CRM Reviews

SugarCRM is a commercial open source CRM solution with a clear focus on Sales Force Automation. The Sugar CRM community edition can be downloaded and used for free, but the company also offers a professional edition and an enterprise edition which have more advanced features. Because there is quite some interest in this solution, we decided to do a review of this CRM software as part of our CRM Reviews series.

First of all, let’s have a look at the main capabilities:

• The Reporting module features Dashboards, Marketing Analytics, Sales Trends, Customer Profiles and Sales Reports
• Sales Force Automation provides opportunity management, Contact management, Account management, Quotes & Contract, Outlook plug-in , Mobile Solutions, Dasbboards,
• The Marketing Automation component features E-Mail marketing, Multi-channel campaigns, Lead Management, Analytics, …
• The customer support component features Case Management, Inbound Email, Knowledgebase, Bug Tracking and self-service Portal
• In addition to these functional solutions, there’s also a number of collaboration features

In addition to the free open source community edition, SugarCRM provides 2 commercial editions: the professional edition and the enterprise edition (top-of-the-line). The difference between the community edition and the professional and enterprise editions are a number of advanced capabilities such as:

• Plug-ins for Microsoft Word and Outlook
• Sales Forecasting
• Reporting
• Advanced charts & dashboards
• Advanced Project Management
• Knowledgebase
• Product Catalog
• Quotes & contracts
• Wireless
• team management
• Access control
• workflow management

The enterprise edition differs from the professional edition by providing the following additional capabilities: Self Service Portal, Advanced SQL Reporting, Offline client and Oracle Support.

SugarCRM also offers a number different deployment options. One option is to go for the on-demand CRM. In this option, hosting is provided through Sugar-On-Demand who then takes care of upgrades and maintenance. This option is particularly useful for companies that do not have a dedicated IT staff and want to get up and running quickly with the CRM software. In that case the hosted SugarCRM solution is a good option.

The on-site deployment option is the preferred option for companies that want full control of their CRM environment. SugarCRM hosting is taken care off by the customer. The Faststack deployment option is some kind of a wizard based installation and configuration package which makes sure that the Sugar CRM is deployed properly at the client side. Finally, also an appliance option is available (Sugar Cube) which basically means that you buy a preconfigured server that you then need to plugin within your IT infrastructure.

The great thing about Sugar CRM is the fact that its open-source foundation provides a platform for constant innovation. Customers, open source developers, etc … contribute to the platform. The solution offers a rich feature set at an attractive price. This makes SugarCRM a good candidate for small and medium enterprises. References prove this point, almost all of the reference customers are smaller companies. The SMB focus also show from the feature set which lacks standard connectivity options towards ERP systems such as SAP (although now provided through a partner).

This Sugar CRM review gave an overview of the different editions, deployment options (SugarCRM hosting vs on-site vs appliance) and capabilities. Finally an analysis was provided positioning SugarCRM in the CRM Software landscape.

Zoho CRM is a relative newcomer in the web based CRM market. The company started in 1996 and during the years specialized in the creation of internet applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, document management etc.

What’s rather impressive is that they offer all there basic software free of charge and their business applications are extremely affordable (Zoho CRM is even free up to 3 users). Zoho provides the following business applications: Zoho Projects, Zoho CRM, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Creator, Zoho DB & Reports, Zoho People and Zoho Business.

So, pricing for the ondemand CRM solution is as said before free up to 3 users. From the 4th user onwards, the license fee is $12 per month. There is also an Enterprise edition which costs $25/month. The main difference is the security model which is much more advanced in the Enterprise Edition. There is also more storage available.

Main capabilities which are supported are Sales Force Automation, Marketing Automation, Customer Support & Service, Inventory Management, Reports & Dashboard, Workflow Management, Role Based Security. There is also an outlook plugin available (remember there is an additional cost of $3 per month per user to use it).

I tried the online demo which is directly available from their website. There are seperate demo’s available depending on the role: Sales Manager, Marketing Manager, Support manager, Inventory manager and CRM administrator.

The web CRM software is really snappy and easy-to-use. The looks are not that great, but I guess it is a matter of taste. The homepage features a task list and provides quick access to some core functionalities (such as the creation of leads, accounts, contacts, prospects, products, price books, tasks and events). There also some dashboards which can be changed according to personal preferences.

The ondemand CRM solution according to the review, follows a rather standard layout with the main functionalities on the top navigation bar and the detailed functionalities on the left navigation bar. I found the recent items widget quite handy as well as the quick create widget.

So, this was already a first Zoho CRM Review. A more in-depth review will follow.