SugarCRM for Outside Sales

[cfeadmin]

We're looking for a CMS primarily to be used by our outside salesmen to track their orders/clients. I've poked around a bit on the website, and, as I understand it, the application is centrally located on a single server to be accessed by clients via their web browser.

Is there any way to make this function for a scattered sales force? I realize that I could set up a VPN to allow them access remotely, but is there any solution for offline changes to client information/orders/etc? For instance, a local database on each laptop to store any revisions made offline and then synchronize to the the server once a connection is established...?

Thanks for any and all feedback!

[enrashid]

Offline clients are available for Sugar Enterprise version. This begs the question that if the stack is all open source, then is it possible to to determine how Sugar manages the thick clients separately and then manages the synching of both data and application to the main CRM server.

Essentially each client on a pc/notebook would be running a webserver and a database. It would be interesting if you cracked this. Keep in mind also that the 35-char IDs have to be unique when you consolidate data from each of the clients.

Apart from purchasing an Enterprise license ( I think the minimum purchase is 5 users) and then trying to reverse engineer, you would need to do trial and error.

You mentioned VPN, there is also PC Anywhere type products, but you have to have some form on IP connectivity.

It would be interesting to find out if a SugarCRM consulting company has successfully created an offline product.

[jimlove]

I can't believe what I just read. Open source doesn't mean "open theft" of someone else's efforts. So don't go "cracking" the stack on the offline.

There is an offline client by Sugar, there is a third party mobile client, synch with Outlook and a couple of mobile phone options.

Jim Love
Performance Advantage
Sugar Silver Partner

[gmobisson]

Jim,

I work for a fellow SugarCRM Silver Partner, and we get the same set of questions all the time..."what do we do about the Mobile Outside Sales Force?"

Certainly this is the sweet spot for the Enterprise Offline Client, but what to do about the Professional users? and those that don't want the footprint of the Offline Client on every salesperson's machine?

The typical productivity scenarios (for the laptop carrying salesperson) that we're asked to consider are the following:

1. Work on planes and other modes of transport that dont provide connectivity.
2. Hotels sans connectivity.
3. Customer sites, where network connectivity is not allowed for guests.
4. Offshore scenarios (particularly Asia-Pac..and some locations in EMEA) where the connectivity is harder to come by, or perhaps not as reliable.

The issue is that the typical "Process" scenario, isnt one where a Salesperson is looking for a contact, or an account name...services that can be reliably provided by Mobile solutions (including "sugarwireless" and iEnterprises' Blackberry based SugarCRM solution). The typical process scenario we run into involves a desire by the Salesperson, to review a reasonable volume of data and manipulate it for the purposes of account reviews, order analysis, opportunity funnel or business reviews, etc. Or in some cases the Salesperson needs to put together a Quote or a Contract while at a customer site...without connectivity.

Invariably, the ideal for theses folks would be to pull this data, load it into a place like Microsoft Excel for updating and re-synch it when connectivity is established.

So...we did exactly that. We developed Microsoft Excel Plug-Ins for the following modules:

1. Accounts
2. Opportunities
3. Quotes (this one is pretty complex)
4. Products (for Order data..this is different from the product catalog)

The Plug-In requires a Sugar account/password, but handles all the synchronization - gives you a set of dialogs to manage potential duplicates (like the Outlook plug in) as well.

It's our IP, but doesnt take a genius to guess how we did it. The key is that the EXCEL communicates directly with the SugarCRM WebServices framework. There is no server-side code.

Currently, variants of the initial offering are being used by 5 customers - including one of Sugar's largest customers (they are a reference/SugarCRM case study customer), for Offline Quoting of customers. Currently used by their US and European Sales Teams...
As most customers are using custom fields - it requires some technical setup to align fields and allow the customer to define the worksheet structure...and we're happy to help with that.

Drop me a line if you would like to learn more about it...

Geoff

[malcolmh]

Hi,

fyi, the Offline Client can be purchased for the PRO version as well, with ENT it comes as standard.

Other options which our clients usually use:

- the Sugar Wireless option with PRO/ENT
- 3G access for all versions (usually the option or cleints take)

3G direct access gets around all the issues of synchronising