The “official” start to the holiday shopping season on Black Friday has not left us without myriad statistics regarding shopping preferences. According to a recent holiday survey of more than 2,300 consumers by Prospectiv, an online performance marketing firm specializing in connecting women to brands, found:

• 25 percent will use coupons more often this holiday season;
• 16 percent will shop online to find the best deals; and
• 35 percent will utilize email to share great deals they either receive or find with friends.

Convergys, a relationship management provider, also unveiled findings from a recent survey:

• 86.1 percent of respondents will plan to shop online;
• 37.3 percent will do all or most of their shopping via the Web;
• nearly nine out of 10 consumers say the most desirable attribute is the ability to shop whenever they like; and
• 61 percent of shoppers prefer the online channel because they can “get customer service on their own terms.”

No matter which numbers you scrutinize, one thing is clear: online retailing is rapidly taking the hearts — and wallets — of consumers. I had the chance to speak with Doug Farmer, Convergys’ senior director of customer management, about his company’s survey results, one statistic that shocked him, and what he has seen in his work with Convergys’ customers in the retail industry.

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According to Nielsen, there are reportedly 57.3 million mobile users in the United States. And as Jessica Tsai reported earlier last month,  two-thirds of today’s companies have expressed the intent to deploy mobile applications to extend business operations.  Given those statistics, the future of mobile is now.

For those reasons and to expand its reach in the collaboration software market, enterprise 2.0 vendor Socialtext has released a new version of its mobile software. The company, perhaps best known for bringing Twitter-like status functionality to the enterprise, is now allowing customers to access its collaboration software via the Web on their smartphones. According to Socialtext President, Chairman, and Co-founder Ross Mayfield (a recent recipient of CRM Magazine’s 2009 Influential Leader award), the Socialtext Mobile platform capitalizes on the following capabilities:

1. Microblogging,
2. Activity Streams,
3. Social Networking, and
4. Collaboration with content through Workspaces.

Socialtext Mobile is available for all customers at no extra cost. “In terms of mobile design, it’s making the choices of what not to include, make it simple yet effective and how do you make sure you’ve done a  mobile application that’s designed for speed and for the different usage patterns that people have,” Mayfield says. He adds that the decision to host the application via the Web made a lot more sense. For users running the application behind the firewall, they have the ability to leverage Motoroloa’s Good Mobile Connection to provide additional secure transport to the Socialtext software.

With its Free 50! promotion, Socialtext is offering a free trial version of its software online for up to 50 users. Those who sign up will also be able to log into Socialtext Mobile without cost.

I’m moderating a Webinar on Wednesday, March 4th at 2:00 pm EST (11:00 am Pacific), called “What’s New in Mobile CRM?”, sponsored by Oracle.

It’ll focus on some new developments helping mobile sales professionals better manage customer relationships and increase sales while reducing cost. Joining me are Sheryl Kingstone, director at Yankee Group; Mark Woollen, vice president of CRM products at Oracle; and John Reinke, vice president of CRM On Demand sales at Oracle.

If you have any questions that you’d like to ask any of the presenters during the Q&A session, feel free to reply here or email me directly at dmyron@destinationCRM.com .

You can also register for this event here.

Hello from Denver and the Sage Summit afternoon keynote. Assuming I have wireless or some sort of ‘Net connection (pretty please, Sage?), I will be live-tweeting the event, so if you follow me on Twitter, I apologize for clogging up your stream. If you like that sort of thing, you can follow me @laurenmizzou, or search Twitter for #SAGE for more Sage micro-bloggers. In addition to Sage product announcements and strategies at today’s keynote, Olympic decathalon winner (and recent reality TV star) Bruce Jenner is here to talk about finding the champion within during tough economic times. (Something tells me that Jenner didn’t collaborate with step-daughter Kim Kardashian on this presentation.)

Just yesterday, Sage altered its branding a bit, dropping “Software” from its title to align more closely with the Sage global operations, Sage Groupl plc. Also yesterday, the business management software provider hosted a run and walk along the Cherry Creek Greenway in Denver led by Jenner, of course.

Early this morning David van Toor, general manager for Sage CRM, delivered a CRM-specific keynote that introduced new features and enhancements to the three Sage CRM products: SageCRM and SageCRM.com, SalesLogix, and Act! by Sage. Look out for a detailed destinationCRM.com news story on the new releases early tomorrow. To whet your palate, here are a few highlights which I expect will be expanded by the Sage exective team during the keynote:

• A greater commitment to Web 2.0 and Social CRM in all three products. The basis of this will be through the use of mashups. 
• SalesLogix 7.5 will “spoon feed” users who struggle with filtering through data and accounts. Includes new filters, tabs, groups, and timelines, to see the whole picture of the customer.
• Act! Mobile Live supports new operating systems. Sync Act! to virtually any handheld — even the new Blackberry. 

I expect much of this conference to focus on how to get the most out of your business given the economic climate. I attended a presentation this morning given by Sage CRM champion, Bill Hoffman on using CRm to drive business value in a tough economy. Hoffman had a unique view on the role SMBs can play — and he doesn’t see scaling back as an option. “In the small-to-midsize business market, we have an opportunity to thrive,” he says. “Your competition does not have CRM systems and you competition does not have communicative sales skills. They are backing off on marketing and training … When they back off, move full speed ahead.”

