SugarCRM Review

Introduction

SugarCRM is one of the most popular Open Source CRM software systems with almost 180,000 downloads of its free “Sugar Open Source” version as of November 2005, according to its community page. Its popularity is well founded, as it is probably the most mature and arguably the easiest to use OS CRM product available.  This review will concentrate on the home-page, the calendar, the activities, the contacts, the accounts, the leads, the opportunities, and the dashboard (graphs of key sales and marketing data) modules, as well as the administrator functions of Sugar Open Source version 3.5.1a.

The Home Page

After logging-in, SugarCRM displays an attractive and useful homepage, similar to the successful salesforce.com layout.  Displayed are lists of pending duties, which can be sorted in different ways including by priority, by status, or by due date.  The “accept”, “decline,” and “tentative” buttons next to each of the upcoming appointments or calls are very useful; it is too bad that they are available only on the home page.

Figure 1: The home-page.  Most pertinent information and shortcuts are accessible from here.

Also displayed is the user’s sales pipeline, all of the shortcuts needed to quickly create new tasks, contacts, or leads, and a clever “last viewed” feature that lists the handful of the most recent activities that the user has performed in the system.  The only item on the home page that could use a significant improvement is the calendar, which despite taking up quite a bit of room shows no information other than the current date.

The Calendar

The calendar module could have used some additional thought and more features to make it a truly helpful tool.  In its current form it is definitely the weak point of SugarCRM.  The biggest flaw of the calendar is that it allows conflicts in scheduling, i.e. it lets the user schedule two different activities at the same time, without even giving a warning about the conflict.  Since activities such as calls, meetings, and other tasks can be scheduled from other modules that do not display the calendar, the user needs check the calendar for his availability every time that he wants to create a new task in order to avoid conflicts.  To make matters worse, the calendar display is not very precise with one hour intervals in the daily view, making activities that start exactly on the hour look identical to ones starting 15, 30, or 45 minutes past the hour.  The weekly view of the calendar is no better, with the days of the week listed from top to bottom on the left hand side rather than across the top from left to write.  This arrangement severely limits the amount of detail that can be seen for each scheduled task.

Figure 2: The calendar.  It could be improved if it showed additional, more detailed information.

 Another shortcoming of the calendar is that it does not display the names of contacts or companies that the scheduled activities are associated with.  This is very inconvenient, that type of information should be available at first glance, just as it would in a little paper day-planner.  Two other features that would make the calendar more useful and easier to read would be the possibility to color-code the displayed activities according to their importance (SugarCRM allows the user to assign an importance of low, medium, or high to most activities, but that information is not shown on the calendar); as well as visually distinguishing completed and cancelled activities from pending and scheduled ones, for example by drawing a line through the activity name, similar to the way a user might cross out completed tasks in his paper calendar.

Activities

This module is designed to be the central one in SugarCRM, all functions related to tasks, meetings, calls, emails, etc, are best created here.  This module is well designed, with only minor shortcomings preventing it from being an excellent feature.

Among minor weaknesses in this module, the biggest ones are related to the way that tasks, meetings, and calls can be viewed and assigned to other users.  It does not matter whether a particular user does not have administrator rights, he can still assign a task, call, or meeting to other people, even the user to which he “reports to” as specified in the user profile.  In other words, SugarCRM allows employees to play with their boss’ schedules.  Many of the more minor inconveniences are related to the reminder feature in this module.  Reminders can be assigned to calls and meetings, but not to tasks.  Also, the reminder pop-up box does not appear when the user has the SugarCRM window minimized.  Finally, the reminder feature could be enhanced with a “snooze” or “reschedule” button. 

Among other nuisances is the minimum time allotted to a scheduled call.  Having had quite a bit of cold-calling experience as a salesman, this reviewer would liked to have seen the minimum call length be less than 15 minutes, as a cold call lasts less than five minutes on average.  Moreover, it would have been nice to see a field to write in the phone number of the person with whom the call is being scheduled right on the call detail screen, rather than having to search the system for that  info. Lastly, the start date and time should not be mandatory fields when scheduling a task, as sometimes it is more practical to schedule a low-priority activity for an unspecified time during a given day. 

Figure 3: The meeting scheduling creation screen.   This feature has a good deal of useful options, though unfortunately not many of them are displayed as information on the calendar.

However, those are all minor deficiencies in an otherwise very good module.  The searchable “add invitees” element at the bottom of the call and meeting scheduling screens is helpful, as are all of the shortcuts on the left side.  Exporting lists of tasks, calls, and meetings to Excel for easier modification and printing is a handy feature, as is the ability to sort the lists by all fields.  Most importantly, the module is easy to read, navigate, and use.

