TrustRadius Insights for Sage CRM are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Seamless Integration with Third-Party Reporting Tools: Users have consistently praised the seamless integration of Sage CRM with third-party reporting tools, particularly noting the ease of use with SQL as the back-end system. This feature has been highlighted for streamlining data management processes and enhancing overall efficiency in generating insightful reports.
Real-Time Reporting Capabilities: Many reviewers have emphasized the real-time reporting features of Sage CRM, citing its effectiveness in tracking leads and enhancing team performance monitoring. The ability to access up-to-date information instantaneously has proven valuable for making informed decisions promptly and staying ahead in a competitive business environment.
Cloud-Based Accessibility: Customers appreciate the cloud-based accessibility offered by Sage CRM, enabling them to work from any location globally and boosting overall productivity levels. The flexibility provided by this feature allows teams to collaborate seamlessly, ensuring that critical customer data is accessible whenever needed, thereby improving workflow efficiency.
Sage CRM was used strictly as a CRM solution for many of the clients that I consulted with. So, basically it was used for customer data collection and marketing campaign management especially with email circulation. The product modules were also used heavily for the smaller business clients. I mostly worked with smaller businesses with Sage CRM. They also had ACCPAC implemented as well.
Pros
Great value for what Sage CRM provides.
It provides either onpremise or cloud based options which is still important with some clients.
It links with ERP solutions that the client may already have especially other Sage products.
Cons
When compared to other products such as Salesforce it doesn't compare.
Sage CRM doesn't have the extensive app store that other CRM products have.
Implementing the on-premise version can be difficult depending on the host database.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think Sage CRM is suited very well for veteran customers of other Sage products. It is a great value for smaller businesses as opposed to other CRM products out on the market. It is very easy to use which is also something that makes it stand out amongst its competitors.
We no longer use Sage CRM but previously we used it as our client relations management system. It was used across the whole organization. This system allowed us to keep track of all our clients, potential clients, interactions with these accounts and contacts thought email, notes, to-dos, phone calls and meetings. It also allowed us to keep track of projects with clients. For my role specifically, Sage CRM allowed me to pull key reporting data required by stakeholders.
Pros
User friendly interface, upon moving to our new system this is the number 1 missed feature
Highly customizable to your company's needs
Reporting/Groups are easy to understand and flow in a logical direction
Cons
Backend of Sage CRM can be difficult to comprehend and it is always easiest in terms of changing.
Limited in dashboards.
Can not customize on own, must hire outside services.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you require web based this would not be suited to your needs. Though I did not have the cloud version.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
We use Sage CRM for our sales team, as a lead and sales tracker and for our email marketing. It's only used by our sales team. Our management team used to use it for activity tracking but we have since moved over to a different CRM for that as well as our sales tracking.
Pros
Lead tracking. Sage CRM does a great job of helping salespeople keep track of their prospects, if the salesperson uses it correctly and keeps it up.
Email Blasts. Our marketing team has used it since day one to send email blasts to all of our customers and prospects.
Support. We have had an ACT rep come to our facility a few times to help walk us through updates and new services.
Customization. The user database can be customized.
Cons
I think overall user friendliness is one of these areas. When I started with my company I was new to Sage CRM and coming from SalesForce. Salesforce was a lot easier to learn.
New functions. Our management team has reviewed other CRM's that have capabilities that far exceed ACT.
Customer Support. While I mentioned this as a strength, it's also a weakness for Sage. We have gone days without being able to get problems resolved in the past.
The fact that we have to use Outlook to link the emails we send to customers to their account. My whole sales team prefers to use the gmail interface.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think if it's managed well by a sales team, it can be a great tool - if that sales team is also willing to put in the time to learn to use all of the functions. I think if you are looking at Sage CRM, you should ask for a full walk through to see if it's something that you really think you can manage, it's definitely not user friendly for salespeople who lack in tech knowledge.
We use Sage CRM as our central repository for all customers we deal with in our company. As of now it contains around 9,000 customers. All leads and eventually opportunities are found and worked on.
We also use add-ons such as knowledgesync to hook into the CRM and generate reports for things such as new leads and tasks. It is mostly used by the sales and management team.
Pros
Rather high amount of customization when it comes to allowing your own custom fields on each screen.
Search/Find function is rather quick and breaks down by categories (person, company, leads, opportunities, etc).
Not very resource intensive when it comes to size and memory usage/sql.
Easy to visually see all past and current opportunities and their statuses.
Cons
Can only have one primary contact attached to each company. This causes quite a few issues when many of the companies we deal with have multiple primary contacts that need to be reached out to.
Report building is lacking and the interface to do so could use work. Better off building custom Crystal Reports than using what they provide.
Minor issue but no "copy" when making new users. Have to set up all the roles/permissions/settings individually.
