Highrise CRM (discontinued) vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

I am not familiar with other contact management systems; before Highrise, we used a paper rolodex. But for our purposes, which have certainly changed over the last several years, we've been able to adapt Highrise to our needs. We've changed our tagging protocol - now, for example, we have social media tags, so I can narrow a contacts search down by contacts who have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. And we've added fields in the Contact Info so that we can include links to those pages when they exist, and you can click on it to go directly to those pages. It definitely meets our needs, though we are a fairly small marketing department, under 50 employees who utilize Highrise, and probably far fewer who use it frequently. Particularly with the tagging system, I could see a large number of users creating useless and overwhelming numbers of tags

Incentivized

The way Community Tax uses Sugar from a users point of view is, it can house a lot of information for either a company or individual with the option of adding additional sub cases . The down side is there are licenses issued per user and 1 per user is not enough because most of the time we are multitasking. Therefore a program/software would be more suitable instead of using a URL.

Incentivized

• Able to see all activity, this helps if you need to find out who made updates last.
• You can create different tags for clients. We have tags labels for each product the client has with our company, so when we need to pull reports it saves a lot of time.
• If a client has multiple people in the office you can add all their informaiton.

Incentivized

• Very easy to set up and configure reports among teams. Very customizable and allows me to build reports that illustrate how the team is performing.
• Exporting granular reports into excel for in depth analysis and actionable measures.
• Ability to mass upload lots of information and leads. Important for our team to import lots of information on prospecting clients.

Incentivized

• Would like to be able to copy information from the right sidebar more easily without having to open up & edit the contact (like Skype or email info)
• When I start a search by tags and pull out information, I have to re-do the tagged search to pull it up again
• Takes a while to export a custom list

Incentivized

• The back-end programming (logical hooks) for advanced customizations could benefit from a more user-friendly interface
• General layout could be improved by the addition of modern templates to customize the standard look and feel
• Support communities could be further improved with the addition of videos on how to do specific configuration, modules.

Incentivized

It's become the heart of our contact management system - it's low cost, simple to use and high impact for us. We are using a version that allows for unlimited employees, 50,000 Highrise contacts and 100 Gb or file storage. This means to us that this is scalable and sufficient for the foreseeable future. By using some other apps we can add some things that we need that aren't built into the product. We use infusionsoft but not as a contact manager for clients. When a contact in infusionsoft reaches a certain stage and we get more "hands on", we use Zapier to setup the contact in Highrise and create an embryonic deal. We like Mailchimp for email newsletters and Mailchimp syncs nicely with Highrise. Finally we use SalesClic to give us a more refined sales pipeline.

Our organization will continue to use Sugar as long as it remains cost effective and it addresses the majority of our needs. I will, however, recommend looking into other options once our needs increase and there is additional budget for some bigger named and more robust platform options. I feel if the application was friendlier to end users we would get better productivity as well.

It's quick and easy to setup and use. There isn't any feature "bloat". Nothing to struggle with

In the overall usage of the system I still give it a 10 out 10 because it's our day to day system that we use here at work. We all have come to love it because it's quick and easy to use. New updates are given to us by our supervisors or managers and it's easy to do new things in the system. The only Issue like I said before that I'm having is that once I put a payment date and want to modify the dates, it will only allow me to eliminate the date but not put a new one back in.

Incentivized

SugarCRM has never been down for us.

No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.

They are quick and SO nice. They are very friendly and are eager to help.

Incentivized

Because it provides us with the necessary support and with the updates that are being made in the system, it allows us to improve our work experience and makes it easier for the entire team. When requesting some type of support it is effective and immediate and with this, it [does not] stagnate our productivity.

Incentivized

We feel clasroom training is essential to ensure user adoption and buy-in. Video and on-line training courses gave their place but being in a classroom setting enables the Team to make any potential CRM issues visble right up front.

Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.

Study, study, and study. Be prepared to train everyday until all processes are flowing nicely. The CRM is the elephant and figuring out where to take the first bite can be a challenge. But there is only one way to eat this elephant, one bite at a time. Systematic planning is very important.

Incentivized

We use to use Connectwise and Highrise is a breath of fresh air compared to Connectwise. We love that the 37 signal services are all web based. We can connect anywhere making working on the go much easier for everyone. Our challenge with Basecamp was that it was a computer program based product which made it very slow and inefficient. It also conflicted with our Mac computers because it only worked on a Windows platform. None of this is the case for Highrise. I've never had a load issue nor has it ever run slow. It's up to the minute with any updates and entries. The categories it offers is wonderful and very appreciated. Organization is key, and it's the best way to keep everyone on task. Overall, we are very happy with the product

Incentivized

SugarCRM does not stack up well against Bloomreach; we moved away from SugarCRM to Bloomreach, which was much more suited and easily integrated into many different platforms. Bloomreach has a much nicer user interface for debugging and simpler screens for less technical audiences to utilize 3rd. Party support is rarely required, and lots of easy-to-understand documentation is available.

Incentivized

Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.

• We use it to streamline and assign inbound sales calls.
• Sales reps use it to automatically store correspondence , schedule follow ups, and note requirements.
• We download the text data and apply big data techniques to learn about customer needs and product requirements in the aggregate.

Incentivized

• I know that SugarCRM has made a positive impact on my day to day work. Since we have made the change to SugarCRM (over a year ago) it has made life easier, more productive, and efficient.
• Organization is key and this CRM has done this exceptionally for me.

Incentivized