The Laban Johnson Group, LLC

The Laban Johnson Group uses a customized implementation of SugarCRM to perform many functions.

Here’s a nice plain-English explanation of why small businesses should plan on using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like SugarCRM from the get-go, an excerpt from the Blog of Leonid Mamchenkev

“As with WordPress, most people who have heard of SugarCRM probably think that it is Customer Relationship Management tool.  And it is.  But it’s so much more.  It is also a platform.

If you take the evolution of an average business web site, then it will go something like this.  First, we don’t even need a web site.  We’ll just pay for advertising or directory listings all over the web.  Then we’ll need a simple web site with contact information.  Then we want to expand it a bit to have information about the company, a list of products or services, and some other static information. A contact form appears somewhere around here too.  Then we start getting into more dynamic stuff with company news, online shops, etc.  Then web site becomes sort of a primary tool for a business.  It is content management, stock management, communication tool, and more.  At this stage, site’s database holds much more data than can be seen online.

Now if you think about that evolution in terms of software development, you’ll end up in hell.  You started with a clean and simple thing, which grew over the years and became a patched up monster that nobody wants to touch.   Most web sites would be rewritten a couple of times, but that won’t help them much.  Because most web design companies aren’t software development companies.  And though they are slowly turning into software development companies, they aren’t quite there.

SugarCRM helps a lot here.  It is a large and complex application that provides a solution from top to bottom.  So, instead of upgrading the web site and adding a few things here and there, you’ll be downgrading SugarCRM and removing things from here and there.  Depending on which level of evolution the web site is, SugarCRM might be a much better solution than a lot of in house development.”

Here is a a basic introduction to the features of SugarCRM and how to leverage it for your business goals:

What is SugarCRM?

SugarCRM is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which can dramatically improve the way that you manage and interact with your customers. A CRM system such as SugarCRM provides a central point for capturing, storing & sharing information about your customers and preserving that information across geographic locations or throughout staffing changes. A CRM can help you to:

• Increase sales by improving how your organization tracks and manages sales leads, opportunities, accounts, customer and prospect interactions.
• Increase Visibility by showing all your activities related to an account, business contact, or prospect in one central place.
• Improve Top Line Results by helping you to convert leads and opportunities into sales.
• Manage Information about the companies and individuals you do business with so that you can easily check the standing of a specific account.
• Improve Customer Service by ensuring that customer support requests are properly assigned and tracked.
• Generate Reports to forecast sales, track account activity.
• Scale Your Business by providing a smooth and affordable growth path from one user to hundreds.
• Protect Your Data by having your important customer and business data securely hosted and backed up.
• Save Money by using a well supported open source application.

Sales Force Management

SugarCRM provides a comprehensive environment for enabling and managing your sales force. By tracking accounts, contacts, activities and opportunities, the activities of the sales team can be reported on, making team members more accountable. This also helps to smooth the transition and protect business when a sales person leaves.

Customer Service and Support

With customer service case tracking and robust workflow automation, SugarCRM can help your customer service team become more efficient transparent and accountable. With the greater visibility provided by SugarCRM, your sales people can be aware of any high priority support cases before they meet with a client, and your service team can be aware of pending deals when providing assistance to customers. This enables you to break down the silos between departments, harmonizing your entire business to function more smoothly.

Marketing

SugarCRM takes marketing to a new level by integrating eMarketing with traditional marketing methods, tracking responses and gathering leads online. Sophisticated propsect targetting allows you to segment your customer & prospect lists with pin-point accuracy for specific marketing initiatives.

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