Is SugarCRM right for me?

[vogelap]

I am working as Associate Director of Graduate Admissions of the University of Cincinnati College of Business. Part of my job is to focus on recruitment & "courting" of prospective students into our many programs (full-time & part-time Masters of Business Administration (MBA), and full-time & part-time Masters of Science in four areas (Accounting, Marketing, Information Systems, and Quantitative Analysis). At this time, the College does not have a solution for managing customer relations, and I am evaluating SugarCMS to see if it might be appropriate for our needs given the following set of guidelines.

Our prospective students come to us via a variety of routes... from contact cards students fill out in-person, student info we purchase from testing agencies, and through email/postal mail. Generally, we know the student's interest area as well, so we can slot them into various campaigns, though we would like a general (non-specified interest) campaign as well. Each of these campaigns would draw from a set of "standard" pieces (that would be in each campaign) -- information about Cincinnati, the University, and educational outcomes, for example. In addition, each campaign would have highly-targeted information about the specific program in which the student is interested. So, for example, our Full-Time MBA campaign might be 6 pieces, 2 of which are "general" and 4 of which are specific to the full-time MBA.

We envision our CRM solution handling automated (as automated as possible) email/print campaigns (mostly electronic) to prospective students, leading them toward applying for our program, at which time the student is removed from the CRM's campaigns. The email pieces could be anything from plain text, html emails, PDFs, PowerPoint or other attachments, and even podcasts.

My ignorance of CRMs in general leads me to this question... Is SugarCMS the right/best tool to help us with what we're trying to accomplish (ie: am I barking up the correct tree)? If not, could someone guide me toward an appropriate solution, please?

If I learn that SugarCMS is the best solution, I will begin earnestly reviewing the documentation, learning the program in order to get it deployed!

I am happy to answer any additional questions that might further illuminate our needs. Thanks for your time!

[bstonehill]

I've never used the campaign portion of SugarCRM so I can't tell you much about that, but I have evaluated quite a few CRM solutions and nothing has come close to SugarCRM in terms of affordability and flexibility. One of the greatest things about SugarCRM is that for the most part it is easily customized and added onto, so if it doesn't do what you need out of the box you can change it. I've been using it for about a year and half and I have found it to be the most intuitive of all that I have evaluated and thus has a much shorter learning curve.

The next best solution I've found is ...... which is also web based and open source.

Hope this helps

[bisana]

Hi
I have done only the campaign module.
From my experience with the campaign module I could say Sugar will be fine for u .
Almost all my test conditions was success , except the display of bouncing mails
Thanks
Joseph John

[roblaus]

Hi,

First and foremost congratulations to your approach. Most people choose a CRM system and start asking questions afterwards. And this leads inevitably to problems because possible shortcomings turn up much too late.

To your question: It is important to understand that a campaign in the Sugar sense (the same is valid for all other CRM systems I know) assumes a uniform message. So if you say that you can "slot" potential students into different campaigns then you are on the right track.
Each campaign can have its own email template so your are ok here as well. Attachments of various kinds are possible - another check mark.
An area that needs further investigation is the removal of a person from a campaign. You might not need to do that because a campaign is a one time shot but it can be duplicated (e.g, for a follow up) where you don't want to include people who already applied.
As a summary: Given the limited knowledge I believe that Sugar is the right tree. Especially since there is no initial cost. You will definitely find some limitations but usually the community can help. One area to focus on is the selection of contacts for a campaign - here the PRO version of Sugar has distinctive advantages (what doesn't mean that you can't achieve the same with CE but it might need some adjustments).

Good luck
rl

[vogelap]

Our CRM solution would ideally function also as a call-manager. We got lots of telephone calls, both directly to our phones and to voicemail. I'd like our CRM solution to be a place where I can record these calls (noting name, phone number, a place for notes from the student's incoming voicemail message, and a place for notes on our conversation that also records time/datestamp). We would also record our outgoing calls there, too. In my dream world, incoming calls would connect to the contact's account in the CRM (though I don't know if that could be made to work with our phone system).

Additionally, our CRM would be able to receive leads from a webform with selection box(es) that enable the student to specify which academic program(s) they're interested in. The leads received from the webform would be (automatically, ideally) imported into ...... and assigned to campaign(s) based on the indicated interest. All without any (or very minimal -- I want it to be automated) interaction from me.

Does SugarCRM allow these things? If not, how close does it come?

[vogelap]

Hi,

First and foremost congratulations to your approach. Most people choose a CRM system and start asking questions afterwards. And this leads inevitably to problems because possible shortcomings turn up much too late.
[...]
An area that needs further investigation is the removal of a person from a campaign. You might not need to do that because a campaign is a one time shot but it can be duplicated (e.g, for a follow up) where you don't want to include people who already applied.

I think if I mark an "opportunity" as the end of the marketing campaign (in my case, the opportunity would be "student submits application", that should allow me to remove them from the CRM's campaigns once they've accomplished that opportunity, don't you think?

[roblaus]

Hi,

Re. phone calls - yes, whenever you record a note a time stamp is assigned automatically (last modified date). But you might add your own fields or use one of the add-ons that are offered on Sugar Forge - one that I recall can actually assign (and later sum up) times to cases. It is not very difficult to modify such a tool to work with phone calls.
In order to have contacts/leads pop up once a phone call comes you definitely need a telephone interface (TAPI). But I'd be moving this wish to phase 2, the Sugar global search (for names) is pretty fast (I worked with 17,000 leads and the results always showed in less than a second - with the most basic HW configuration possible).
Webforms work nicely - in order to assign a campaign automatically you most probably need the workflow engine that is part of the PRO version. But yes, it's a standard feature.
And removing leads from a campaign is easy - it just depends on your criteria. You may even set the contact to "opt out" as the easiest solution or assign him/her to another non-email campaign.
An opportunity as the endpoint for a campaign is fine but I don't think that you have to do that, a lead or a contact is qualified through other criteria, the strongest being "enrolled" or however you call it.
Try a test scenario on a local PC. It's a piece of cake with the installer and you can really get a feeling what is possible (in the standard CE version).

rgds
rl