Salesnet Updates Channel-Friendly CRM

Salesnet this week will launch a new version of its hosted CRM which will make it easier for partners to tailor and rebrand the application for their customers.

The Salesnet25 edition adds lead management and campaign management modules to the company's existing sales capabilities. VARs can build a customized dashboard to track and analyze prospective deals. Also new is an integral e-mail tool to ease mass mailings with the customers' existing e-mail infrastructure. A new WYSIWYG editor will help customers create mailings on the fly.

The updated services promise to make it easier for solution providers to re-name tabs and entities within the application.

Salesnet, which targets SMBs, characterizes itself as a more channel-friendly alternative to Salesforce.com.

Entelegen, a British solution provider started working with Salenet two years ago. "We started off looking for an on-demand CRM solution for our own use and selected Salesnet over Salesforce.com - mainly because Salesnet seemed not only a better fit, supporting our established sales processes in a way that nothing else did, but the Salesnet guys seemed keener to work with us as a user and partner," said Ian Hendry, director of the Windsor, U.K.-based company via e-mail.

Hendry says the addition of lead and campaign management is a big plus. Those are " normally the last two areas of any organization to see process automation. The delivery of a single system for producing leads and then managing the process of converting them to sales helps our customers to ensure they are getting a real ROI from Salesnet, a clear hard benefit to sales and marketing and one that is easily measured," Hendry said.

In addition, Salesnet signed Greenpages, a Kittery, Maine-based solution provider as a new customer.

GreenPages reportedly chose Salesnet over market favorite Salesforce.com. Greenpages made the decision when Salesnet partner AppsOnTap was able to integrate the new CRM services with Greenpages' legacy applications. Greenpages had been using home-grown CRM.

Hosted CRM is a hot topic these days. ERP kingpin SAP last week finally unveiled its long-anticipated hosted CRM service with partner IBM. Salesforce.com, the San Francisco company that pioneered subscription CRM, has come under fire of late for recent outages. These widely reported snafus may cast a pall on overall software as a service offerings.

Salesforce.com offers referring partners a one-time 10 percent fee on a year's service for each customer they bring in. (SAP is offering similar terms.) Other than that Salesforce.com relies on its new AppExchange solutions store to build a partner ecosystem.

Netsuite, San Mateo, Calif., offers an ERP/CRM suite and a recurring 30 percent fee to partners. Salesnet's partner can make recurring revenue ranging from 30 percent to over 50 percent for active customers, depending on volume. "The customer belongs to the partner," said Salesnet CEO Jonathan Tang.

For now, Microsoft is concentrating on on-premise CRM with its latest release, but is working on a version of Dynamics CRM better suited for hosting. That upcoming "Titan" version of CRM will support true multi-tenancy, a Microsoft executive has said. Multitenancy, already supported by Salesnet and Salesforce.com, allows hosting companies to put multiple customers' implementations on shared servers.

This story was updated Monday morning with solution provider comment.