Contacts, Accounts, Leads, and Opportunities

These four modules share many characteristics; each module has a screen with a list that can be browsed or searched, each module has a screen with details on chosen individuals with all information on that individual quickly accessible from that page, and all modules have similar shortcut boxes on the left side.  They all have many positives, though it could certainly be argued that it is not necessary to have four separate modules dealing with similar data.  Many other CRM solutions successfully handle the same information in just two modules.  But despite being a little redundant and repetitive, these four modules reflect Sugar Open Soruce’s best quality: ease of use.

Figure 4: The contacts search and list page.  Powerful, yet easy to use.

Clicking on one of the contacts, leads, accounts or opportunities displays a wealth of scrollable data, and all other related information can be accessed by just one click.  The option to quickly update or edit multiple selections at the bottom of each module’s list is also very handy, as are the “search” and “advanced search” capabilities.  In addition, attachment of external documents, linking contacts to accounts, and converting leads into contacts, opportunities, or accounts is all done very quickly and easily.

One drawback to these modules was a difficulty with importing contacts from Excel.  While for the most part the process was fairly uncomplicated, the system did not want to accept any contacts that did not include a last name.  Also, it would have been nice to be able to quickly browse the pages of the long lists in the modules alphabetically.  Finally, there is no field to put down information about the reasons why specific opportunities were won or lost, as well as which competitor won the opportunities that the user lost.  This information could be very useful in creating reports to recognize sales and marketing trends, and while it is possible to create custom fields through the administrator module to cover this issue, such fields should come ready to use as part of the installed system.

Dashboard

The dashboard is the module in SugarCRM that makes it stand out from other open source CRM systems the most.  Four different graphs are presented on the dashboard, each one of them containing a summary of useful information.  The first graph is a sales pipeline, divided by sales stage; the second one shows opportunities by lead source and outcome; the third one depicts the pipeline by month and outcome; and the last one is a pie chart showing all opportunities by lead source.

Figure 5: All Opportunities by lead source by outcome.  A good graph to view if one wants to know the effectiveness of each lead source.

Each graph can be customized to display the results of only certain users (salesmen), and rolling over each section of the graphs brings up a small information box with a basic summary of the opportunities in that section.  Clicking on any part of the graphs brings the user to a list of the opportunities represented by that section of the graphic.  As a result, the dashboard provides the users with not only a quickly accessible and easy to read big picture of sales and marketing performances, but can also display more detailed and in-depth information.  An additional feature that would make the dashboard even more useful and should not be hard to implement would be the ability to set sales goals and to see them represented on the same graphs as the actual results.

Figure 6: All opportunities by lead source.   This graph lets the user know where the customers in his pipeline are coming from .

Administrator Functions

This module provides the administrator with many possibilities to customize SugarCRM, and is also the place where users are defined and managed.

On the positive side, the administrator has the option to customize almost everything in the system.  Each drop-down menu in SugarCRM can be easily edited by adding, removing, or changing the name of existing items in the menu.  As well, the contents and display of every module can be customized by adding or deleting fields, by changing their labels, or by creating custom entries.  The ability to customize the system to such an extent without having to look into the source code makes SugarCRM very powerful and adaptable.

Unfortunately, the user-friendliness that is so apparent in all other modules is sometimes lacking in this one.  Changing the layout of the modules and adding custom fields is achieved through a very awkward slot system.  Each new field needs a field name and field label, and to make it work properly, equivalent custom fields often have to be created in the “detail,” “list,” and “edit” views of a given module.  This process is complicated and time consuming, and making a mistake by editing or deleting the wrong fields can lead to errors in the running of the program.  However, modifying the drop-down menus and editing labels is a breeze, as is creating and managing the users.

Other Features

The project manager is simple and easy to use.  It could perhaps use some additional features such as the ability to link one task to another, and a graphical representation of project/task progress is missing as well. 

The campaigns module is also very simple, with the ability to create prospect lists, and select the type and status of the campaign.  Unfortunately, the prospects cannot be pulled from the existing list of contacts or leads, and the revenues and costs of the campaign are not tracked or automatically updated by the system, they are simply arbitrarily written into dialogue boxes by the user.

The free version of SugarCRM also has a module where the user can insert his preferred web portal and another module for RSS new feeds.  Unfortunately, it is lacking a “reports” module, as well as a module to manage accounting and HR.

Conclusions

While all the modules in Sugar Open Source range from very good to excellent (with the exception of the calendar), some organizations may find the lack of reporting, forecasting, and accounting modules too critical to consider this software.  If that is not the case however, Sugar Open Source is an excellent choice for any small or medium sized business that is considering implementing a CRM system.  Organizations with little to no experience with CRM in particular will find this product an excellent choice among open source CRM’s, as it is arguably the most user friendly solution among that field. 

Since we installed SugarCRM for internal use, you can also access and play on the demo: username: gayane, password: gayane.