Let us stop a moment to consider and clarify our definition of a small or medium-size business, as it covers a wide range of organizations, so definitions may vary depending on whom you ask. For example, Gartner Group, a U.S. based information technology research and advisory firm, has one definition, while their competitors, your local government, or other influential parties may have another. For our purposes, we will define a small or medium-size business as one that falls into one of the following categories:
Small office/home office businesses: The proprietor may or may not work with other people on a regular basis. If others are involved, they may be outsourced contractors, commissioned salespeople or agents, or one or more partners who operate their businesses under similar models. These businesses vary widely and some involve lots of travel, while others very little. This is very relevant, as travel is a frequent cause of poor information flow within an organization and between an organization and its customers. CRM tools are specifically designed to address such issues. These businesses tend to have employee counts in the range of 1 to 20 individuals, with annual sales under US$2 million. According to SCORE, a U.S. based small business advisory council, these businesses represent the fastest growing part of the U.S. economy.
Small services based businesses: These would usually have office premises that deal directly with businesses and/or consumers. Some common examples include financial, legal or real estate services, graphic design services, door and window replacement, home renovation, carpet cleaning, and others. They represent a multitude of industries and services. Often, these organizations have mobile staff, visiting customers that would benefit from tools, providing them access to customer and other information stored at the organization's office. These organizations typically employ somewhere between 5 to 50 individuals, with sales between US$0.5 million to 10 million.
Small-to-medium size product/services based businesses: These typically have an established storefront to interact with other businesses and/or consumers. This can include almost any retail sales or service activity with an average sale value high enough to merit tracking customers or clients individually. In terms of employees, these firms usually employ between 10 to 100 individuals, with sales ranging from US$1 million to 20 million.
If your business has more than 100 employees, you are on the verge of becoming—or have already become—a more sophisticated, complex, and wealthier organization with different needs than those of the businesses described previously. If your business falls under the 100 employee level, this book is definitely for you.
It should be noted that while businesses with less than 100 employees are classified as small or medium-size, there is nothing small about the job of administering and managing these organizations! Being your own boss (of the organization, or of a department within it) may mean there is nobody around to tell you what to do. However, it also means that you have to manage and prioritize your own responsibilities, which are often numerous. In a typical small business the owners, managers, and employees usually fill multiple roles. At one moment the owner might be running finance, while at the next moment, sales. All the while, a customer service request also awaits response, a proposal requires input, an issue needs to be addressed with the landlord, and so on.
This is due to the fact that small businesses have limited resources, both human and financial. The latter of the two also forces small businesses to be cautious, creative, and smart with their money.
For many a year, these same financial limitations also prevented small businesses from accessing critical business management tools aimed at helping them grow, such as advanced CRM systems.
That, fortunately, is in the past.
Open source has been a driving force behind this change. The open source movement is a software development philosophy dictating that source code, or recipes, used to create a solution are to be made freely available to anyone who needs them without any restrictions or financial considerations. The ever growing acceptance and maturation of solutions developed under this philosophy has brought many new tools to the masses by eliminating financial barriers.
Today, organizations of even the smallest size can easily access business management tools, that rival in sophistication the expensive systems, once the exclusive domain of large organizations.
A glance at the income statements for a typical small business should expose a need to lower administrative costs. If it does not, it usually means the owner's quality of life may be suffering, as they are likely to be doing it all by themselves. It can also indicate that administration is being very poorly managed. Unfortunately, even though administration costs are usually high, the administration resources that exist are typically overworked, and struggle to meet the workload. This usually does not get much better until the 100 employee milestone is passed.
Another key need for those managing smaller businesses is the need to get out of the office more. Reasons will vary, from spending time with the family to winning new customers or servicing existing ones, but in the end, it needs to happen without the business collapsing upon itself. Often, the usual day spent managing a smaller business consists of the following:
Numerous visits from employees regarding a variety of questions
Shouting instructions across the office
Dropping by the various departments for updates
Several hours dedicated to handling phone calls
Sending e-mails to contacts
Working long hours to bring paperwork up-to-date
Getting out of the office often means traveling some distance on business. Such scenarios serve well to highlight another need, that is, access to business information when away from the office, either through laptops or smartphones, and regardless of whether or not an Internet connection is available.
This kind of connectivity and flexibility is what it takes to compete in today's increasingly demanding and cost-conscious business environment. However, most small and medium-size businesses do not have access to systems that provide such connectivity.
Readily available tools that they might have, are usually client-server based meaning that some software are loaded on a shared server and more software are loaded on each user's computer. In addition to technical limitations inherited by such applications, there are also significant financial concerns relating to licensing, and even yearly maintenance fees that one must further consider. These types of tools also tend to lack extensive connection points, making it difficult to access the system when a user is away from their desk, as they no longer have access to the computer with the installed software that normally provides it.
Widespread Internet usage introduced new models for these systems. Soon after Internet and web usage became the norm in the mid-90s, software vendors began to modify their systems to work within a web-based environment, instead of the traditional client-server model of years past.
Web-based systems offered a number of advantages never seen before. They do not require software to be loaded on each user's computer in order to provide access to its information and equally important, access is nearly universal. To access such systems, a user simply uses their web browser of preference, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari, and merely points the browser to a specific web address. The geographic location of the user is irrelevant.
SugarCRM is a web-based system offering all these benefits and more when compared to its competitors. In addition to the availability advantages, SugarCRM is also open source. This latter point means that one is free to install and use the application for as many users as one's infrastructure can handle, without incurring any licensing fees whatsoever. For those who are more technically inclined, this also means one has full access to all the code used to create the application and one is free to modify it; thus, providing an unparalleled level of extensibility and customization.
SugarCRM directly addresses all the aforementioned information accessibility and connectivity needs. It allows you to get out of the office, yet stay in touch. It lets you see your family or win more business without excluding you from the organization's information loop. It reduces administrative load and costs by ensuring that the company and customer information only needs to be keyed in once and is well‑organized and easily accessible. SugarCRM is accessible not only by home computers and road-warrior laptops, but also through handheld devices, such as a BlackBerry or iPhone, using the device's built-in web browser.
Note
Chapter 6 explains details of wireless and mobile device access
The introduction and subsequent mass adoption of personal computers in the business world during the early 1980's, had a deep and profound impact on the workplace that continues to be felt to this day. In a similar manner, CRM technology continues to play a significant role in business since its early beginnings some 20 years ago. The technology has established itself as a necessary tool for efficiently managing any business, including—and perhaps most importantly, the small and medium-sized.
Until recently, smaller businesses typically could not afford management tools of this type. Even when they could, those tools were more oriented towards larger businesses and were often impractical and unwieldy. The maturation of these technologies has addressed these issues and simultaneously helped small and medium-sized businesses better compete against any and all competitors.
Throughout this book, I will endeavor as much as possible to deal with CRM from a business, not a technical, perspective. However, the later chapters do become quite technical in nature as we discuss the architecture of the system and various techniques for customizing it. The information in this book will focus on SugarCRM, the leading open source CRM tool. SugarCRM is an excellent example of a very capable, yet affordable CRM tool, focused on the needs of smaller businesses.
In this book, we will not just discover the specifics of installing and implementing SugarCRM, but also explain the business context and broader business perspective associated with CRM implementations in smaller businesses. Through the course of the various chapters in this book, we will examine what CRM is, what SugarCRM can do for your business, how to implement it effectively, and how it should be customized to maximize the benefits it can afford your business. By the end of the book, you too will be able to leverage SugarCRM to better manage your business.