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, 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.
“This combination delivers actionable, intelligent sales strategies that will improve revenue, maximize profitability, increase customer satisfaction and produce more efficient sales people.”
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.
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“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.
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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.