Sugar and spice and...not so nice: A review of SugarCRM
January 28, 2015

Sugar and spice and...not so nice: A review of SugarCRM

Zoe Leanza | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Sugar Professional

Overall Satisfaction with SugarCRM

SugarCRM is being used in the Sales department to aid both Sales Representatives and the Marketing Department to identify products of interest to a wide variety of customers. It addresses the specificity of advertising materials sent to groups of customers, aiming for more specific and less redundant advertising. The whole organization does not use SugarCRM but has access to it. A potential transition away from SugarCRM is in the works, as it is not the most efficient way of organizing and profiling customers.
  • SugarCRM is easy to learn and can be mastered in a matter of hours. It is laid out in a very intuitive manner and can manage thousands of entries and customers.
  • It can record a wide variety of information - not only customer names and contact informations - but also a description of their work and an ability to select biotechnological tools in which they may be interested.
  • Profiles can be annotated and updated constantly; and grouped into larger laboratories. The corresponding profile of each customer can reveal Sales Representatives and their interactions with each customer, which is helpful in avoiding redundant or irrelevant cold calls.
  • When trying to edit or annotate a subsection of a customer's profile, a new page opens entirely. Thus, rather than being able to see all the information at all times, you have to navigate back and forth in a very inefficient and frustrating way. It makes entering things into SugarCRM very tedious.
  • Duplicate entries are a regular occurence in SugarCRM, thanks to the program's inability to differentiate between small differences (such as a capitalized first name or a suffix).
  • SugarCRM does not allow you to very easily merge duplicate entries, and data will get lost in the transfer or consolidation of information.
  • The ability to manage customer database was moderately streamlined.
  • Marketing had a slightly improved capacity to target customers.
  • Cold calls were not made if they would be irrelevant or redundant to the customer, thus increasing efficiency and effectiveness of marketing techniques.
SugarCRM is appropriate as a customer profiling database for small projects (ie, fewer than 1,000 customers) but with larger projects it gets very tedious and repetitive, presenting a number of frustrating issues with redundancy and a meticulous attention to detail. Thus, I would recommend this to smaller projects; but it is less appropriate for larger tasks with multiple contacts or locations. Another thing to consider is its user-friendliness. If the employees using SugarCRM have minimal experience with marketing or customer profiling, it is a good choice since it is so easy to learn and navigate - a simple and intuitive layout that resembles a social media site.

Sugar Sell (SugarCRM) Feature Ratings

Customer data management / contact management
6
Workflow management
4
Territory management
7
Opportunity management
3
Contract management
3
Interaction tracking
4
Channel / partner relationship management
6
Case management
5
Call center management
4
Email marketing
6
Task management
3
Forecasting
7
Pipeline visualization
5
Single sign-on capability
5
Social data
3
Not Rated