting, Red Hat, Talend, Makara, DotNetNuke, AgencyQ, Entrinsik, Omni Technology Solutions, salesElement, SierraCRM and Zend.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Over 6,000 customers and more than half a million users rely on SugarCRM to execute marketing programs, grow sales, retain customers and create custom business applications. Leading publications such as CRM Magazine, InfoWorld and eWeek praise SugarCRM for its ease-of-use, flexibility and open design. SugarCRM runs on the leading cloud computing platforms, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Sugar On-Demand and Private Clouds, offering customers unparalleled choice and control of their data and deployments.

Great way to think about this: Mobile carriers are dropping prices on unlimited mobile plans from $99 to $69 as their price wars heat up – just keep budgeting that $100 or so a month and you can give your sales staff all BlackBerrys and SugarCRM!

Martin Schneider writes:

I would like to think that core SFA systems have moved from the “nice to have” into the “must have” bucket. But this is not always the case. Hopefully, more people will see that with a $100 per person, per month budget – they can equip their sales agent with a complete desktop, laptop and mobile solution connecting them to their important data, their prospects, and each other.

Here is one of my favorite observations by Greenberg:

What the social customer is expecting is a human being who’s not selling products at them or just following a particular path, but providing a relationship that will be mutually beneficial.
For the salesperson, this experience will be the purchase of something by the customer. For the customer, it will be an experience that provides her with what she needs to solve a part of her personal agenda—be it in a B2B environment (such as meeting an equipment need) or in a B2C environment (purchasing a family vacation package). But the expectation goes beyond that. The customer is looking to have a relationship—if not with the salesperson then with the company the salesperson represents. Skeptical? Think about your own relationship to Amazon.com, and why you shop there: It’s convenient, and the site “knows” you.

This change in customer-salesperson interactions has certainly occurred in my industry, for those companies who are prepared to embrace it at least. How has this affected your industry?

From Core Financials and Project Management to Distribution and Manufacturing, Sage MAS 90 and 200 4.4 is loaded with features. You’ll be able to work even more efficiently the way you want to with additional features and enhancements focused on workflow and business process — especially in the inventory, purchase order, bill of materials and bar code areas of the system. Included in Sage MAS 90 and 200 version 4.4 are some of the most requested customer enhancements and usability improvements.

Highlights include:

• Upgrade more conveniently with significantly less downtime – Parallel Migration will allow you to continue operating your business on your existing Sage MAS 90 or 200 system while your new 4.4 system is getting prepared and tested
• Increase productivity and improve accuracy using more information in expanded Customer and Item Number fields to include unique information using 20 alphanumeric characters for Customer numbers and 30 for Item numbers
• Simplify the process of applying customizations to your system and reduce your overall costs with customization that survive future upgrades
• Dual grid streamlines your data entry throughout core Accounting, Distribution, and Bill of Materials
• Increase your productivity by accessing your data with fewer clicks
• Personalize your reports, views and other options throughout your system
• Access information easier using the new Business Desktop for the Sage MAS 90 and 200 Community site, training, support, and more
• Streamline your workflows to enable more efficient physical counts, display your system’s expected quantities so only the variances require updating
• Increased your speed and accuracy of data collection using bar code enhancements
• Plus over 30 usability enhancements — and additional new features coming your way every few months to add value through the year!

MAS 90 and MAS 200 4.4 New Features

MAS 90 and MAS 200 4.4 Pre-Release Guide

The list provided below highlights the major changes:

Bug Fixes:

Print to PDF format on invoices had a directory update issue that has been resolved. Please apply this update to resolve this error.

Feature Additions:

Sales order transfer to QuickBooks. Oasis CRM has the ability now to transfer over completed orders as either estimates, sales orders or invoices to QuickBooks. Clients may only select one option of the above. Note: if estimates or sales orders are selected, the transaction must then be completed in QuickBooks.

The list provided below highlights the major changes:

Bug Fixes:

Tasks associated with work orders staying open after the work order had been completed or deleted. Resolution that was provided and now all associated tasks with work orders will be marked completed when a work order is closed. Additionally, if a work order is completed, all associated tasks are mark as completed.

Feature Additions:

PCI Compliance Practices are being implemented. First, all credit cards will be stored in the database in an encrypted format. Secondarily, all passwords for user logins must be updated every 90 days. No blank passwords will be accepted within the system as well after this update is applied.
Ship methods within Oasis CRM will be matched to the shipping methods available via Z-Firm ShipRush’s product. For example, if you offer FedEx Ground delivery, the Oasis CRM system will pick that up via the SDK and display that as an allowed selection.
Auto-Charging of shipping charges with the Z-Firm interface will be allowed. If you have this selected, the mark up selected within Z-Firm will be pulled in for the shipping charges (e.g. if you have a 10% markup selected, then Oasis CRM will pull in the cost plus 10% as the charge to the client).

