In 1999, a company named Salesforce.com changed the rules for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools. Once exclusively the domain of multi-million dollar solutions designed to be used by large organizations, Salesforce.com revolutionized the capabilities and price points of CRM so that it was usable and affordable by much smaller firms.
In 2004, a further paradigm shift took place, when a Silicon Valley startup by the name of SugarCRM released its first version of software that made the benefits of effective CRM available to firms as small as home-based businesses (and as large as several thousand employees).
I have been involved with the SugarCRM Open Source project since its very early days. I remember my first thoughts after seeing it—thinking how good the user interface and performance were, and wondering why there was no user documentation. One of the first contributions I made to the project was the Open Source User Guide—a basic reference guide to the system’s operation.
With Implementing SugarCRM, my goal was to bring more perspective to the topic of CRM technology and its role in small/mid-size businesses today, and to illustrate those possibilities with a detailed introduction to SugarCRM Open Source. I also wanted to give small/mid-size businesses the benefit of the experience I have gained from carrying out over 30 SugarCRM implementations just during the course of writing this book.
This book is intended to help you on two fronts:
Learning about the recent game-changing advances in the field of Customer Relationship Management for small to mid-size businesses, using a step-by-step guide to modern CRM capabilities illustrated by worked examples and images from SugarCRM Open Source—today’s leading open-source CRM solution.
Leading you though the business analysis process of understanding how your organization is different from other firms, and therefore how your CRM should be customized so it best fits your needs and business processes.
I have tried to write a book that will engage you at your current level of knowledge, whether you already have some familiarity with CRM principles, or with the details of SugarCRM itself, or would like to gain familiarity with the CRM field from the bottom up. It will deliver in-depth understanding of CRM concepts, SugarCRM capabilities, and advanced applications, and the business context to apply CRM to your real-world challenges.
From the initial blank sheet of paper you face when first considering a CRM implementation for your business, through the detailed business and technology considerations of creating the right CRM solution for you, to the challenges of deploying and introducing the CRM into your business, this book will lead you each step of the way.
During the course of this book, I will demonstrate and explain how to improve your business processes, business performance, and quality of life using CRM tools created specifically for managing small and mid-size businesses. By the end of the book you will be doing business—better!
Chapter 1 introduces you to CRM and shows how CRM systems such as SugarCRM can increase your business’s productivity and profitability, and lead to richer, even more pleasurable business relationships. You’ll also meet Doc, the proprietor of our case study business—RayDoc Carpets.
Chapter 2 provides the critical business analysis process you need to work your way through to identify, understand, and satisfy the special CRM needs of your business. The business analysis for the RayDoc case study is presented in worksheet format, and then you mark up an analysis worksheet for your own business.
Chapter 3 makes a break from the theoretical, and gets down to the practical considerations of deploying your CRM system, explains the options you have to choose from, and ends with your new system up and running.
Chapter 4 helps you take your new CRM for a test drive, providing a step-by-step introduction to CRM concepts and usage, illustrated with a task-oriented series of worked examples in SugarCRM. This hands-on approach lets you get a real feel for the information held in a CRM and how easy it is to find it and keep it up to date.
Chapter 5 takes you beyond the basic CRM information, and explains the Sugar Open Source features you may not have realized were part of a CRM—marketing campaigns, project management, document management, RSS news feeds, linking to external websites, and sending email.
Chapter 6 discusses commercial and Open Source add-ons for SugarCRM. Some important CRM capabilities may be found in Open Source and commercial add-ons, including the ability to prepare quotes, receiving email within the CRM, security and access control, standard and custom report generation, sales forecasting, wireless handheld browser access, wirelessly synchronizing CRM data with handheld devices, HR management, and service contract management.
Chapter 7 is a guide to managing your CRM implementation. How do you make sure that your new CRM will be the right fit for your business, and that users will embrace it? This chapter deals with the key issues of setting goals and requirements, involving all areas of the business throughout the entire process, managing the development of any customizations, and then system training and rollout—making sure it becomes a welcome part of the new office routine.
Chapter 8 explains how to link SugarCRM with your customers. Outside the walls of your business, there is an entire world of integration opportunities for your CRM. This chapter explores the creation of automated lead capture from your public website, and integration of Sugar Open Source with a customer self-service web portal based on the Mambo portal.
Appendix A details the step-by-step process of installing SugarCRM on a Linux server.
Appendix B explains the relatively simple process of installing SugarCRM on a Windows server.
Appendix C shows you in detail how to get your valuable data out of your old contact manager or CRM, and into SugarCRM.
Appendix D explains the role and responsibilities of the system administrator—at the time of initial system installation, as well as for ongoing support and maintenance.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: “We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive.”
A block of code will be set as follows:
$_POST[‘status’] = “New”; $_POST[‘refered_by’] = “Lead Capture Webpage”; $_POST[‘email_opt_out’] = empty($_POST[‘email_opt_in’]) ? ‘on’ : ‘off’;
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be made bold:
$_POST[‘status’] = “New”;
$_POST[‘refered_by’] = “Lead Capture Webpage”;
$_POST[‘email_opt_out’] = empty($_POST[‘email_opt_in’]) ? ‘on’ : ‘off’;Any command-line input and output is written as follows:
/echo “0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * cd /<path-to-sugar>;
<path-to-php> ./scheduler.php” | crontab -u apache/ New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: “clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen”.
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