Sage CRM: Simple and adequate...
October 02, 2015

Sage CRM: Simple and adequate...

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Sage CRM On-Premise

Overall Satisfaction with Sage CRM

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Lead and opportunity generation is simple and efficient
  • Trying to connect it to Sage 100 caused massive issues which wiped out contacts. We decided afterwards never to link them up again even if Sage claimed they "fixed" the issues.
  • Tracking current opportunities and having weekly meetings around those using the CRM has increased focus on the leads/opportunities.
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.

Sage CRM Feature Ratings

Customer data management / contact management
8
Workflow management
6
Territory management
9
Opportunity management
9
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
2
Contract management
3
Quote & order management
8
Interaction tracking
10
Channel / partner relationship management
6
Case management
8
Lead management
10
Task management
9
Reporting
1
Forecasting
8
Pipeline visualization
10
Customizable reports
2
Custom fields
10
Custom objects
10
Scripting environment
4
Role-based user permissions
6
Single sign-on capability
6
Social data
5
Social engagement
5
Marketing automation
5
Mobile access
6

Using Sage CRM

Mostly sales related along with some managers and the owner to keep an eye on what is going on throughout the company.
1 - Basic understanding and knowledge of software. SQL and crystal knowledge is a plus. The custom additions can be learned rather simply however the interface to do so is not the most pleasant in the world.
  • Lead generation
  • Opportunity review and progress
  • Repository for all company and contact information.
  • Export all data for various email campaigns or advance graphs/forecasting
  • Better mobile support for remote users and sales persons.
Might look into alternatives simply to see what is out there. We are upgrading our hardware and software (sql) so we plan to review.

Sage CRM Implementation

The implementation and upgrades were rather quick and straight forward.

Attempting to link Sage CRM with Sage 100 ERP however was a nightmare and will be avoided by us in the future due to numerous issues.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Professional services company
SWK Technologies.
  • Some minor "errors" generated by sql on some pages. Resolved as the index rebuilt itself.

Sage CRM Training

  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
Most training would come after a upgrade. Otherwise we would self teach new employees. Training was with a Sage Software partner SWK technologies.
Rather straight forward, nothing overly complicated outside of the behind the scene things which IT would deal with.

Using Sage CRM

It does its job. Missing a few things here and there that can be remedied with outside add-ons.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Find/search function
  • View all leads/opps throughout the various teams we have.
  • Tracking communications between company and customers.
  • The customization part is rather ugly to look at. Tracking down what each screen is called and what fields they contain can be a bit annoying when want to add new fields to various screens.
  • Custom reports are lacking and difficult to use. Better to use crystal reports and tie in using sql.