Deltek Vantagepoint vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

I have used Vision/Vantagepoint with 5 different companies. Where the business model is project-based it works very well. This is the rule for most AEC companies. My current organization does not really have a project-based business model as they have many, many small "projects" that never get entered into Vantagepoint as it would be time prohibitive to do so. This makes the use of the system very limited for all employees outside of accounting and unreliable for reporting pipeline and historical revenue data. This is not the fault of Deltek, however, just an observation of how it is used with my current company.

Incentivized

Sugar CRM is a good tool, but it's complex to customize. It often requires expensive 3rd partners to implement more complex scenarios that SugarCRM struggles to support; coming back with explanations was usually time-consuming and unsupported. The back end is overly complex in terms of what it needs to be, with many redundant database tables and columns.

Incentivized

• Consolidation of CRM
• Project data
• Project financials

Incentivized

• Great way to keep myself organized. I do not miss appointments with clients since within the system I can input my appointment time and also send out a reminder to my clients.
• It has a nice layout [that] does not seem to be cluttered. I find it to be very user friendly.
• It has customizable dashboards which I find beneficial

Incentivized

• Customer Service
• Fraudulent Charges
• Listening to their clients

Incentivized

• The back-end programming (logical hooks) for advanced customizations could benefit from a more user-friendly interface
• General layout could be improved by the addition of modern templates to customize the standard look and feel
• Support communities could be further improved with the addition of videos on how to do specific configuration, modules.

Incentivized

Our organization will continue to use Sugar as long as it remains cost effective and it addresses the majority of our needs. I will, however, recommend looking into other options once our needs increase and there is additional budget for some bigger named and more robust platform options. I feel if the application was friendlier to end users we would get better productivity as well.

It is ok to use; it is not the easiest to use in terms of usability and user-friendliness but it is not the worst. It still feels somewhat outdated. Many cloud options are cleaner or look more modern. But it is good enough and you should be able to get the hang of it.

Incentivized

There's a learning curve associated with Sugar. Right away, it's not as easy as an out-of-the-box CRM. Once you learn how to use Sugar, the system fits what your needs are. With any other CRM, you'd be trying to figure out how your company can best fit the CRM. You don't want to change your business cycle for your CRM, the CRM should fit your business cycle.

SugarCRM has never been down for us.

No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.

I would rate Deltek VantagePoint highly in terms of the overall support. You can receive support any time you need it and there is a representative from Deltek assigned to your account so that you can always get the help when you need it. Sometimes, they want to go more in-depth than I would like, however.

Incentivized

The support overall at least for us has been phenomenal. Anytime that the system has any Issues at all IT gets in contact from someone from support to get the system back up and running. Have never gone more than 30 minutes with the system not working. So overall I will be definetely recommending this system in any other company that I may work for in the future.

Incentivized

We feel clasroom training is essential to ensure user adoption and buy-in. Video and on-line training courses gave their place but being in a classroom setting enables the Team to make any potential CRM issues visble right up front.

Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.

Study, study, and study. Be prepared to train everyday until all processes are flowing nicely. The CRM is the elephant and figuring out where to take the first bite can be a challenge. But there is only one way to eat this elephant, one bite at a time. Systematic planning is very important.

Incentivized

BQE Core. I think that BQE Core is definitely harder to use, and has a lot of features atleast from the users perspective that dont seem entirely neccesary. Deltek is very straight forward and easy to use.

Incentivized

SugarCRM is a lot better in many ways then LogicsCRM which I started using when I started as a sales rep at Community Tax. Yet there is still room for a lot of improvements to accommodate a steady workflow. They integration of old CRM files seems to have worked great from Logics to Sugar.

Incentivized

Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.

• Provides a customizable option for many current and to-be-determined use cases.

Incentivized

• Overall seems to be more expensive than other subscription based CRMs.
• Has positively impact our sales team to make more efficient and accountability among sales teams. Also allows for high level aggregated reporting
• Has been impactful for all teams, not only sales to track individual activity on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis

Incentivized