What is SugarCRM?

SugarCRM is a comprehensive solution for sales, marketing, and service. The feature set is extensive, and Sugar is known for constant innovation and unique solutions. Any functionality you don`t find in Sugar can be added on, as it is an open-source CRM. The downside—SugarCRM is as unwieldy as it is extensive. Users should prepare for a significant learning curve. Due to its size and complexity, Sugar works best for large enterprises with a dedicated tech department.

Ease of Use

SugarCRM has set out to compete with industry giants like Microsoft and Salesforce. The result is a large and complex CRM solution that isn`t very easy to use. SugarCRM boasts virtually any feature you could want. But you`ll need the time and patience to adapt to its steep learning curve.

Coding experience required: Sugar is an open-source software. To deploy and customize SugarCRM, you will need some knowledge of software development and programming language. Many users prefer to hire one of Sugar`s select partners to configure and deploy the CRM. However, this adds considerably to the cost of using SugarCRM.

Customization

Sugar`s open platform means you can tailor the system to your business needs. In the Sugar Studio, you can create your own fields, layouts, and relationships, without writing a line of code. However, to adjust Sugar`s core functionality, such as creating new business modules, you`ll need a software developer.

SugarCRM for Sales, Marketing, and Service

Sugar can be broken down into three arms: Sugar Market, Sugar Sell, and Sugar Serve.

Sugar Market: Sugar Market offers an arsenal of tools for social media management, SEO, and marketing automation. Let`s drill down into each feature:

Social media: You can schedule content, measure your social ROI, design ads, and respond to messages, tweets, likes, and mentions—all from a single platform.

SEO: SugarCRM offers several native SEO tools to boost your site`s performance. You can audit your site for crucial KPIs like the number of keywords, backlinks, page speed, and mobile performance. Sugar can also tell you how you stack-up against your competitors` numbers and make recommendations to improve your SERP rank.

Marketing automation: Make sure your brand stays top-of-mind with automated email nurturing campaigns. SugarCRM can segment prospects and deliver a personalized message for their stage of the buyer`s journey. You can also automate the transition between marketing and sales with automated lead scoring.

Sugar Sell: Sugar Sell offers salesforce automation, easy to use reports, and a product management feature. Let`s take a closer look at each:

Salesforce automation: You can automate virtually every step of your sales process, including lead assignment, quotes, approvals, customer emails, and more. Reps spend less time manually entering data and more time building client relationships.

Reporting: SugarCRMs reports and dashboards are designed for sales teams–not analysts. You can see a snapshot of your sales performance, consumer trends, and easy-to-understand sales forecasts. Reps can also build a customized dashboard that displays the data they need most in their preferred format. Bar graphs, donut charts, timelines, and funnels are available.

Product Management: You can publish your product catalog through Sugar Sell. Each product and its availability is always on hand, even in the field. You can also run reports to understand product performance and identify your top-sellers.Sugar Serve: SugarCRM recently released its suite of customer service tools called Sugar Serve. It`s part of Sugar`s ambition to be the leading CRM for customer experience (CX). Service features include:

SLA management: You can create templates that set the required standards for all your customer service cases. This ensures every rep meets your company’s service level agreements (SLAs).

Service automation: Use intelligent workflows to assign cases to the right rep and score them by priority. Customers never get left hanging in the queue. Sugar can also calculate follow-up dates (using your SLAs) and program automatic follow-up reminders.

Self-Service: Relieve the pressure on your agents by creating a customer knowledge base. Customers can help themselves regarding common issues, and agents can focus on complex tickets that require human oversight.

Reporting: Sugar offers 60 customer service reports, giving you deep insight into your service department`s quality and efficiency.

Features

  • Calendar system
  • Email marketing
  • Marketing automation
  • Territory management
  • Document storage
  • Lead scoring
  • Mobile access
  • Task management
  • Contact database
  • Pipeline management
  • Call management
  • Sales forecasting
  • Opportunity management

Pricing

  • Free trial - yes
  • Sugar Market- $1000 per user per month billed annually
  • Sugar Sell - $80 per user per month billed annually
  • Sugar Serve - $80 per user per month billed annually
  • Sugar Enterprise - $85 per user per month billed annually
  • Sugar Professional - $52 per user per month billed annually

Support

  • Webinars
  • Training
  • Documentation
  • Online
  • Phone
  • Email