With use of its mobile app tripling year-over-year, SugarCRM Inc. is buffing up the iOS and Android software with a host of new usability and management features.

Many of the enhancements relate to “streamlining where the clicks are and making intuitive actions part of the flow,” said Clint Oram, co-founder and chief marketing officer. “We also did a lot around making the framework enterprise-ready.”

Specifically, Sugar Mobile 5.0 is getting a completely redesigned user interface that requires fewer clicks to reach important data, the company said. An important new feature for enterprise customers is the ability to distribute and manage the mobile app using any of the most popular enterprise mobile management systems through new compatibility with the AppConfig standard. A new security feature in the iOS app is support for Apple Touch ID for authentication.

The app will now natively support the SugarCRM Mobile Application Configuration Service to enable companies to customize the interface with things like names and logos, as well as to fine-tune colors, login, splash and loading screens with no coding. Oram called this feature unique to SugarCRM’s product. Finally, deep linking capabilities internal records and pages to be accessed with a single click, cutting down on navigation time.

For CRM vendors whose customers tend to spend a lot of time in the field, mobility is no longer just a nice-to-have, Oram said. “We’ve got customers who aren’t equipping their customers with laptops anymore.”

SugarCRM claims to have the most customizable app in its market thanks to a software development kit that enables organizations to access unique mobile features such as the camera and geolocation capability. This enables the app to be used, for example, to check in and out of customer locations and to take photos and link them to customer records.

Oram also teased a new intelligence service that the company plans to announce shortly for delivery in mid-summer. The service will transparently integrate data feeds from services like Pipl Inc.‘s people search and LinkedIn contacts with the CRM engine.

With about 5,500 customers, SugarCRM’s market share falls into the “other” category behind the big four of Salesforce.com Inc., SAP SE, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. But the company has raised nearly $105 million in financing and boasts some prominent customers, including IBM Corp., Audi AG, Reebok International Ltd. and T-Mobile US Inc. The company is notable for having started out as an open-source vendor, but it quietly stopped enhancing the open-source version over three years ago.

Image: SugarCRM