Likelihood to Recommend
Only having one primary contact can cause issues for companies who are more specialized and custom. We deal with many people throughout the company so this can cause issues on trying to figure out who to contact. Creating advanced custom screens are also rather complicated and many times would require outside work to complete.
For retail it is much more simplistic and easy to use. Storing all customer information along with communication info is simple.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
We became engaged with SAGE CRM in 2004, so now been using it for 11 years. Whilst we have used and demonstrated and recommended on for Sales and Marketing, our initial usage for ourselves focussed around the powerful Help Desk or Case Management features and this was introduced to fill a hole in our existing CRM system at the time which didn't have any case management functionality.
Since SAGE CRM is browser based, all our team can use it from home or wherever they are in the field and this has been great when working with a number of freelancers who can be assigned just the case they are working on.
Because of its workflow capabilities, we received an instant positive feedback from clients who started to receive polished formatted emails giving details of their logged case and where it is in the system. This has in my view been a key factor in improving customer satisfaction over the years. More importantly, it means that our clients are confident that their issue or request is 'in the system' and thus do not need to chase us or when and if they do, they use their Case Number to refer to.
Pros
SAGE CRM is a very clean and easy to use interface and easy to navigate around. Users seem to instantly understand with very little training where they are in the system, which is not always true of other system we have used in the past. The Key sometimes is removing 'clutter' for that user.
Sales and Sales Manager tend to find it is very intuitive and since it is flexibly with its design, we have created various extra option to improve sales peoples management of Contracts, Events and even Samples, saving and eliminating multiple spreadsheets.
Case Management and workflow capabilities together with the ability to offer Self Service and embed into your website has been very powerful and a number of client have found this can save them tremendous time. Adding in automatic notifications through a powerful workflow capability can save hours of time for the Users
Flexible Reporting using a wizard approach means that the system is easy to train on and for users we find that they embrace this even more since they feel an ownership for the CRM system, something that all CRM User aspire too.
Flexible licencing and Editions. Not always well known, but SAGE CRM has two editions (somewhat confusing) the Cloud or SAGE CRM.com doest use the same naming convention, but these are Standard And Advanced Editions. However, in particular, there is a Concurrent Licence option, albeit at a premium, but we once saved a client over £14000 on a 50 user system when they migrated to SAGE CRM Concurrent from their existing Named Licence CRM system, paying for the complete migration in year One
Cons
In my view, there is no such thing as perfect software, it is always evolving and one area which I think would have been useful is the addition of a Contract Entity. Having said that, when needed it is actually once scoped quite a straight forward addition.
More third party integration focus is needed, although there is now email marketing integration with Swiftpage, at long last, MailChimp integration is now going to be available in the next release (SAGE CRM 7.3) and this will open up more opportunities. Continuing on this theme, further integration options are needed still in my view
The Look and Feel of SAGE CRM could do with a refresh, although this is coming, this is double edged sword, since the look hasn't changed since 2004, this has meant it is easy to train on (you can do themes) and users don't get confused with upgrades. Like all software, you need to have a contemporary design feel to help users, for example pencil icons used now for edit and gear icons for changes
Likelihood to Recommend
Having spent a long time now in the software industry, there is no one size fits all I have learnt, but having said that, SAGE CRM is a very adaptable and easily customised product that it can fit in a variety of situations and markets. The key in my view is ensuring that the software is a good match and sometimes the look and feel is important in gaining ownership. Sales and Marketing Departments find it easy to use as do Help Desk and it is a strong contender in many projects we are involved with.
Currently only one using it, I have a unique role in that I handle all add-hoc negotiations and for this I need a reliable database CRM to be able to track my interaction and follow up points. Critical for me is to have a logical flow of communication and to be able to act on discussions.
Pros
Layout, it is very easy to see the whole picture
Workflow, not only for individual contacts, but on the aggregate too, where in the pipeline are we with everything
Timeline in communication, critical in negotiations.
Cons
Make it easier to link related contacts
Dialing function, so that software dials the number and automatically records date and time of call
Interact with Thunderbird mail.
Likelihood to Recommend
It all depends on the type of organization, what one is wanting to track and the knowledge one has with CRM in general. Compared to Salesforce, e.g., Sage CRM has a much easier and logical layout, the overview is much better and it is easier to learn. I cannot speak about capabilities in total, but for my purposes Sage CRM rules.
VU
Verified User
Director in Professional Services (201-500 employees)
We use this product to track employees and it's used in conjunction with our HRIS system. Sage CRM allows us to track engagements our consultants are assigned to and it provides the history. It also allows us to house all of our client information, who the sales reps are, who the internal contact is for the account, what practice the consultant is part of, who the Practice Director is, who their supervisor is, etc. HR, IS, Contracts, Recruiting, PD's, Resources Managers, and possibly others use this system. It allows us to keep as much information available in one place on a user friendly, company wide, accessible system.
