Software Solutions Digital Marketing Business Services SugarCRM Community Edition for Small & Medium Enterprises
Contents Introduction... 1 SugarCRM Community Edition (CE)... 1 Basic CRM Workflow... 2 Departments Benefiting from SugarCRM... 2 Marketing... 2 Sales... 4 Service and Support... 4 Accounting... 5 Implementation & Customizations... 5 Integration... 6 User Training, Support & Maintenance... 7 Conclusion... 7 Nablasol s SugarCRM Service Offerings... 8 About Nablasol... 8
Introduction Customer Relationship Management is at the core of most small and medium sized businesses to help them manage their marketing, sales and servicing efforts. It is also the most efficient approach in maintaining and creating relationships with customers. It helps drive the business to reach a new level of success. It makes it easier for organizations to understand the actual needs and requirements of their customers and serve them in a better way. CRM gives a view of all the customers that are already acquired by the company and help form lists that can be targeted as prospects. It makes it easy and efficient to manage and track the leads, prospects and customers. The CRM system can also help you determine which set of prospects and customers can be more profitable in near future and thus target them appropriately. Analyzing the trends and other key metrics provided by the CRM system data enables the management to make better informed decisions. It is essential that the implementation of this important piece of software should be done meticulously. Companies that put more effort into CRM up front get more out of technology and thus, report a better satisfaction score than those that put a limited effort. In this Whitepaper, we ll introduce the SugarCRM community edition and discuss some basic strategies about how different areas of your organization can benefit from the system. We ll also briefly discuss some implementation details, integrations, user training and maintenance procedures. SugarCRM Community Edition (CE) SugarCRM is one of the largest CRM providers in the world. It is primarily popular for its compatible, scalable and easy to use design. It has an open source architecture that allows you to easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships with the customers. It is well-known for its efforts to provide the best customer service experiences and excellent support by numerous vendors worldwide. The features and offerings provided by the system make it suitable for most industry verticals. With the help of SugarCRM, you can make your business more effective and efficient by automating your business processes. It enables you to measure and increase marketing campaigns ROI, make sales, conduct presentations, send proposals, manage leads, service customers and use social media. It also helps you to track your organization and can be integrated with most common Business Intelligence tools. SugarCRM develops CRM software in five editions namely Sugar Community Edition, Sugar Professional, Sugar Corporate, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Ultimate. We will be discussing about the Community Edition which is the free open-source edition provided by SugarCRM and can be hosted on your existing IT infrastructure or widely available web/cloud servers. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 1
Basic CRM Workflow The basic workflow of a CRM includes the following terms. Let us make you familiar with some of the information and functionality hierarchy: Target Lead Contact Account Opportunity Someone you don't know anything about - e.g. a marketing list you bought. Someone who has expressed an interest in your product or service but needs to be qualified by sales. People you don t have a relationship with yet. The people you do business with or have been qualified by sales and you have a reasonable expectation to do business with. Someone you have a business relationship with, someone you know. They can also be suppliers, stakeholders etc. It is a business entity. Contacts work for Accounts. These are the sales events related to an Account and one or more Contacts. When the Target fills out the form, it becomes a Lead. The Lead when further does business with you becomes a Contact. Target -> Lead -> Contact We run a campaign where we have the target list which can be converted to lead and may be further a contact. This can later turn into an account where an opportunity may be created. Campaign [Target-> Lead-> Contact] [Account, Opportunity] The above depiction reflects a basic workflow of the CRM system. Though the exact workflow, you ll follow would depend on the complexities of your business processes. Some organizations can handle everything with few modules, while others might need a lot more to align with their organizational workflow. Departments Benefiting from SugarCRM Marketing SugarCRM is a boon for marketing departments. Marketing Automation is done for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks. Individuals related to marketing benefit by marketing automation as they can specify criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. With marketing automation, prospects are scored based on their activities and then presented with campaign messaging by the use of email and social channels, thus nurturing them from initial interest through to sale. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 2
Some of the SugarCRM features that help Marketing departments include: Multi-Channel Campaigns With multi-channel integration you can integrate and coordinate the development, execution and marketing across multiple channels like mobile, web, email, newsletter, print, social channel etc. You can identify which is the most effective channel across your segment and then market accordingly. Campaign Wizard With campaigns you can have integrated marketing communication. Campaigns let you target customers in a timely fashion. With campaign wizard you can easily manage your campaigns with very simple setup and execution of campaigns where overhead of the developers to develop and execute the program is reduced. You can track the result of the executed campaign using the Return on Investment form in the campaign. Email Marketing With the help of email marketing you can send emails, newsletter, mail, print, etc. containing design offers across to your targets in various campaigns. Email marketing response which is the number of open e-mails, click-through, unsubscribed, lead generated, contact generated etc. can be monitored with marketing. For the leads that are generated you can track and assign opportunities. You can also control the opt-in and opt-out lists of email marketing. Web to Lead Forms You can generate web to lead forms using SugarCRM. A web to lead form allows you to