Sage and Vodafone partner on mobile CRM

Vodafone Australia has partnered with Sage CRM to offer two new mobile CRM solutions to the SMB market.

The ACT! Mobility Suite will combine ACT! by Sage 8.0 and HandHeld Contact plus a Vodafone Blackberry and voice and data bundle. ACT! Web Suite combines ACT! Premium for Web 7.0 and Vodafone’s Mobile Connect Card for notebook access to broadband services via 3G.

According to ACT! regional business manager, Ken Prokopec, the deals were designed to tap into growing SMB demand for mobile data access.

Through partnering with Vodafone, Sage CRM was also enabling its channel partners to provide end-users more than a straight software offering.

Despite Vodafone recently reconfiguring its channel to focus on the business market, both CRM solutions will be offered exclusively via ACT! certified consultants.

“The learning curve for these products is quite high and we want to make sure we get the model right first,” Prokopec said. “After that we will look at extending the offering.”

The Mobility Suite is priced at $1500 per user and the Web Suite is $600 per user. Both product sets offer resellers margin of 20 to 30 percent of the retail price.

Accreditation for the ACT! products typically took one week followed by a half-day exam, he said.