Book Image

Implementing SugarCRM

By : Michael Whitehead
Book Image

Implementing SugarCRM

By: Michael Whitehead

Overview of this book

<p>SugarCRM is a popular customer relationship management system. It is available in both free open source and commercial versions, making it an ideal way for small-medium business to try out a CRM system without committing large sums of money. Although SugarCRM is carefully designed for ease of use, attaining measurable business gains requires careful planning and research. This book distils hard won SugarCRM experienced into an easy to follow guide to implementing the full power of SugarCRM. SugarCRM is an extensive PHP/MySQL based application but with its rich administration interfaces no programming is required to get the most of it.</p> <p>This book will give you all the information you need to start using this powerful, free CRM system. Written by veteran SugarCRM expert and experienced documentation author, Michael J. Whitehead, this book is the definitive guide to implementing SugarCRM. Whether you are wondering exactly what benefits CRM can bring, or you have already learned about CRM systems but have yet to implement one, or you're working with SugarCRM already; this book will show you how to get maximum benefit of this exciting product.</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Implementing SugarCRM
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Chapter 5. Extending Your CRM’s Business Role

In the last chapter, we introduced the CRM basics of accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and the sales pipeline—as well as group calendaring of activities including meetings, calls, and tasks.

In this chapter, we deal with the expansion of the role of your CRM system within your business beyond that of basic CRM functions. We will cover a number of other related applications that are commonly found in better CRM systems. These applications are frequently added to a CRM system to take advantage of the fact that the CRM system is in use by most people at a company and already contains all the information there is to know about the business’s customers, partners, and suppliers.

These advanced CRM topics include:

  • Marketing campaigns: Creating and running email marketing campaigns.

  • Document management: Filing version-controlled documents in a repository of operational, sales, and administrative reference material.

  • Project management: Tracking...