Item: Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)
Rating: 9
Author: Emma McCarthy

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SugarCRM as our primary tool in tracking applications, determining eligibility, and managing payments for children in publicly funded preschool programs. Although it was primarily designed as a sales tool, we use it less as for sales (given that we are not a sales organization) and more as a relationship management and accounting tool. We have a very small team (10 people total), but we all use Sugar on a daily basis.

Pros and Cons

Extremely flexible. Sugar is open source, and so you're able to build customized modules to fit your needs readily and easily.
Robust reporting capabilities. I appreciate how it's quick and easy to pull the data that my clients need.
Easy to use. Sugar has a fairly straight user interface, and so is usable even by those who are not particularly tech savvy.

More approachable user interface. At its core, it's a complex database, and it's not always intuitive.

Return on Investment

Sugar is an incredibly cost effective CRM solution. It allows us to reach thousands of children wishing to receive funds for publicly-funded preschool programs quickly and easily and for very little money.
You need to have a smart technical team who understands your business model and needs in order to implement SugarCRM successfully. It's customizable nature is both a blessing and a curse. You can do anything with it, but unless you have intelligent folks defining your business requirements, you can easily end up with an unworkable tool.

Alternatives Considered

I have used a number of built-from-scratch, customized database software packages. I like the strength of Sugar's backbone, and that it offers tremendous reporting capabilities right off the bat. I also appreciate how flexible it is - it can truly be used for a variety of different business cases. I can see how it would be a powerful tool in a sales arsenal, but we use it for eligibility determination and payment tracking, which is just as effective.

Other Software Used

UberConference, Slack, Dropbox

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well suited for tracking and managing customer relationships. We also find that it's well suited for tracking program eligibility. We use it to manage over 6000 applications for publicly-funded preschool programs, as well as the entire communication flow with both families and preschool providers who engage with our program. It does well if you have a few different customer groups that interact with one another - it allows you to track your communication with these groups, as well as their relationships with one another.

Sugar is a great, customizable solution - just make sure you have a good tech team behind it

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with SugarCRM