Sugar - Take 1

I attended the CRM Acceleration Summit in Atlanta this month. Hosted by SugarCRM, there was a good balance between both commercial and open source aspects of Sugar. I especially benefited from the "Sugar as a Platform" session. Currently positioned as a sales force automation tool, Sugar is expanding to include more community portal features such as forums. Basically, Sugar manages the sales lead to customer relationship pipeline and provides powerful reporting capabilities for sales managers. So, how does this tool benefit an IT shop? By using Sugar as the hub of the customer relations process, we believe there is much value in the Sugar as a platform concept. With the ability to write custom Sugar modules and share information with external systems, SugarCRM can be expanded to interface with helpdesk applications, business phone systems (call logging, notes, and automated dialout), and community portals.

Being an Open Source systems integrator, AlchemySI is strategically positioned to leverage such systems. Our ongoing development efforts will focus primarily in the area of extending SugarCRM to interface with Drupal (extendable portal system) and Asterisk (open source VOIP PBX). By eating the same thing we're serving, we trust the ongoing internal development efforts will yield value added benefits to our customers as well. Not only will AlchemySI foster a more rich business partner relationship with its customers, but we can help your company achieve the same results yours. Keep a close eye on GOMYSI.COM to see the fruits of these efforts! Stay tuned here as I track our progress down this new and exciting road.