capture the visitors information from the website. This allows automating the import of information from the website to the SugarCRM. The forms can be placed on the external websites but when the visitor to the site submits the form the information will be entered directly into SugarCRM as a new lead. Lead Management Lead management lets you capture the leads across channels. The leads can be segmented based on the attributes that drive your business. You can check the sales feedback of prospects and develop strategies to follow-up with them on different time intervals based on the information provided. The sales must be aligned and the lead activities should be monitored throughout the sales pipeline to generate better results. Marketing Analytics With marketing analytics you can measure, manage and figure out marketing performance. Marketing analytics lets you optimize return on investment (ROI) and maximize the effectiveness of marketing. Marketing analytics allows the marketers to be more efficient and also minimize wastage of money in marketing. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 3
Sales For the process of sales, SugarCRM provides sales force automation which help in measuring sales force performance and profitability. Sales Force Automation is a technique to automate the process of sales. Using this one can automatically record all the stages in a sales process and analyze the performance of the sales through various metrics. Sales force automation lets you get real-time and accurate visibility of the sales pipeline. Common sales force automation and management features in SugarCRM includes: Opportunity Management With opportunity management you can share consistent information, track the progress of sale and record sale related interactions. The opportunity information can be shared across individuals and teams. Using this sales process you can increase the productivity of sales. With opportunity management you can manage multiple reporting through real time. Contact Management With contact management you can incorporate contacts into a single location. It lets you associate accounts with sales opportunities, account information, customer case information etc. Using contact management companies get a consistent view of all the customers and relations. It lets you import contacts, de-duplicate and merge your records. Account Management With account management you can have a single view of all the customers across products, accounts, status and geographies. It lets you analyze the status of each account and build close and profitable relationship. It provides you with a view where all the sales opportunities, contacts, activities, cases and history can be viewed at a single location. Service and Support SugarCRM is a great tool for the Service and Support department of your organization. The CRM will help the department in viewing all details of the client including information from the sales and marketing process. This will enable your customer service executives to respond to a customer question or complaint immediately and help you greatly increase customer satisfaction levels. It is the driving force to provide reliable, proactive and customer focused support. Service and support departments can benefit from the following set of features: Case Management With case management you can achieve inbound and outbound email integration and automated notifications of case updates. It allows you to have a detailed view of customer requests and responses. Metrics of case management allow managers to monitor how cases are handled and to enlarge issues to ensure customer satisfaction. You can magnify the unresolved Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 4
issues if any, before they become large problems for you. You can monitor the effectiveness of the case responses using cases. Inbound Email Inbound Email lets you solve your email customer service problem by automatically routing inbound customer email inquiries to the right place quickly and efficiently. With inbound email you can respond to inbound inquiries quickly and professionally from SugarCRM. Bug Tracking Bugs are the defects or features associated with a particular revision of a product. They have the potential to affect the performance and output of applications etc. With the Bug Tracker module you can report, track, and manage product bugs. The administrator can populate the drop-down list of product releases. Bug can be associated with the related case. Accounting The Accounting department in your organization can also benefit from the SugarCRM system. SugarCRM acts as a conduit between the sales, servicing and the accounting department. It can help in reconciling client information, tracking payments and monitor client communication, if required. With some external connectors, common book-keeping software packages can also be integrated to the system. Also, it is possible to build client invoicing and payment modules which can automate these processes. Enabling your accounting department with the CRM system also helps the management to get a complete holistic view of the organizational revenues and expenses and can help them in making better decisions. Implementation & Customizations Implementing a CRM system requires elaborate analysis of the business processes. The internal workings of each department should be meticulously evaluated keeping a special focus on pain areas. All possible stake holders should be involved in the process to clearly understand the requirements. The implementers should understand the organization culture and align their strategies accordingly. The strategies should be clearly defined and discussed with key people in the business to ensure consistency of objective. After the requirements are lucid, you need to determine the modules that will be required and how each of them will fit into the organizational workflow. Carefully decide the fields needed for each of the modules. While deciding the fields, don t bloat these modules with unnecessary fields which might turn annoying for the users. At the same time, ensure all the relevant data is captured appropriately. Departmental and employee roles should to be decided to control information access and foist accountability. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 5
