Property-centric CRM

[gdi2k]

Hi All,

We're an asset management company operating multiple residential communities and are looking to move away from our current CRM for a number of reasons.

The way we operate, everything is property-centric - everything revolves around the property. We have owners, tenants, property managers, agents etc. who all come and go, but the property always remains.

We would need to be able to perform customer lookups by property, see ownership / occupier history at a glance along with key contacts (owner, tenant, agent etc.) as well as the usual CRM functionality.

My question is, do you think Sugar might be an appropriate tool to consider for this purpose? If so, how much customisation work would be required to make it fit our operational scenario?

[andopes]

Hi gdi2k

Accordingly to my understanding regarding your needs, Yes, SugarCRM is the appropriate tool to consider for this purpose.
Additional informations would be great to understand better your business.
Let us know.
If you prefer, send me an email.

[sugarcane]

Hello gdi2k,

The way we operate, everything is property-centric - everything revolves around the property.

You can use the Accounts module for the property. Sugar is centered around this Accounts module.

We would need to be able to perform customer lookups by property,

this is not a problem. There is a search panel for every module, and each search panel can be customized to display any and all fields you need. There is also a global system search panel.

see ownership / occupier history at a glance along with key contacts (owner, tenant, agent etc.)

You can use the Contacts module to track all contacts associated with the property. A Type field can easily be created to track the different types of contacts (owner, tenant, agent etc), as well as a staus field (current owner, previous owner etc) or dates to track this as well.

as well as the usual CRM functionality.

This is a CRM system, so the 'usual CRM functionality' is already here

My question is, do you think Sugar might be an appropriate tool to consider for this purpose? If so, how much customisation work would be required to make it fit our operational scenario?

You can definitely use SugarCRM for the scenario you described. Some of our clients are in the real estate / property management industry, so we have performed similar customizations. We would need to know more information in order to get a more accurate picture of what you are looking to do, but from what you wrote, everything so far seems pretty straightforward.

We hope to hear from you!

[gdi2k]

Thank you for your responses, that sounds encouraging.

I will go ahead and install the open source edition in the coming days and see how far I get with it. If I can convince the powers that be that it may be a viable solution, we would probably need some cusomisations.

Thanks again.