Executive Summary

• This is the Brightwork Research & Analysis software rating series.
• We rate both the software and estimate the risk of implementing each application.

MUFI Rating & Risk for SugarCRM

MUFI: Maintainability, Usability, Functionality, Implement ability

Vendor: SugarCRM (Select For Vendor Profile)

Introduction

SugarCRM is an open source project and is the low-cost alternative to companies that may ordinarily consider Salesforce. Our TCO analysis shows that while its software price is much less than the best applications in the space. Its TCO is a lot closer to these applications than most buyers realize. Buyer satisfaction with SugarCRM is moderate.

Application Detail

SugarCRM has functionality that is on the basic end of the spectrum. When working in SugarCRM for the first time it’s easy to think “is this all there is to the application?” However, for those companies looking for a lower priced solution that does not have heavy requirements, SugarCRM is often presented as a logical choice. However, in our testing, SugarCRM lagged the productivity of the best applications in the category because while it is simple, the workflow of the application requires many page views. Secondly, SugarCRM is one of the few enterprise applications that we ran into performance issues with, which is a concern because at the time we were only performing very basic actions with the application. If SugarCRM knows it requires users to navigate through more screens than competitors, it would be wise to increase the server hardware to make this less obvious. Also, as with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the system is buggy, which many salespeople will be less likely to tolerate – which means not only lost time, but we predict lower data quality as salespeople may opt out of data entry and also rely less upon the system.

SugarCRM has a few reporting views like this – which in this case is the CRM funnel, but in general, SugarCRM has very generic screens.

Overall, the ability of users to quickly interact with the application and to scale quickly with the application is more limited. These are essential criteria for salespeople who most often want to enter their data as quickly as possible, and of course get quick snapshots as to the sales and lead situations.

Even though SugarCRM is not an application we rate very highly on its technical merits, some of their customers are quite enthusiastic about the application. These tend to be companies with limited IT support that just want a simple system that “works.” However, if we had been drinking coffee to we would have to spit it out when we found that Forrester had named SugarCRM its “top CRM vendor,” just beating out what we consider to be the abysmal Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We found it strange that this could be the case since this following quotation was taken from the report on SugarCRM.

A key weakness of the solution, however, is that it provides very limited support for the broader range of CRM capabilities, including analytics, customer data management, partner channel management, eCommerce, and field service.

In one of the most rapidly expanding categories of enterprise software, where the footprint is continually expanding, SugarCRM cannot keep up with the leaders regarding where the category is going. The nice thing is that CRM systems are one of the easiest categories of enterprise software to switch between.

This Forrester report is filled with trendy and for lack of a better word….idiotic contentions as the following quotation can attest.

We’ve entered a new era that Forrester calls the age of the customer. While companies have always, to a greater or lesser extent, called themselves “customer-centric,” this is different. It is not about customer-centric thinking or taking the attitude that the customer is always right. Instead, the new power of customers means that a focus on the customer now matters more than any other strategic imperative. IT are all now only table stakes. Thee only source of competitive advantage is the one that can survive technology-fueled disruption — an obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with, and serving customers. Effectively. Competitive differentiation achieved through brand, manufacturing, distribution.

MUFI Scores

All scores out of a possible 10.

Vendor and Application Risk

Implementation of SugarCRM is about as simple as an implementation can get in enterprise software. The only risk of note is the traditional risk concerning CRM implementations, which is getting users actually to adopt the system and input and update the information. SugarCRM’s low level of functionality must, of course, be considered before the purchase is made. However, SugarCRM does not tend to oversell what the application can do, and it is easy to find out the application’s capabilities by simply using the free trial. Therefore there should not be an excuse as to why a buyer should get into a situation where they thought SugarCRM could do something that it actually cannot do.

Likelihood of Implementation Success

This accounts for both the application and vendor-specific risk. In our formula, the total implementation risk is application + vendor + buyer risk. The buyer specific risk could increase or decrease this overall likelihood and adjust the values that you see below.

Risk Definition

See this link for more on our categorizations of risk. We also offer a Buyer Specific Risk Estimation as a service for those that want a comprehensive analysis.

Risk Management Approach

There are no special considerations regarding risk management for SugarCRM implementations.

Finished With Your Analysis?

To go back to the Software Selection Package page for the CRM software category. Or go to this link to see other analytical products for SugarCRM.

References

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sugarcrm.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fwhitepapers%2FThe_Forrester_Wave__CRM_Mid_0.pdf