Pros
In my prior job with my current company, we used Sage CRM to create offer letters and send them directly from this system. It was quick and easy because their contact information was there and accessible..
Also in my prior job I was tasked with working with out employees/consultants on leaves of absence. IN addition to tracking in our HRIS system, we also used this system since it's internally accessible to managers and others outside of HR. It was a very quick and easy process to update Sage CRM to reflect someone being out on LOA. It was just a quick to change them back when they returned.
In working on employee situations, we are able access the work history portion on this system so we could see how long the employee was engaged with past clients, we easily located the supervisor, the sale rep and others we need to work with to complete the investigation process. It's all there, easy to access.
I find SAGE CRM to be very user friendly. I'm not very technically savvy and this system was not intimidating for me to use.
Cons
One thing I wish SAGE CRM could do functionally is to be better able to move around between the tabs. There are occasions where it's difficult to "go back" because it only goes back to far, or you have to exit the system and go back into the record. It can be annoying depending on what you are working on but it doesn't alter my feelings on the ease of using this system.
It would also improve the functionality if the user was able to back out of the email option when working in the system. By this I mean, if I accidentally click on the email address of the employee when working in the file, I have to exit the record and get back into it to clear that function out. This was more of an issue when I was doing offers from this system.
Likelihood to Recommend
I was not part of the building process but have been with other systems. I think you need to think about who is going to be using this system, how they will be using this system, and what the end user and the people buying the system are expecting to get out of it. I feel if there is a clear, defined, documented process, it would serve the purchaser well to be sure this system can do exactly what they want it to do, can be altered if needed, the costs associated with that process, timelines, and compatibility with other systems. It's also a great system for pulling reports for various things.
We sell and implement Sage CRM to help organizations manage any customer facing and operational goals as it relates to the execution of marketing, sales and service job functions. In helping those organizations we have found that Sage CRM can be an excellent tool not just to provide infrastructure for meeting company goals but to help with the execution of process execution as well.
Well over half of our Sage CRM customers are using the tool in all facets of their business and most of those organizations have also found benefit from integrating other technologies to manage their customer experiences and provide meaningful customer engagements. Integration includes marketing automation, ERP and order fulfillment as well as project management and billing systems.
Pros
Sage CRM is very intuitive and easy to use. The benefit to organizations using this system is that users will find executing daily tasks seamless and accessing historical information easily while selling or servicing customers and prospects.
The dashboards and reporting are extensive at both a global and a client level. In addition, these reports and dashboards are available through any interface (smartphone, tablet, browser). This makes accessing real time information in a meaningful way available to users easy through any device wherever the user is located.
Escalations and workflow are also very powerful. Sage CRM uniquely provides the ability for users to execute workflow from within the context of the dashboards. What this means is that every day tasks can be executed quickly without lots of time searching through client records.
Cons
One of the areas that Sage CRM is different is the way that Appointments and Tasks are delivered to the user in the interface. This presents a challenge in the way that most people utilize a Calendar in their daily execution. Many companies want to see a color coded Calendar for multiple team members and this is provided through a 3rd party.
Executing workflow through the mobile device is another area that users have requested. With such a strong workflow and escalation engine extending to the mobile interface would be groundbreaking in the CRM industry.
The data loading tools also need some work. In today's world we often extend the platform for unique entities and today we use 3rd party tools for any data migration besides basic customer and contact information.
Likelihood to Recommend
Sage CRM is well suited horizontally across the business marketplace. The product is easy to install, works across all browsers and mobile devices, and is easily configurable and customizable in a way that is upgrade safe. In particular, Sage CRM is a great system for emerging businesses that are growing quickly as the system can be configured quickly for a team of people and scales to hundreds of users easily. Lastly, Sage CRM integrates quite well with other systems and there are many examples of significant ERP integration (especially Sage ERP products) that would be costly using other CRM technologies.
We are using Sage CRM to manage all of our contacts. We are using Sage in the sales department to keep all of our meetings and people we are in contact with in order so we better plan our week and month to be a more profitable company.
Sage addresses the old problem of losing track of what took place at meetings we were in. It gives us a quick reference for what was discussed when we meet the client again.
Pros
Organizes companies and the employees that work at each one in a clear and concise manner.
Enables us to easily generate emails for marketing campaigns to keep our clients more up to date to what is going on in our company.
Support is always good so when we run into problems someone is there to help out.
Cons
Not necessarily a problem with Sage in general but at first, the layout gets confusing. This is typical of any program that is new to a consumer.
Easier navigation for getting email campaigns started.
Likelihood to Recommend
Like stated previously, it is well suited for organizing your contacts and relevant information for each one.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Professional Services (1-10 employees)
