Sage

Postcard from Dublin: Sage CRM 7.3 Release

Sage CRM 7.3: What’s New

Expect a fresh ‘flat design’, easier navigation, and a few goodies to boost your sales automation.

Official Release Materials

This fun, 2-minute video steps you through the new look and feel of 7.3.

Sage CRM’s Marion Carr posted on the Sage CRM Community with a bullet list of features and images, here.

Our Favorite Elements

Mail Chimp Integration

Right away, the Mail Chimp integration for e-mail marketing stood out to us as one of the most practical upgrades. The Mail Chimp product was specifically requested by many Sage customers, and Sage is offering it in order to provide more choice in terms of the built-in e-mail marketing functionality.

You can build an e-mail marketing group in Sage CRM, then sync that group with Mail Chimp. You use Mail Chimp’s web interface to send the e-mail blast, and then the product updates the person record in CRM with the fact that they received an e-mail marketing blast. (Nice.) If a customer unsubscribes, CRM is updated with that customer’s preference. Previously DataQuest advised handling e-mail marketing manually with a combination of group-building and Mass Updates. We’re delighted to roll this out at clients who make use of e-mail marketing.

The ability to make use of the Mail Chimp integration can also be limited to certain CRM users.

 Business Accelerators

This release of the product includes some nifty Business Accelerators, which are essentially a package of built-in alerts & notifications (for example, to whom we lost the sale), and a simpler sales/opportunity workflow.

iPhone App

Because of the preponderance of mobile, we applaud the movement on this. We do believe most of our clients will need more functionality on the app before we see full acceptance, however. You may review a brief post on the look on the Sage CRM Community site thanks to Eoin Shanley, here. The calendar looks good, and we appreciate the ability to add a person to CRM from your iPhone contacts. A list of Gotchas is below.

Gotchas

  • For 7.3, browser support is limited to Internet Explorer 11.
  • You will not need to use compatibility mode for Internet Explorer.
  • Mail Chimp will be helpful in many ways, but note that there will not be drip marketing features in this release.
  • The iPhone app does not allow progressing workflow or updating records. It does allow adding notes to an opportunity so if that is helpful we say, fire away.

Overall we welcome the new design and user experience. A majority of Sage CRM customers use the product on-premise, and it’s important that those customers benefit from the new developments. We’re happy to see this.