Marketing your Business - Martin Bailey - Reviews, Joomla, SEO and Marketing advice

With many small companies CRM (customer relationship management) extends only to storing the company's details in their accounts software, or at best a basic database. A good CRM system will allow all relevant staff the ability to access information quickly and easily, but with the advent of the mobile office this is becoming more of an issue for many companies. Enter Sugarsales CRM software. Sugar Suite is a web-based product with an interesting business model:- The basic product is open source freeware, with a commercial big brother also available.

The basics - getting up and running
Sugar Suite uses PHP scripts and a MySQL database, which are services offered by most ISPs. Installation is relatively straightforward for anyone with a basic understanding of modifying a PHP script (using a program as simple as Notepad) and FTP settings. Once the CONFIG file has your correct server settings added, all you need to do is transfer the files to your server using FTP software and run the install routine - Sugarsales then goes off and creates the relevant tables within MySQL. Once the files have been uploaded the installation process takes less than a minute.

Using the system
Once installed, users access the system through a specific web page on their server. Users are greeted with a login request, where they can also select one of several 'themes', to change the look of the site. Three are supplied as standard, and it is not difficult (for someone with intermediate web and graphic skills) to modify these to fit an existing corporate identity.

Across the top of the screen are a series of tabs (pictured above), which allow you to access the various elements of the system. A slight niggle is that, even on a fast broadband connection there is a delay between page loading. This is a problem that only affects Internet Explorer as the system is lightning quick when using Mozilla Firefox, so I'd strongly recommend installing Firefox - it's a better browser anyway! (The reason for the delay is that the code has been encrypted - IE cannot easily decrypt it but Firefox can).

All information starts can start either as a lead or by having an account created. A lead would be used where an account is yet to be created as they are (perhaps) not a qualified opportunity - for example if you were importing a purchased database list but had not yet spoken to any of the companies. Accounts would normally start with an opportunity. Once an opportunity is created in the system it can then be converted to a sale.

'Cases', or issues can be assigned to an account and a CRM user, so a specific salesperson could have a case allocated by an administrator.

Once you've created your account you can append activities to it. An activity can be classified under one of several headings - calls, meetings, tasks, notes or emails. Sugar Suite can act as a web-based email system, but can also integrate into Outlook (using the commercial version only). Each activity can have a date associated, which is then reflected within other areas of the site. For example, creating a meeting will show it in the calendar but will also show it on the account's page.

Open sesame!
One of the truly remarkable features of this product is the very nature of its licensing - open source. This means that you have access to easily modify the product at a source code level. You can tinker with the database or modify the front end. Be aware of course that, at with any product this will make upgrades to newer versions more difficult. But for simple mods like template design it allows the product to be customised to a corporate identity very quickly.

Getting data in and out
Sugarsales supports importing and exporting of data. Import filters supported include salesforce.com, Outlook, Act! or custom CSV file format. Export is directly to CSV, which is simple enough to pull into any other application. Note that while this is adequate for exporting contact information (perhaps for a mailing list), when exporting sub-sections such as Opportunities you would be wise to pull the data into an Access Database, along with the Accounts data and link the two with the common denominating field, otherwise it is difficult to understand the data in the subsections alone.

Free versus Commercial
There are three major differences with the commercial version - ability to create quotes, and ability to run customisable reports, and email archiving. Depending on your product types, the quotes system may or may not be suitable - as with most general quotation system they work well with off-the-shelf items but anything that requires in-depth configuration can be problematic. The reporting function does offer a quick method of interrogating the data with an easy-to-use interface, although intermediate users of phpMyAdmin (which can access the back-end MySQL database) would be able to create similar output by entering in SQL queries - for may this would be too cumbersome and open to SQL input errors. The dashboard (pictured below), supplied also with the freeware version may provide enough 'finger-on-the-pulse' information for most users.

Sugarsales say that the freeware version will eventually inherit some of the features of the commercial version, as new 'must-have' features are added to the full-blown product. More interestingly, they are working on marketing and support products that will interface with sugarsales and each other. Both products will be available as both open source and commercial versions.

Conclusion
For companies with a mobile or widespread workforce, Sugarsales represents a solution that was previously only within the realms of larger companies that could afford to purchase or develop a CRM system. With the freeware version companies can be up and running on cheap webspace within an hour. Couple that with the promise of commercial functionality being handed down to the open source version, and the launch in 2005 of the marketing and support modules, this may be the only communication tool your company needs.

So, should you use Sugarsales CRM, buy an off-the-shelf package such as Act! or Goldmine or write your own system. Unless you have a very specific requirement, and have the skill and time to write your own - don't! Which leaves us with two options. The off-the-shelf packages are good and will do exactly what they say on the tin, but have the limitation of not having worldwide access. Act! can overcome this with a Palm-Pilot link, which may be good enough for many, and does have a web-based version available, at a price. Existing Act! users should consider this before looking to jump ship to another product (and all of the data transfer problems that it entails).

Where it falls down a little is on interfacing with the printed word. Products such as Act! have wonderful report writing facilities built into the software, allowing you to quickly write and tailor a report. This makes producing mailshots quick and simple, using a single application. You could do this with Sugarsales, but you'd have to export your data into a local database, and then merge it with another application (such as MS Word) - for the computer literate this is only a couple of minutes of work. This is not a show-stopper, but must be considered when comparing to off-the-shelf systems and especially if the users of this system have only general 'office' computer skills - messing around with CSV files will soon cause problems!

The bottom line is that for many Sugarsales CRM will be a godsend. It does the majority of tasks that users want and it does them well. For the functions that it doesn't perform there are ways around it if you have the knowledge and time.

The reasons that Sugarsales does not obtain 5 stars is that for many users a web-based solution is not required. Also, for absolute non-techies it could present a problem installing and maintaining the system. Reporting is adequate on the commercial product but non-existing (except for the ability to export data) on the freeware product. If these issues are not relevant to you and you don't have a CRM system in place, what are you waiting for?

Supplier's web site: www.sugarsales.com


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