It is also essential that the existing organization data is transferred over to the new system. Depending on the existing processes in the organization, the data may be stored in spreadsheets, emails, database, another software or even in physical files. The data import can turn out to be a long and tedious process. Proper planning and mapping should be laid out to ensure that the current data is transferred over to the corresponding modules. SugarCRM CE comes with most of the common modules needed in a CRM system. Some of the most commonly used modules include Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, Emails, Notes, Tasks, Cases etc. These modules are fully customizable and it is easy to add or modify the available fields and layouts of these modules. For some organizations, these standard modules would be sufficient for their business, but most would need to build new modules to handle specific business needs. New modules can be easily created from the administration panel itself by following some easy steps. Some additional code might be required to achieve specific functionality. With SugarCRM each user can configure their system according to their preference. They are allowed to rearrange the layout of different modules and have a fully customizable homepage layout which is made up with a collection of gadgets known as dashlets. The personalization options offered by SugarCRM really help the organizational users to adjust the system according to their needs. Integration Integrating your CRM system with your existing systems and applications can help in further streamlining your business processes. The SugarCRM platform provides reliable, scalable and cost effective methods for integrating with third-party systems. Web service API lets you combine the functionality of multiple applications into SugarCRM. It takes the complexity out of platform connectivity and application integration. Web service lets you achieve interoperability between platforms. It exposes the functionality and data of applications in order to be excessed by any service user. Cloud connectors entitle you to connect through web services to the external data services (like third party services providers such as LinkedIn). This helps you to get more information about your customers from external data sources in real time. You can select multiple data providers and can merge all the information into SugarCRM modules. With Module loader you can quickly build custom objects and also combine the existing or custom objects into a new application. You can create an unlimited number of custom fields and modules to build new apps, which can interoperate with all the Sugar modules and platform tools. You can deploy them to mobile, browser or your email client. You can integrate Reporting platforms, Mobile Apps, Google Apps, Accounting Software such as quick books and many more with SugarCRM. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 6
User Training, Support & Maintenance Like all software systems, SugarCRM also has a learning curve for its users. It is essential that the users are trained to use the system and follow the proper organizational processes. For most users, this training can be done in just a few hours and should be supported with relevant documentation for reference. Different training sessions may be necessary for different user groups depending on their organizational functions. Also, training guidelines should be formulated for new employees who ll join the organization in the future. Ongoing user support is essential with every CRM implementation. Each system will have issues some issues may be technical, some may be due to gaps in users understanding of the system and yet others may be operational. A support system should be established so that the users know whom to contact in case of issues. Ideally, a SugarCRM admin should be assigned who could take care of day-to-day user issues. Support can also be outsourced to a third-party vendor capable of handling issues. Change is the only constant this fact of life is also true for organizational processes. As processes evolve it becomes essential that the CRM system is updated accordingly to meet the needs of the business. These changes should be appropriately handled to ensure system continuity. Also, standard system maintenance, security checks and backups should be performed at appropriate intervals. Conclusion SugarCRM CE is an excellent and cost-effective CRM system suitable for all industry verticals. It enables businesses to automate most of their businesses processes, thus making their business more efficient. The centralization of information reduces the process time and fosters intra-department information sharing, which in-turn increases productivity. This also helps in efficiently dealing with the customers, increasing client satisfaction rates leading to more business opportunities and eventually higher turnover and profits. The system also has tremendous benefits for the management who can analyze different areas of their business efficiently and get a holistic view of their organization. The RoI of implementing the system in your organization will be tremendous. While deciding to implement a CRM system in your organization is a great start, it is crucial that you get the right consulting advice. This will ensure that the system is implemented in a seamless manner with your workflow and aligned with the business processes. The right consultant would be able to understand the procedures and challenges of your business and propose an optimal road-map for implementation, user training and support for the CRM system. As a last bit of advice, be meticulous and take expert help for the system which would be the most essential software in your organization. Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 7
Nablasol s SugarCRM Service Offerings We at Nablasol, have a special focus on SugarCRM. We offer end-to-end consulting, implementation and support services for SugarCRM. Our common SugarCRM service offerings include: SugarCRM Consulting SugarCRM Setup SugarCRM Implementation SugarCRM Hosting SugarCRM User Training SugarCRM Support Packages SugarCRM Maintenance Packages SugarCRM Module Development SugarCRM third-party System Integration SugarCRM Reporting, Business Intelligence & Data Services About Nablasol We are a New Delhi, India based company offering a range of services in Software Solutions, Digital Marketing and Business Services. We specialize in working with businesses and devise solutions to enable them reach their business objectives. We work with businesses of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to small and medium size businesses across the world. A majority of our clients are medium size businesses who wish to be ahead in their industry before the competition overtakes them. We are boastful about providing high-quality solutions for our clients, which make an impactful difference for them. The success of our clients is our primary focus in whatever we do. This clientcentric approach has helped us earn huge accolades, which gives us further motivation to exceed their expectations. Website: www.nablasol.com Email: info@nablasol.com Phone: +1.888.973.0248 (USA) +91.99100.55246 (India) Nablasol www.nablasol.com Page 8