SugarCRM Makes CRM Simple with Launch of Sugar 6
CRM isn’t just a piece of technology. Orienting your business around knowing, serving and connecting with your customers is a process and a culture. Process and culture are truly the heart of CRM. And it isn’t easy.
But there’s no reason the technology that enables a customer-centric culture has to be hard to use. But frankly, CRM technology has often been a bear to work with.
Most CRMs take a complex piece of technology (encompassing marketing, sales, support, contracts, quoting, etc.) and combine it with a clumsy, click-happy user interface. That’s a recipe for disaster.
With today’s launch of Sugar 6.0, Sugar has taken a “good enough” user interface and made it exceptional.
Sugar’s new tagline with the launch is “CRM Made Simple”, and they’ve clearly targeted the user experience. I’ve been using the new Sugar interface for several months. In short, it’s incredible.
The best improvements?
- A shortcut bar that places the most common actions persistently at the top of the page and opens an overlay without moving you to another screen. For example, if I’m looking at a project status screen and receive a call from a customer, I can click the “Log Call” shortcut, input my notes and save the call without ever leaving the project screen.
- Hovering your mouse over Tabs brings up specific actions for that tab. For example, when I hover over Accounts, I see options to create, view and import accounts as well as a list of the accounts I’ve viewed most recently. This keeps the screen clean while still putting countless tools a single mouse-action away.
- Global search returns a results list from the entire system without making me leave the screen I’m looking at. It’s so brilliant and simple I have no idea why I’ve never seen it in a CRM before.
- The new look is snazzy. A little bigger and a little bolder is a little easier on the eyes. Clearly Sugar has been paying attention to what Facebook and other leading Web 2.0 companies are learning about user interfaces.
- Upcoming native support for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberries. Native mobile integration is going to be a “must have” in the very near future.
I’m excited about the quality of this update from Sugar. As business-technology consultants we like to stay technology-neutral and realize we risk our own reputation when we commit to a piece of technology. Based on Sugar 6, we made a good decision five years ago when we brought Sugar into our technology stable.
If you’re considering a CRM project or would like to see Sugar 6 in action, feel free to get in touch with us.
If you have opinions about Sugar 6, feel free to leave a comment below.
