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On March 17^th, we had our Sugar User Group Meeting focused on Sugar Sales Automation Ideas. On May 19^th we will host the next User Group Meeting covering a SugarCon 2015 Recap. 

A huge thanks to everyone who participated in this meeting! Below is the video recording from the meeting, general notes as well as the questions & answers. 

Still have more questions about SugarCRM? Feel free to reach out to our team here, we’ll be happy to answer!

Agenda

• Last User Group Recorded Video Link
• SugarCRM News Roundup
• Upcoming SugarCRM Training
• SugarCRM Top 10 Sales Automation and CRM Advice
• SugarCRM Questions and Answers
• Next Meeting Training Topic Survey

Last Meeting

• January 2015: Report and Dashboards

News Roundup

• SugarCon 2015 Registration is live at https://sugarcon.com/
• SugarCRM purchases Stitch, a top mobile application development team with innovative ideas
• SugarCRM 7.5.1 was released for both on demand and on premise customers on February 25th that offers a number of minor fixes
• SugarCRM 7.6 enters Release Candidate testing and is expected to be released for SugarCon end of April
• W-Systems named Elite SugarCRM Partner – Top 18 partners worldwide. 
• W-Systems was Top 5 Partner worldwide for 2014

SugarCRM Resources

• SugarCRM Community - community.sugarcrm.com
• SugarCRM Support Main Page – support.sugarcrm.com
• SugarCRM eLearning - learningportal.sugarcrm.com
• SugarCRM on YouTube - youtube.com/user/DiscoverSugarCRM
• W-Systems SugarCRM Blog - w-systems.com/blog/sugarcrm
• W-Systems on Twitter - twitter.com/WSystemsCorp

Upcoming Training on Sugar University

• View the full SugarCRM Learning Portal Catalog
• April 15: SugarCRM Administration Essentials
• Video On Demand Series: Get Started with Sugar 7

SugarCRM Top 10 Sales Automation and CRM Advice
To see the detailed bulleted information, make sure to view the presentation slides at the bottom of this post.

1. Form a CRM Committee
2. Simplify SugarCRM Screens and Processes
3. Create a Data Driven Environment
4. Implement a Customer Information Standard
5. Automation Your Integration with Outlook or Email
6. Integrate to Financials
7. Integrate Marketing Tools
8. Create a rock solid leads pursuit process
9. Training your users on mobile app usage
10. Automate your quotation or proposal process

SugarCRM Open Questions & Answers

1. Could you discuss the benefits/costs of Act-On over the native marketing automation within Sugar?
   
   Native marketing automation within Sugar just involves sending email. The cost is free in that you can send as much email as you like (through your own mail server) without any restrictions to leads, contact, prospects, etc... Sugar then will tracks links, opens, unsubscribes and hard bounces.
   
   However, most people prefer to have this done by a third party solution such as ConstantContact or MailChimp since they don’t want to handle spam complaints and deliverability issues of sending mass emails.
   
   Act-On in comparison to services like ConstantContact or MailChimp is much more expensive, but has many more features and capabilities. In addition to sending email, at W-Systems we use Act-On to manage our webinars and are able to profile the data and then automatically make it available within Sugar.
   
   In addition to handling webinars, Act-On also handles website tracking, white paper downloads, social media posting, and much more. If you would like to learn more about Act-On send us a message and we will be happy to give you a demo.
   
    
2. Do you have a way to carry over ProcessMaker workflows into a marketing automation tool such as Act-On or Marketo?
   Sugar purchased a tool called ProcessMaker and is now working to integrate it for Sugar enterprise processes.
   Usually process tools use API endpoints, so we would expect that it would be possible to trigger a transactional emails in Act-On or Marketo.
   
    
3. Can you go into more detail about the automated workflow in Sugar 7?
   There are two types of workflows that exist in Sugar 7. 
   
   1) The first option is available in both Sugar 6 and 7 and is accessible through the Admin Panel of Sugar (accessible for administrators) called Workflow Management. 
   Workflow Management was covered in November 2014 User Group meeting.  It allows you to:
     - Create a workflow
     - Look at a certain module of Sugar such as Customer Service Cases or Leads
     - Look for a certain condition such as a lead saved with a certain status
     - Then in response to finding this information, send out an email or create a task or update a record automatically within Sugar.
   
   2) In Sugar 7.6 if you have Sugar 7 Enterprise Edition you will get a new visual workflow designer.  There is a flowchart type designer that allows you to create complex business decisions such as pricing approvals, complicated workflows that have many steps and conditional breakpoints. This should be released in April 2015.
   
    
4. How should we approach learning more about using Quotes?
   
   Starting off with Quotes is a process of building up the product catalog in Sugar and then using the Admin PDF Manager to customize the quote to match the visual layout that you wish to have paired to your customers. 
   
   You can make this look like anything with your logo or with certain data points.  Check out support.sugarcrm.com to start out by reading the manual and familiarize yourself with these concepts.
   
    
5. We looked into Riva when we started with Sugar approximately two years ago and it did not seem to be fully integrated. How has Riva improved their app to work better with Sugar?
   Riva is a product that W-Systems has done about 50+ installations for as partners for Sugar.  Riva continuously is improving their product to work better with Sugar.  They have a cloud and an on-premise version. If you go to rivacrmintegration.com you will be able to browse more information about their integration with Sugar.

Our next meeting will highlight: SugarCon 2015 Recap