Item: Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Rating: 8
Author: Emmanuel Mwangi

Overall Satisfaction

Pros and Cons

Pros

User organization - Onboarding users, getting them setup and setting scope and access level is great in SugarCRM
Phone Integration - The feature that we really wanted SugarCRM for; it's integration with sales calling systems is great.
Sales Funnel - The ability to view the sales funnel for our team and to see the value for our pipeline at a given time was amazing.

Cons

UI Complexity
UI Customizability - We were always confident that SugarCRM could do what we wanted but, the complexity and thus cost of making SugarCRM into exactly the CRM we needed was a big question.

Return on Investment

Increased Sales - We sold more with a more efficient funnel and pipeline.
Separation of Effort - We could have people setup the funnel and create leads while others closed on those leads. And barring that, we sent our cold leads to a drip marketing email system and squeezed a second pressing of juice from those leads.
Visibility of the Total Pipeline - We could see the total value easily and monitor sales performance more closely, by user, etc.

I would use it again gladly if I had the need to use a CRM system. It's great for sales teams. It helps alot in managing customers, seeing how the sales team is performing. It helped us create millions of dollars of sales that otherwise wouldn't have happened if we stuck to our previous spreadsheet system.

Likelihood to Recommend

Figure out what you are going to build in SugarCRM before you build it. Going in without a gameplan is a recipe for an expensive and painful experience. Also, use seasoned developers who are familiar with SugarCRM. Going cheap here will bite you in the end. The experience in SugarCRM is key; far more than just someone who knows PHP or CRMs in general.

Comments

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Great CRM system that needs to be customized carefully.

Software Version