Advice/Opinions/Other Solutions?

[BoomerangJ]

SugarCRM was recommended to me recently and I have spent several hours going through the Sugar website, looking at the presentations, demo's, etc. Initially I was excited about it-but am now wondering if it isn't overkill?

Situation is this: 2 users, 3 computers (1 laptop, 2 desktops), cell phone is Treo650, used for contacts/calendar currently synchs to outlook. Computers are all Windows XP-Home Edition.

1 person focused on outside sales, complex sales process, high ASP products. Annual PO's would be 7 to 15. 2nd person focused on prospecting, lead generation, marketing(general and focused e-mail campaigns).

CRM requirements are:
-7 state geography, 125 potentail customers, up to 2000 contacts.
-Desire to track sales process from initial suspect stage to closed order, including forecasting.
-E-mall marketing campaigns
-Track opportunites based on product vendor.
-My company represents and sells for multiple vendor with each vendor having multiple s/w products, consulting services.

Previous experience includes the following:
-Outlook 2003, Experimenting with Business Outlook but it is not linked to Outlook, thus no synchronization with the Treo 650 (that I am aware of)
-Used Salesforce.com 3 years ago-was not completly immersed.
-Neither user is a prgrammer. We could only contribute to open source as evaluators/users

To summarize my question: I absolutely need to get more organized with the goal to EFFICIENTLY track sales opportunities, follow up on prospects. I do not feel Business Outlook is the right tool. Sugar CRM looks like it has most of the features I need, however I am worried that the implementation and the use of SugarCRM may be overkill, thus inefficient?

In addition: All three computers are networked peer to peer but using only XP HE. Access is the only DB installed.

[lvangool]

No, SugarCRM is not overkill for your situation. However, it won't run on Access. Your best option is to hire someone to set it up for you and keep the server located at a hosting company. That way, you don't need any technical knowledge.

[BoomerangJ]

Thanks Ivangool-

I'm learning this slowly but surely. I have two web server accounts-one at GoDaddy and the other on my local cable provider Roadrunner. I'm assuming that I would install mySQL and SugarCRM at either of those services and that would provide me with the infrastructure that I could use anywhere.

To your specific response about hiring a setup maintenance person. What expectation should I have in regards to setup time/hourly rates?

I appreciate the feedback.

Regards;

Scott

[roblaus]

Regarding your hosting question: I do not believe (I am actually sure) that your current accounts will be sufficient. It seems as if they are just normal web space accounts. What you need is a virtual server with root access and some easy admin tool. That allows you to install and setup your Sugar app as if the server sits in your office. Cost for such an account varies but since location doesn't play a role these days you should have a go at app. 10-15 USD per month (taking into account your limited no of users and the resulting bandwidth).

Re. the support: Go, if possible, for somebody who has experience with the product and who knows what he or she is doing. Preferably somebody who is not only on the technical side but also has some business experience. That helps a lot. Cost? Depends what you want. If it can be done remotely (what I recommend anyway) it should be cheaper than having somnbody on site. As a rule of thumb: Take your local geek's hourly rate, double his price and throw in another 20% as a safety net. That should do it.

rgds
rl

[Angel]

To summarize my question: I absolutely need to get more organized with the goal to EFFICIENTLY track sales opportunities, follow up on prospects. I do not feel Business Outlook is the right tool. Sugar CRM looks like it has most of the features I need, however I am worried that the implementation and the use of SugarCRM may be overkill, thus inefficient?

In addition: All three computers are networked peer to peer but using only XP HE. Access is the only DB installed.

I think there are a couple of points you've made which are important to fully evaluate before making your decision.

While the feature set of Sugar *may* not be overwhelming, it may actually be lacking in what you need. Case in point, PDA support. The ability to sync to Treo devices is not built into the product. You can do it by first synching to Outlook and then use Outlook as the intermediary, or you can get a third party tool that integrates with Sugar which in turn syncs to Treo devices. In the case of the latter, there will be a bit of work involved in getting it setup, and resolving issues may require some technical expertise. I would give some further thought to the level of importance your group places on this capability before making a decision.

If you choose to go the Outlook route, you'll need to keep in mind that you'll also need the Outlook plugin for Sugar and you'll only be able to move a limited amount of data to Outlook.

Secondly, it seems you've used a mixture of both online and offline clients. This is an important item to consider, as you may not have access to data that you may need if disconnected or away from your network. If you use a hosting provider, you'll be able to access it from anywhere on the net, but you are also taking the risk that none of your users will be able to access your data if the provider has some type of technical issue that affects your access to Sugar on their servers. There is a single point of failure that would effect all of your users, which is never a good thing.

Hosting it on your own server (on one of the machines on the network) mitigates some of the risk, in that your network users should continue to have access to the data even if anyone not on the network is unable to do so, but then, that too has its drawbacks in that you will then be responsible for maintaining the system (or hiring someone to do so).

There is a lot to consider and I would advice that you think about how important each item is in relation to the solution as a whole before making a decision. i.e. Is having built-in Treo sync more important than access across the web?

You may also want to take a look at something like Maximizer or ACT!

Sugar has many great features, but you may find it frustrating to use if you aren't willing to invest some time on the technical side of things or paying someone to do it for you. Products lie Maximizer or ACT! are a bit more friendly in that regard, but keep in mind that in either case you'll never be able to remove yourself from doing at least a minimal amount of technical work to maintain the system.

[DMG]

As others have already said, I don’t think that you'll find Sugar to be overkill for your situation. The open source version doesn’t have the ability to sync with PDA’s built in, but the Pro and Enterprise version does. There may be a third party plug-in to make this functional in the open-source version. The only one I know of offhand is PocketCase (http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/pocketcase), but I believe it only allows you to manage cases.

If you are looking for hosting or support we offer these services. http://www.iradeon.com

[BoomerangJ]

Thanks for the great feedback and advice. As I review the various CRM solutions (i'm a sales professional) I am getting excited about the capabilities! However I am realizing that there is a lot to this.

I'm back at square one, ie;
-one centralized database (on a server) versus distributed databases (synchronized)
-web based (or not)
-feature set-finding the "sweet spot" of capabilities to meet our needs

I am going to download Sugar and see how it goes. Went back and looked at ACT-seems like they are going downhill and are a sideline business for Sage? Customer support was horrible. Act 9.0 would not install correctly on any of our machines. Prophet looks promising but for us it means peer to peer and they seem weak on db synchronization.

I keep getting drawn back to sugar the dashboard and capabilities seem to be the most in line with what I want to do. I do believe that for me with my admin skill set (or lack thereof) I will need help. My concern is expense both start up and ongoing. Low overhead is another key to success for me and to put it bluntly if Act and $400.00 solved the problem that would've been great!

I guess its time to quit typing and try the download and see what I learn.

Thanks again for the reponse