Open-source CRM continues to grow in popularity, and visibility, in large part to the reported success of Cupertino, Calif.-based SugarCRM, now disclosing that it supports 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in worldwide. Noting the growing trend, CRM magazine introduced the market as one of our Market Leader categories in this year’s Market Awards.

SugarCRM took the winner’s position, but not without intense competition from companies including Adempiere, Compiere, Concursive, vTiger, and xTuple.

The open-source pioneer just announced yesterday the general availability of Sugar 5.1, touting new capabilities in analytics, reporting, and wireless. At the company’s CRM Acceleration event last Thursday at The Westin New York, in the heart of Times Square, SugarCRM Senior Manager of Product Management Jennifer Yim gave a glimpse into the release update, as well as a look at the future roadmap through (tentatively) June 2009.

Speaking first about Sugar 5.1, Yim said “the focus is on deep CRM, and the analytics of the information in our system.” This is evident in the revamped reporting aspects, affectionately referred to as “Reports 2.0″–very Web 2.0-eriffic. Anyway, the new reporting capabilities include:

• user interface improvements;
• a report wizard that enables users to create various reports depending on business need;
• an ability to create more complex queries and filters by using the “and/or” rule;
• runtime filters; and
• grouping by matrix.

Sugar Wireless 2.0 is also compelling. In this updated functionality, SugarCRM Professional and Enterprise edition users can have browser-based, real-time access to their CRM on BlackBerry and iPhone devices. For these users, no separate installation is needed, according to Yim. She also insisted that mobile users will have the same functionality on their phones that they would using SugarCRM on desktops, including view, search, edit, and accessing any necessary records.

While this capability is browser-based, and not native to the actual phone like Research In Motion’s plans with SAP, its clear the next move in CRM is in the world of smartphones and being able to access CRM software anywhere, anytime, as fellow CRMer Lauren McKay pointed out a few days ago.

To conclude, Yim gave a quick look at plans for Versions 5.5 and 6.0, with tentative dates set for December 2008 and June 2009, respectively. That could especially change, given that last year when Sugar 5.0 hit the mainstream, the plan was to come out with 5.1 in December 2007 and 5.5 “in mid-year 2008″.

Yim stressed the roadmap could change, but still explained that release 5.5 will focus on enterprises, while 6.0 will delve even deeper into CRM.

Possible new features for 5.5 include:

• complex teams groups;
• sales territory management;
• social networking mashups; and
• platform enhancements that include full text search, calculated fields, and dependent drop downs.

Possible features for 6.0:

• calendar 2.0;
• Sugar wireless advanced mobility;
• advanced workflow;
• advanced studio and module builder;
• partner relationship management;
• extensibility platform; and
• Sugar Web services.

Keep a close eye on SugarCRM and its roadmap as other competitors continue to evolve and innovate in their own right and fight for supremacy on the open-source seas.

Yesterday I wrote a story for destinationCRM.com about Maximizer Software’s announcement of its Mobile CRM branding. Along with the press release, the folks at Maximizer passed along a YouTube video that demonstrates the need for accessing CRM, even on-the-go.

The video is pretty funny, and as Laurie McCabe (SMB analyst with AMI-Partners) points out, it’s a good attempt at viral marketing.

The topic of smartphones brings me back to Tim Bajarin’s keynote at the dCRM conference last week. Bajarin, who rubs elbows with Steve Jobs, says:

“These devices will represent 70 percent of all phones sold in the us by 2012. That is a huge change in thinking.”

Bajarin goes on, saying that generation Y will not even consider using a regular cell phone anymore. A phone without a text keyboard? Forget about it.

Mobile CRM makes sense. CRM is not an industry that ties its employees to desks. Sales and marketing people are often traveling and doing business whenever and wherever. Recently, I had the privilege to have dinner with a several CRM vendors, one of whom sells mobile CRM solutions for BlackBerry. At one point during the evening, the man next to him turned and said, “I need you.” He shared that all through the day at the destinationCRM exhibit hall, he was meeting people, making contacts, and taking business cards. He was frantically writing down information on the back of the business cards so that when he goes back and enters the contacts into his CRM system, he will hopefully be able to put a face to the name. However, as he told the mobile CRM guy, if he would have been able to pull up the CRM database on his BlackBerry, it could have been done in seconds.

I recently purchased a smartphone, mostly because I wanted to be able to check email on the road. I won’t share which kind of phone it is, but I will tell you that it’s not an iPhone or a BlackBerry. I have found myself, even after having the phone for about six months now, discovering new features and using it in new ways. Perhaps my favorite application is the quick access to Google Maps. [It means I don't have to bring my old fold-out map with me when trekking through new areas of the city. Basically, it allows me to still look "cool" in New York, even when I am incredibly lost and confused.]

Talks of mobile CRM has seemed to have taken conferences — and headlines — by storm. In the words of my dear colleague, Jessica Tsai, “Dude, I’m so relevant.”