Understanding the CRM Options in Sage X3 ERP

While Sage ERP X3 does have a fully integrated CRM module which includes marketing/sales functions that link directly to the Sage ERP X3 Sales features (such as quotation management and sales order entry), the system is designed more from an order entry and customer tracking system. This leads to a discussion of what Sage is planning to help their existing and future X3 ERP customers in the area of CRM with the other solutions they currently support, most notably Sage SalesLogix and Sage CRM.

We are diligently working with Sage to help them understand both what is needed by our Sage X3 ERP customers from a design standpoint and also where demand lies across the various types of functionality in working directly with the design teams to bring these integrations to fruition. At the present time both the teams in Scottsdale for SalesLogix and the team in Dublin for Sage CRM are feverishly working to get the X3 integration to these products to market. We have seen a number of communications and blogs on these subjects and wanted to throw our two cents in so that you can have an understanding of what is being developed and when it will be available. Following are some of our CRM & ERP integration solutions.

Sage SalesLogix

The first integration we will talk about will be the SalesLogix integration. We began working with Sage on this over a year ago and the first iteration of the integration will be available in the coming months. As part of the discussion we talked to Sage about the most relevant connections needed between the two systems as a starting point for integrating between X3 and SalesLogix. Those pieces are nearly complete and now Sage is about to embark on what they call a handheld customer beta program where they will work with a couple of selected customers on tweaking and getting the integration finalized for release. Net at Work has 1 of the 2 customers in North America selected for the X3 – SalesLogix Integration beta and will have one of the first live sites in the country! At the present time it is our understanding that the first edition will support those customers on SalesLogix 7.5.4 and Sage ERP X3 6.4. There is some discussion as to whether or not Sage ERP X3 6.3 will be supported but we don’t have final word as of press time for this posting. Lastly, the question has been asked many times whether or not earlier versions of either application will be supported and we don’t believe this will be the case.

In the first edition of the integration we expect that there will be an ability to promote prospects from SalesLogix to X3 and existing customers from X3 will be imported and linked with SalesLogix. We also anticipate that there will be a fair amount of X3 data that comes into SalesLogix as read only information (Quotes/Orders/Invoices/AR Aging). We don’t have full confirmation of exactly what is included but these are the elements that have been in discussion. And, we do not anticipate that the first iteration will include Order entry from SalesLogix. As soon as we get more information we will certainly let people know. We expect to be fully involved in the handheld beta program as we have customers ready to integrate at the present time.

Sage CRM

The other integration will be the Sage CRM integration for Sage ERP X3. This development started after the Sage SalesLogix integration but we are hearing that both may be available around the same time. We are still awaiting more specifics on the details of the integration but fully expect that the “template” for the integration will be very similar to that of SalesLogix. Again, we have candidates that will likely be among the first to integrate so we expect to communicate more details in the next newsletter.

Discover more about Sage X3 ERP CRM Integration

If you currently have Sage X3 ERP and do not have a CRM system or if you are looking to get more robust Marketing, Sales Force Automation, or Customer Service functionality integrated to X3 we would be happy to do a sit down and complete a discovery session to help you understand how we can help and which solution would be most appropriate. Please contact your Net at Work representative to get more details or schedule one of these sessions.