Dean Haddock, the Manager of Information Technology for StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization recording the lives of Americans, recently attended the open source CRM provider SugarCRM's (News - Alert) conference and blogged about his experiences.

"Now that we're two years into our SugarCRM implementation I thought it would be good to visit the annual developer conference in San Francisco," he wrote, adding "I set out from New York to the Land of Woz to learn a little bit more."

As Haddock says, "take my advice: if you are a small and growing organization, find yourself a CRM that fits your culture and processes, and move away from the spreadsheets." Using a CRM - "especially a web-based CRM," he said, "will make sharing data and reporting on goals incredibly easy and efficient."

SugarCRM is one such CRM option, Haddock observes: "It has come a long way since its inception in 2003. Last year they changed leadership, and Larry Augustine seems to be steering the company to a slightly brighter future."

Their model hasn't changed, as Haddock said, noting they still offer a free, thinned down, Community Edition alongside the fee-based options. But the software is slowly becoming more stable, and there is a new emphasis on the user interface and cloud services. 

"Information technology is all about relationships," he concluded. "It may be a misnomer that we emphasize 'customer' in CRM because there are infinitely more applications for a CRM beyond customer service and order fulfillment."

In related news, TMC's (News - Alert) Anshu Shrivastava has reported that SugarCRM, a provider of open source CRM software, has announced its CRM Acceleration Spring World Tour schedule.

The tour will cover 16 cities on three continents, and is scheduled to begin on May 05.

Company officials said that CRM Accelerations are half-day, intensive sessions that help business leaders develop and implement a CRM strategy.

At CRM Acceleration events, the company plans to introduce Sugar 6, which is the latest release of its flagship products. Sugar 6 comes with a new user interface that places a premium on speed, simplicity and interoperability with other Web applications and mobile devices, said company officials.