Velaro's Integration of Live Chat with SugarCRM Expands CRM Functionality

BALTIMORE, April 15, 2010 – Velaro, Inc., the developer of the multi-award winning live chat product, officially announced its integration with SugarCRM, the world's leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. This integration creates a real-time customer touch point for SugarCRM users and provides a 360 degree view of customer information.

With the addition of Velaro's live chat integration with SugarCRM, a number of sales and support processes are significantly expanded and streamlined. For example, businesses are able to create leads, support cases, and contacts from Velaro's chat window. Then upon completion of the chat, transcripts are automatically attached to a SugarCRM record.

Live chat for SugarCRM streamlines sales process for Healing Wings Healthcare of America

"With the dramatically ever-changing healthcare market, it's important to us, as a major provider of individualized medical insurance plans for individuals, families, and businesses, to be aware of what our clients feel about the market and how we relate to them," said Costi Hinn, President Healing Wings Healthcare of America.

"These changes, by and large, are reflective of Congressional actions and the daily news, and require monitoring — not monthly or weekly — but on a day to day and even an hour to hour basis, so that we can effectively provide our clients the best possible healthcare solutions. Our nationwide network of agents also needs to talk directly with potential clients to assure we are right on target with what they need most.

"We have selected Velaro to implement and streamline this integration with our SugarCRM contact management platform, to put Healing Wings Healthcare of America at the forefront customer service and response in a very volatile marketplace."

At a time when more and more businesses are looking to the cloud for software solutions, Velaro has taken the unique and timely approach to offer application integration as a key feature to critical business software-as-a-service applications including SugarCRM, one of the world's most widely-used CRM systems. This has allowed Velaro to become the most versatile live chat provider in the marketplace.

"Providing a universal view of customer information to sales and support staff is critical in today's market. The idea of juggling multiple applications in different windows to manage customer data is antiquated. Velaro's integration with SugarCRM enables businesses instant access to CRM records in real-time from the chat window. Velaro's integrations go far beyond the typical placement of a web control being placed inside a desktop application. Velaro provides a rich integration by using SugarCRM's web services API to connect our click-to-chat service directly to SugarCRM. This allows us to simplify usage and control a customer's complete record as they navigate your web site," stated Alex Bloom, President of Velaro.

"The addition of Velaro's chat capabilities opens up potential as an invaluable tool for all types of SugarCRM users," said Clint Oram, co-founder and vice president of products at SugarCRM. "Live chat from Velaro gives us the best ability to enhance collaboration scenarios for marketing and sales professionals, as well as enable greater levels of service for support and other customer-facing users of SugarCRM. While the combined tools offer great productivity gains for users; perhaps the greatest value is the ability to offer great customer experiences to drive higher satisfaction, loyalty and profitability for our user organizations."

About Velaro
Founded in 2000, Velaro is an established leader in click-to-chat, click-to-call, and intelligent engagement. Velaro won independently rated live chat awards in '05, '06, '08, '09 and 2010. With 99.98% uptime guaranteed, Velaro is the solution of choice for leading companies such as LG Electronics, Blue Cross Blue Shield, MarketStar, Experian, Toro, and Epicor. Visit http://www.velaro.com for more information. Velaro will be presenting at SugarCon on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010.

About SugarCRM
SugarCRM is the world's leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Over 6,000 customers and more than half a million users rely on SugarCRM to execute marketing programs, grow sales, retain customers and create custom business applications. Leading publications such as CRM Magazine, InfoWorld and eWeek praise SugarCRM for its ease-of-use, flexibility and open design. SugarCRM runs on the leading cloud computing platforms, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Sugar On-Demand and Private Clouds, offering customers unparalleled choice and control of their data and deployments.
For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll-free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit www.sugarcrm.com.