Collabspot - March 2013 - SugarCRM AotM

Collabspot: SugarCRM for Gmail and GApps is the March 2013 SugarCRM App of the Month. Collabspot solves the problem of CRM adoption by integrating CRMs with where salespeople truly spend most of their time, the inbox. Businesses can better connect with their customers by having necessary information readily available in their email. Visit the SugarForge project

Your name, title and brief bio?

My name is Jérémi Joslin, CEO and I'm the founder and CEO of Collabspot, which is a productivity extension for CRM and Gmail users. Earlier, I built different products focused around collaboration, Google Apps, and email.Before I was eXo Social's product manager at eXo Platform and built the first enterprise OpenSocial container.

When you designed and built this app, what problems were you looking to solve for SugarCRM users?

CRM adoption. This is one of the biggest problems faced by salespeople riding the web revolution. Salespeople spend most of their time writing emails, but at the same time they need to organize and make use of data found in the CRM. Collabspot solves this problem by being able to view and manage SugarCRM data right within Gmail, saving salespeople precious time and stress from shuffling between CRM and email windows.

What inspired you to build this app?

We faced the issue ourselves. While working on another product we were engaging with our customers a lot by emails. Back then it was fine since there was only one person doing this, everything was in one inbox/head. When the team grew, this system didn't work anymore. We had to frequently update the CRM and make sure all the important information is there. It was time consuming to go back-and-forth between our CRM and Gmail to create new contacts, update existing information, and see what was in the CRM. Thus we were not fully managing and making full use of our CRM. This is when we started to build Collabspot. Afterwards, engaging with our contacts and managing our CRM was such a pleasure that it all feels like a game now.

What attracted you to being a part of the Sugar ecosystem?

SugarCRM is one of the fastest growing CRMs. After talking with some resellers and users, we discovered that we were not the only one with this problem. The community has been very open and aware of the current strengths and issues. The hybrid model of on-premise and on-demand is I think also very attractive.

What other apps have you been involved with in the Sugar ecosystem?

Actually, this is our first one.

What has been the most rewarding part of being a part of the Sugar ecosystem?

I think it's the community. It's amazing to have gatherings such as SugarCon where people come from all over the world for attendance. I was also happy to discover how open the community is in considering our product. I got the chance to talk with some important people in the Sugar ecosystem, and they were really helpful on how our product can be introduced to the community.

How has Sugar's open ecosystem and vast community made building this app?

We got great support from John Mertic and the community when we had questions. We also got great responses from the resellers we contacted who helped us refine our product and make it a success.

What do you want to build next for Sugar?

We are staying focused on building the best tools for Sales, Marketing and Biz Dev people when it comes to email. So, we will keep innovating in this area. We also welcome everybody's idea through http://collabspot.uservoice.com/. Interested people shouldn't hesitate to contact me directly if they have any questions or further inquiries: jjoslin@collabspot.com.