Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » SugarCRM 4.5: How sweet it is!

September 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

SugarCRM 4.5: How sweet it is!

TAGS: Open Source

Because of my ineptitude, it wasn't until today that I got to take Sugar Professional 4.5 for a drive. Verdict?

It rocks.

I've been using Sugar for the past 9 months or so (no, I'm not pregnant), and have loved most of it (Fast, easy to use UI, very easy to administer, etc.), and put up with some of it (customization features, information saved in Leads not auto-converting into Opportunities). No product is perfect.

I'm struggling to criticize this new version, though. First off, it's absolutely beautiful to look at. The UI has been seriously upgraded - Ajax and such, with dashlets that let me heavily customize my home "portal." It's also much, much easier to add custom fields - it's all drag-and-drop now, whereas Sugar used to require a fairly cumbersome (and hit-and-miss) manual creation of fields. The Sugar team has also added Forecasts, Quotes, Contracts, and a range of other new functionalities that are making it easy for my team to track customer contracts, send out quotations (and have the system keep track of them), etc.

While Dave has to resort to insulting Salesforce.com to get support for his CRM system, Sugar is so easy to use that I don't even need support. For the few occasions when I have, I can go to the Sugar Forums to get support, or log a support incident. Because Sugar is in the business of support, my experience with their support team has been fantastic.

Yes, I'm an advisor to SugarCRM, so perhaps I have a rosy view of the product. But my team isn't, and has also loved Sugar 4.5. It's a fantastic product. You should check it out.

Posted by Matt Asay on September 28, 2006 11:48 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: