Users can now harness the power and flexibility of the Sugar 6 platform to quickly and easily aggregate customer data from all social networking sites to add structure to their Social CRM engagement strategies

CUPERTINO, Calif. – June 21 – Customers, partners and the expansive community of SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, have begun to unleash the social CRM power of Sugar 6, the most intuitive, flexible and open CRM on the planet. These new tools, integrations and out-of-the box capabilities in Sugar 6 extend SugarCRM’s leadership position in driving the value of timely and contextual data within social networks and applications to its customers.

With Sugar 6, the new release of SugarCRM’s flagship product line, organizations can better leverage social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as any number of social media feeds, inside their SugarCRM user interface. Unlike proprietary CRM vendors’ stovepipe approaches to social CRM which locks users into their system, and simply enable internal collaboration around internal data inside the corporate firewall, Sugar 6 extends the existing SugarCRM social platform – encompassing unlimited external data sources to foster social business value. Sugar 6 allows CRM users to listen, monitor and aggregate social data and tie it to their existing customer information in a simple yet highly structured manner – bringing order to the fragmented world of myriad social media data sources.

“SugarCRM is enabling Family Search International to take the next step into social marketing, extending our reach into networks and audiences which would have been impossible to perform with any other system,” says R. Dean Taylor, vice president of Channel Management at Family Search International. “If you are not creating a social marketing program in this business environment, you are already behind. We are excited about expanding our social outreach even further with the dynamic tools offered in Sugar 6.”

“The Sugar platform enables us to quickly aggregate and analyze data about our customers and prospects from all types of networks and sources,” says Chip Meyers, sales operations manager at Insource Performance Solutions, LLC, a leading manufacturing and supply chain labor solution provider. “With Cloud Connectors and mashups of tools like InsideView’s SalesView – we are in real time with our prospects and customers, and ahead of our competition. We are excited to build on these capabilities with Sugar 6.”

A Simple, Powerful Social CRM Platform

Sugar 6 continues the company’s innovative approach to social CRM, which has enabled users to quickly become more customer-centric and better able to listen and react to their prospects and customer actions in the social realm. New social CRM features of Sugar 6 include:

• Ability to quickly monitor both individual and company activities across various social properties such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more using Sugar Cloud Connectors.
• View social feeds right inside the Sugar 6 user interface, increasing CRM adoption, productivity and return on investment.
• Sugar Studio enhancements enable end-user organizations to build custom social feed views and interfaces.

Key Partnerships Bridge the Business and Social Web

In addition to the core platform capabilities, key partnerships have helped cement Sugar 6 as the most extensive social CRM platform on the market today. These powerful integrations and alliances allow end users to finally bridge the gap between the social and business web, adding incremental value to organizations’ CRM initiatives. Partnerships and integrations extending the social CRM features in Sugar 6 include:

• InsideView, whose SalesView product aggregates and analyzes thousands of data sources and social feeds to provide insights for sales and marketing professionals right inside SugarCRM.
• SugarCRM partner SnapLogic has also created “snap” integrations to sites like Twitter, Kiva, Yelp and YouTube that enable Sugar users to access and leverage social media from these properties free of charge.
• Synolia, a key member of SugarCRM’s European channel network, has created a simple to use Twitter connector for Sugar 6.
• Hubspot, a leader in the inbound and social marketing space, has created deep integration between its solution set and Sugar 6.
• Contact Capture by Broadlook Technologies allows SugarCRM users to quickly and easily import contacts from social networks and other web 2.0 sources instantly into Sugar
• Sugar 6 improves the user experience of existing business web mashups with sites like Hoover’s, ZoomInfo and Jigsaw – powered by SugarCRM innovative Cloud Connector technology.

“Sugar 6 enables fast, simple social media integrations thanks to the open, intuitive platform on which it is built,” says SugarCRM co-founder and vice president of products Clint Oram. “No other application offers users such simple tools for making the leap into social CRM, and none offer this at zero additional cost as does Sugar 6.”

These new social CRM capabilities can be seen in Sugar 6 today, currently available for download as a release candidate at www.sugarcrm.com. Sugar 6 will be generally available in July 2010.