What is CRM?

CRM is an acronym standing for Customer Relationship Management. It is a general term which describes the variety of methods used by companies to manage the relationships with customers, including acquiring, storing and analysing customer information. A company’s CRM should add value for both their customers and suppliers based on long-term business relationships. A decent CRM system (whether computer software or otherwise) should provide information and functionality to increase loyalty and decrease defection.

How can Sugar software help my organisation?

• Enable the organisation to give better customer service • Raise customer revenues • Improve customer retention • Identify and attain new customers • Sell products more effectively • Enable the sales force to close deals faster • Improve the efficiency of call-centres • Make the sales and marketing process easier.

Does my hosting contract include end-user support?

To keep the costs as reasonable as possible, hosting contracts do not include end-user support. It does include technical support for a named individual from your organisation. Technical support means resolving problems relating to the software, it does not include showing you how to use it.

Does my hosting contract include training?

Unfortunately, to fully train a sugar administrator takes a whole day. We offer a range of solutions to help you get up to speed, but if your budget won't allow it, manuals are available from within the application (go to Admin --> Online Documentation). There is also a wealth of information available on the SugarCRM forums and within the SugarCRM Wiki.

Can I have direct access to my database when using your hosted service?

We are happy to provide you with a snapshot of your database on request.

Can you move my current Sugar installation to your servers?

Yes, this is relatively straight forward if you can give us access to your existing Sugar location, or send us the files. We would normally charge you for one hour's engineering time to do this.

What is the setup at your data centre?

Our setup involves pairs of servers located at a secure data centre, that are replicated across to each other every two minutes. This gives full redundancy in the event of a system failure. In the unlikely event of failure of the primary server of any pair, the secondary server will kick in automatically ensuring that you can keep working. In addition, backups run every 4 hours to servers at the same location, as well as overnight to a second remote location, so that in the extremely unlikely event of double server failure, you will never lose more than a few hours' work.

How much data storage do I get with the hosted service?

With all of our hosting contracts we impose a "Reasonable Usage" clause. In this way, we do not limit the amount of data that you can store in your Sugar installation. To date, we have yet to impose a limit on any of our customers.

What's the difference between Community Edition and Professional?

There are quite a few differences, but in essence there are a few bits missing from the Community Edition. Most of the excluded elements can be compensated for through either free add-ins available at SugarForge.org, or for a fee from Sugar Exchange. The most common deciding factor for our customers is the lack of the cross-module reporting facility in Community Edition.

Can I capture leads from my web site?

Yes, Sugar has a built in lead-capture form generator, within the Campaigns module. This will help you to generate a basic form that you can format to match your web site and upload. We include help in setting this up for all of our hosted service customers.

How secure is Sugar?

Sugar is only as secure as your users make it. We do everything we possibly can to ensure the security of your data, but ultimately security comes down to passwords. Sharing passwords, or using simple words as passwords is asking for trouble. Ideally, you should use a strong password consisting of a minimum of 8 characters, including upper and lowercase letters, plus numbers.

Can I get email read-receipts using the built in email client

In a word, no. Read receipts aren't reliable in any system, but they are not available in Sugar's mail client at all.

Can I move from Community Edition to Professional Edition?

Yes, on purchase of licences, this is a very straight forward upgrade.

Can I move from Professional Edition to Community Edition?

Yes, however there is no built in "downgrade" mechanism, so we charge a small fee to do this manually.

SugarCRM publish information on supported platforms on their website: Supported Platforms.

Sugar seems very cluttered - is it easy to remove/hide modules?

Yes. You can remove modules from the view of individual users, or from the system as a whole in a couple of clicks. To remove modules from your view, click on the "my account" link at the top of your screen, then click the "edit" button. Scroll down until you get to the Layout Options section and move the modules you don't need from the box on the left, to the box on the right by clicking on them and using the arrow in between the two boxes to move them. Then click "Save".

How can I remove the fields I don't need?

Each form has two views, the detail view and the edit view. To remove (or add) fields from a module, you need to edit both views in the Studio. Go to the Admin panel, then to Studio. Navigate to the module you wish to change and drag the fields you wish to remove from each Layout view, dropping them on the recycle bin icon. Save and Deploy your changes. Do NOT be tempted to delete fields from the Fields table until they have been removed from ALL layouts that use them. Even then deletion of actual fields should never be undertaken lightly as these may be used for reports etc. which would then not work.

How can I create a custom field?

Go to Admin --> Studio --> the module you want the field to appear on. First click on the Fields link, then use the Add button to create the field - enter the relevant information about your new field and save it. Then go to the edit and detail view layouts for that module and drag and drop the field into place on each, clicking on Save and Deploy when your field is in place. That's all there is to it!