SugarCRM: The Perfect, Customizable Sales Tool
December 07, 2013
SugarCRM: The Perfect, Customizable Sales Tool
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Sugar Professional
Overall Satisfaction
- SugarCRM is extremely customizable. Unlike other CRMs, Sugar allows you to create, edit, and modify virtually any feature to make it work with your workflow.
- Using Sugar for our sales cycle is flawless. Starting from assigning new leads to our sales team and ending with the final sale, we are able to track both performance and correspondence for anyone in our sales cycle.
- Creating reports in SugarCRM is extremely easy. If I know what information I'd like to review, I can rely on myself to create the comprehensive report.
- As a SugarCRM Admin for my company, it's very easy to tailor layout and fields so that everyone can see the information that is relevant to them.
- Many of SugarCRM's fields are drag and droppable which is a fantastic tool and makes changing layouts a breeze. However, I've found myself wanting more to customize the system to our ever changing needs.
- Almost all the major modules in Sugar are customizable -- except a few. Since Sugar has been so great for the company, we're always trying to utilize 100% of the program. Unfortunately, some of the modules don't include an edit option, which forces us to decide whether the change is "worth it" to get it edited by Sugar.
- There is a learning curve that comes with SugarCRM. Unlike other CRM's that are straight-forward right out-of-the-box, Sugar takes a bit of getting used to (however, once you've gone through the learning curve, you'll be able to use Sugar much more powerfully than you would an out-of-the-box CRM).
- Sugar has lead to faster lead conversion. By switching away from Excel spreadsheets and Google docs, our sales team is able to work more efficiently as they always know what to do next.
- Sugar has had such a positive impact on the company that we've already expanded from four users, to ten to 25. We hope to, eventually, have everyone in our company, even not sales related, on Sugar.
- With Sugar, any leads or opportunities never slip away. We always know when they've been contacted last, what was discussed, and how to proceed. With Sugar, we've become a more robust efficient sales team while maintaining our new level of efficiency.
Product Usage
25 - Sales and Business Development teams have been the target audience, but since Sugar has been such a success we've expanded it's use to our International Team and our Executive Team. With this new tool, we're able to work with more leads and clients. With the broader user base, we've been able to customize Sugar to each person's individual use.
3 - There is no real skill required for someone to provide internal Sugar support. If you have desire to learn how Sugar works, you're able to teach yourself in a relatively short amount of time. I knew nothing about Sugar when our company started using now. Now I know how to customize it for any new user.
- Improving the speed of the sales cycle.
- Ensuring no lead slips between the cracks.
- Always knowing what the next steps are for each and every lead/client.
- We didn't expect to be able to expand it so easily to our International team when, in fact, it took very little time and effort to do so.
- It has given more people the ability to create custom reports. Instead of asking our Statistics team to run a report through our database, we have all our database information in Sugar, so we can do it ourselves.
- I was able to create a personal sales funnel along with a full breakdown of all of my leads and where they stand on my homepage. When I log on when I get to the office, I already know where to start my day.
Evaluation and Selection
- Salesforce.com,Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing,Microsoft Dynamics CRM
The real factor was flexibility. The other CRM's aren't able to do what Sugar is able to give us through it's customizable features. We didn't want to try to make our sales cycle fit with another CRM, we wanted our CRM to fit our sales cycle, and that's what Sugar did. That, and it was significantly more affordable.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
We didn't want to mold our sales cycle to a CRM. We wanted our CRM to mold itself to our business cycle. Sugar was able to do that and more as we've been able to improve and speed up our sales cycle with all the features that SugarCRM brings to the table.
I would not change anything. I honestly believe that Sugar was the best option for my company. If there was a different CRM that was more flexible and had better features than Sugar, then we'd try that out, but there's nothing on the market, especially considering price, like Sugar CRM.
Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Sugar had been running slower than normal (though still pretty fast, but still noticeable). We reached out to see what was going on and they discovered that, in our desire to see as much information as possible, we were requesting so much information, it was slowing down the system. They gave us some great options so that we'd still see the information we needed without giving up the real data we needed to see.
Usability
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using | Lots to learn |
Yes, but I don't use it