Goldmine

[jason.staines]

I have a problem and I would appreciate some advice on.

We currently have Goldmine CE and Service Manager Enterprise as our Contact management and Service management applications, respectively. Between them they cost approx £4500 per year in service and support contracts. Goldmine is outdated and frontrange are not considering any strategic development of the product in the near future. In fact they will be looking at it's lifespan in the next 2 years. There is no in-house knowledge of Service Manager and no documentation. This is used as the ticketing system for one of our major accounts yet we can't even give them basic or accurate SLA reports. As such we've been looking at replacement products and have come up with 2 alternatives

1. Upgrade to goldmine PE
2. Implement SugarCRM


If we upgrade to PE there's a re-licensing cost of approx £7500, and the year on year service and supports costs of £2160. It is a new, more modern, front end compared to previous version and has tight integration with MS Outlook and includes a case management piece. However, it is still a closed-ish development environment with limited capability and doesn't offer the same level of functionality as SugarCRM.


Implementing Sugar moves us on to the next level of CRM applications. It has a much wider and richer functional toolset, which is still relevant and would see a fair amount of use. However Sugar is £6500 pa on subscription. There's no cap ex but the year on year costs are double.


I want to go for Sugar but I can't see the board signing it off. What can I do to make it more attractive? I have until monday afternoon to come up with an answer otherwise I think it's probably going to be a no.

[agcopley]

If I were you Id do a total cost of ownership over a 5 yr period.
Include things like upgrades, planned development etc.
Also is there a specific reason why you are not considering Sugar CE...6500 goes a long way in Sugar CE!

[jason.staines]

Yes, £6500 would definitely go a long way in CE.
However, it is precisely some of the pieces you get in PE that are attractive to us, e.g. Quotes, Products. Contracts, workflow and mobile client.

[Angel]

You really need to take a closer look at the bigger picture. I'd be the first to jump on the bandwagon supporting your proposed idea of switching to Sugar, but realistically, there are other factors beyond money that need to be considered.

There are fundamental differences between the two applications that may explain why you are still using GoldMine in the first place. The first one is that GoldMine is a contact-centric application, while Sugar leans more towards the account-centric model. If your business is more of a B2C model, GoldMine fits well, if it is more B2B, Sugar would be better. If it is a mix, it is a bit more difficult to discern as each application does have features that touch on areas more closely aligned with the opposing business model.

Another important point is that GoldMine is a desktop application, while Sugar is web based. Technical issues aside, there is also a user comfort issue associated with such a change, specially for long time GoldMine users. For example, many GoldMine users are accustomed to setting up their calendar alongside a contact record window, side by side on the same screen. You can't do that with Sugar. The closest would be using multiple tabs within your browser, but it is not the same experience.

There are a lot of minor usability nuances along those lines that people often overlook. I rarely run into GoldMine users that switch and don't ask me about them after the switch, even though I've made them aware of the matter during the exploratory phase.

So, in the end, don't force the issue. Money is only one of various factors that needs to be considered. There is no point to having a CRM system that costs 1/2 that of its competitors if nobody uses it.

[jason.staines]

Some food for thought there, thank you.

Our business model is B2B with the primary focus on Lead and Opportunity management. There are still parts of our processes that are manual (paper based) which really could be, and should be, incorporated into our CRM application. We also have a small help desk which is currently using a standalone application but we are looking to have an integrated solution, which could be achieved with either Sugar or Goldmine PE.

We also have a number of remote workers who rarely come into the office. The fact the Sugar is web-based is a massive positive in that respect. The smart phone apps are also another important selling point.

There are some usability issues, for sure, but nothing I think can't be overcome.

[Angel]

The opportunity management aspects are somewhat similar to each other, but the customization capabilities in Sugar make its opportunity manager much more flexible.

As for leads, GoldMine doesn't distinguish between leads and contacts as does Sugar (different modules), so if that is an important part of your sales process, Sugar would win.

The service aspects are relatively similar, but again, the customization aspects are better in Sugar. Another point on Sugar's side would be the ability to integrate with ZenDesk, a full featured, web based help desk/customer service solution.

In the case of GoldMine, the first alternative would be to use HEAT (also offered by FrontRange), which is neither cost-effective and tends to be overkill as far as functionality goes. There are some third party options, such as Tele-Support, but I don't think any of them are web based.

[jason.staines]

well the decision was made today to replace Goldmine with Sugar PE. From my personal pov it was the extensibility of Sugar that really won the day.

I've worked with HEAT in the past and while I liked it, it is very expensive and way over the top for what we need.