1. Disable Quantity Breaks unless specifically enabled per account: No / Yes flag. Available now under master system configuration – System Defaults
a. If set to YES, you must go to each customer account specifically, edit view, accounting tab, sales order and invoice settings, set the Enable QTY breaks question to a YES. This will then only use QTY breaks set in the QTY breaks tab in inventory maintenance menu for those accounts.
b. If Set to NO it works as it always has and any account can get quantity breaks based on inventory maintenance setup.
2. Global Discount Percentage at the account level. Go to edit view on an account, accounting tab, sales&invoicing settings. Enter a numeric value. This will automatically discount every order by that percentage without the use of price levels or any additional configuration within inventory maintenance.
3. Order and Work Order Specific Tasks with accompanying tasks dashboards and new TASKS SQL table. System Code Maintenance – predefined list of tasks can be autopopulated under Order Task List Defaults. There is no system code currently to default a list of work order tasks. Tasks are not the same as followups but are specific to a work order or a sale and when assigned to users can show on the tasks dashboard or on the sale/work order itself and then will appear on dashboards. Go to Customize my Dashboard to select those dashboards to appear.
4. Shopping Cart Additions: – Purchase of this module is separate for Oasis if you do not have it.
a. Buy now option allows less key strokes to add item to cart without having to drill down to item details. Option is not available for configurated items.
b. Once logged into their shopping cart account a user can repeat their last order or see a list of items previously purchased and pick and choose to repeat purchase of those specific items. This new feature requires the addition of the REORDER directive and new hyperlink in the Ecommerce Shopping Cart Site Configuration. Go to System Configuration and Setup menu under Reports & Admin. Go to the Shopping Cart Setup. Work with your existing site. Go to the Site Header Tab. Highlight one of your “checkout” or “viewcart” hyperlinks and then click the “chain” icon in the HTML window and copy the URL path that one of those links already uses. Next, In the Site Header area type in the Name of the link you want for the user to see when they shop or login, highlight that name and use the “chain” icon to create it as a hyperlink. Target is “Same Window”, paste in the URL copied from one of the other links. However, at the end of the URL line take out the directive from the one you copied and change the directive to REORDER. Additional assistance can be provided with setup of this through a support request.
c. Hide E-commerce pricing until cart login (yes/no) option now available under master system configuration – system defaults tab. This requires that a person MUST already have an account setup and configured in Oasis in order to login and purchase items on the cart.
d. Search by category now allows sort by item price.
e. Flat Shipping Charge default now allowed for a shopping cart site. Go to Shopping Cart Setup, work with Site, Shipping Configuration Expandable. Set radio button and the $ amount for the flat shipping amount desired. This will also show the estimated values for options other then standard, such as overnight, 2nd day etc as it did before but will deduct the amount of the standard from those options if the shopper selects to have shipping faster then “standard”.
5. Quotations and Sales Order Center:
a. Task Assignments tab – See #2 above for explanation.
b. Alt P –Pick and Pull button on left panel – strictly for those using bar code scanner devices
c. Alt S – Pack and Ship button on left panel – strictly for those using bar code scanner devices
d. Comments per line item moved to just left of the model number
e. Commissions Tab – allows split of total commission based on sales rep on order OR allows assignment of any resource (move to the right) and then can configure commissions at the item level and override each resources settings for this order. Print commission worksheet will show the total commissions to be paid, commissions by resource and commissions by item when used.
f. To Be Printed and To Be Emailed flags in the Payment tab of order. This relates to Quickbooks. These flags exist in QB. When set to YES on either one the invoice goes to QB and sets this flag. The YES/NO settings can default in all orders – go to Master system configuration, financial settings tab. OF NOTE: If you set the order or the default to YES for the TO BE EMAILED flag the contact on the order must have an email address setup on the account or the invoice will fail to transfer to Quickbooks.
6. New Shipping Feature for those using SHIPRUSH integration ONLY. Pack and Ship will now automatically add the shipping and handling and charge/price reported from shiprush as a line item to the order in Oasis AFTER completely printing the waybill from shiprush. This allows multiple charges for shipping and partial invoicing to charge for shipping per shipment. To disengage this feature at the order level, turn the flag in settings – to Add shipping charges to invoice as a NO. This question now always defaults to a yes. You must also have “allow partial invoicing” set to YES in the setting tab of an order or as a default setting in master system configuration under the “system defaults” tab. You must also designate your shipping part number to use in the System Defaults tab under Master System Configuration.
7. SHIPRUSH – version 7.0 supported. Must download the new oasisshiprushconnector.exe from www.oasiscrm.com/customization folder and apply/run at the workstation where shiprush is currently installed. You will also need to upgrade to version 7.0 of shiprush which you can download by going to www.zfirm.com products download area. Of NOTE, USPS is now supported through Oasis and shiprush. Also we utilize the UPS PRO 7.0. Currently we support Fedex 7.0, UPS PRO 7.0 and USPS. We do not support all downloads that zfirm may offer.
8. Inventory Maintenance – New Tab – Customer Specific Margins. Link the particular customer account and then you will be able to designate a specific margin on this item ONLY when this item is sold to this particular customer.
9. Recurring appointments – duplicate appt fixed.
10. FIX – QB Merchant Services credit card processing not working in WORK ORDERS
11. FIX – Shipping Method (using shiprush) now appropriately shows UPS or Fedex respectively.
12. FIX – Shipping Method – UPS Ground, 2nd day etc selected in shiprush now populating correctly in the pack and ship tab.
13. FIX – ability to remove a configured/related item from a PO
14. FIX – not able to change cost on service/non-inventory type items within a related group on a sales order.
15. FIX – in contract the primary technician will be used when creating a new work order linked to this contract.
16. FIX – documents showing in normal view under account profile but not showing in documents tab under edit view now fixed.
17. AUTO RENEWING CONTRACTS – In this version we have eliminated the need to have an invoice template for recurring/auto renewing contracts. There is now a “renewal invoice” tab in a contract. This allows you to manually link ANY part/service from your inventory maintenance to populate as the item/part(s) you want Oasis to use when it generates the renewal invoice over to Quickbooks. For those who have already had renewing contracts setup upgrading to this version will not require you to update this tab unless you wish to make changes. The radio button on the contract to “auto generate renewal invoice” no longer has a drop down next to it to select an invoice template. This is what the renewal invoice tab replaces.
18. New feature in Contract Management to generate a renewal invoice as a sales order or a work order. If work order option is selected it creates an open ticket assigned to the primary tech on the contract.