Reading my 2 year old son's favourite story to him for the third time the other night - We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen - I was suddenly hit by a realisation that, whilst the story can be seen as an innocent tale for children, there is also a hidden sales coaching session in there as well.

Over the past few years we have had a number of projects that involved integrating Drupal with SugarCRM. Because of this, we have developed a small Drupal to SugarCRM connector to make the job a little bit easier.

The module is not packed with features but it does make interfacing with SugarCRM simpler when developing/customising Drupal modules.
This is intended to be used by a developer, however there are one or two features that can be used without the need to write any code.

You may find yourself needing to perform an automated action on a regular basis. Maybe you have an external data source which you have written import scripts for.

Instead of running this script manually each day, you can set up a custom scheduler job in SugarCRM to do it for you.

This post will explain how to add a custom toolbar button to the SugarCRM shortcut bar. This can be useful if you carry out the same task daily and want to reduce the amount of clicks needed to acheive it, this can also be used to trigger custom built scripts for automated tasks.

You can see an example of this in practice with this module.. http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68754

We all know that our CRM systems contain all the relationship information about who you are dealing with, what actvities you have done to date with them, what communications have been made between your organisation and theirs, as well as how they connect and relate to other individuals' records within your CRM system. But relationships aren't just about how pieces of information connect to other pieces of information.

Relationships are, at the most basic level, a joining of two "things", whether pieces of information, pieces of an object/building/machine, or even people.

SugarCRM Inc. has just announced the general release of the latest version of its popular SugarCRM platform.
SugarCRM Version 6.2, branded as SugarCRM Spring 2011 Release now has a whole host of additional features, as well as a number of additional package offerings.

As well as the previous licensed Professional and Enterprise Editions, two new packages have been created allowing for more variety as to the levels of feature sets available.

If they are all from the same company, separately trying to sell the same thing to the same person at the same time, then that's not a joke, it's just bad planning.

There is an old saying that "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" and this just as true whether applied to production, travelling or selling. If you haven't taken the time to check that what you are about to do is at the right time, is with an appropriate recipient, is a valid use of time of all parties involved and, more importantly, is needed by the customer, then you could be heading for failure.

So you just sent out your best ever mail campaign. SugarCRM has pulled the results back into your Campaign Status showing it went out to every recipient, yet there are no reads, no click-throughs and no useful data to go prospecting from. Did they actually receive the mail? If they did, was it simply deleted as soon as it arrived? Are you sure that you are doing everything you can to ensure that your all-important mail or newsletter campaign gets into your recipient's email box?

With the upcoming version of SugarCRM being focussed heavily towards SocialCRM, the TLA, (that's Three Letter Acronym), looks set to make an appearance into everyday business life more than ever before.

While TLAs can be useful to save typing long-winded descriptions such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), they can also throw confusion at the uninitiated.

They've been with us for years already and you may have already come across some or all of the following:

The Royal Wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton due on Friday 29th April 2011 will be the first Royal Wedding streamed live across the world via the Internet and is set to not only make National and International history, but also set and break a good few records in the process.
With so much emphasis and attention currently being poured on to the event, I thought it fitting to take a look at the differences between this Global event and SugarCRM.