The hottest thing at Microsoft Convergence last month was the links between CRM and social media platforms and data feeds. Simply my opinion at that point. But similar views were raised by Steve Blythe, CEO of Blytheco, the perennial award winner in the accounting software channel for Sage North America.
“All of the interesting stuff is coming out in the CRM world,” he said this week. The conversation was a follow up on Blytheco’s recent decision to pick up the Internet-based SugarCRM, something a lot of Sage and Microsoft VARs have done. For Blytheco, it’s a first move to a cloud product. And Blythe sees innovation happening with the CRM packages, not so much with ERP. He plans to reflect that trend in his company’s business model. Right now, his business revenue is about 65 percent ERP and 30 percent CRM. “My intentions are in the next year and a half to make it 50 percent CRM and 40 percent ERP,” he said. The logical follow up was is there a financial cloud product as a second step to the CRM first step? Blythe replied, “We will be adding another two cloud products within the next 90 days, at least one them will be ERP.” The other will likely be HRMS. Now that I think about it - Sage probably isn’t coming out with a cloud accounting product in the next 90 day so I'm guessing this will not be a Sage application.