The latest update to SugarCRM’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform adds several new capabilities aimed at providing sales and marketing professionals with “more timely and relevant” information about their customers.
Sugar 7.7 adds new support for custom tags to help users better classify information about their customers in ways that work for them, the company said. The updated platform also improves search capabilities to deliver the most relevant results quickly, according to SugarCRM.
The new version of Sugar also enhances the platform’s existing knowledge base, streamlines lead conversion and provides better highlighting of key quotes and forecast information, the company said.
New Tag, Search Capabilities Help With Relevance
In an announcement about the platform update, chief product officer Rich Green said Sugar 7.7 is designed to help users “access accurate information about their customers exactly when they need it.” The aim of the new features is to provide businesses with more “informative CRM,” the company said.
Sugar 7.7’s support for custom tagging, for example, is integrated into the platform’s database. That enables users to look for designated tags in their records via the updated global search, rather than having to use a separate tag search function.
The upgraded Sugar Knowledge Base, meanwhile, enables users to write articles on any topic for internal or external viewing. It also features an “intelligence panel” that displays context-sensitive information to help users quickly find relevant articles.
“The new features were driven by how fast the pace of business moves today,” company spokesperson Andrew Staples told us. “We are watching business model after business model being disrupted by ridiculously fast evolution in mobile tech, new marketplaces are popping up all over the place and faster and faster communication keeps connecting buyers and sellers in new ways.”
‘Transforming Customers’ Experience’ Is Key
Staples said today’s empowered customers expect immediate answers and instant gratification. “This means the most impactful strategy for your business must be around transforming your customers’ experience with your company,” he said.
While the new support for custom tagging and global search can be helpful in any industry, the updated capabilities are particularly useful for larger businesses, Staples said.
“Obviously, the bigger you are as a company, the more data you’re incorporating into your CRM system,” he said. “And, as you add more customer information from all data sources, it becomes critical to organize and find data in a timely manner.”
SugarCRM’s development approach — based on commercial open source — “is increasingly catching the interest of larger organizations in addition to its traditional base of smaller companies and individuals,” Forrester analyst Kate Leggett noted in a blog post last year.
For instance, last year, one of the 100 largest conglomerates in Brazil began using Sugar and IBM’s Marketing Cloud to enable employees at car dealerships to use tablets to deliver personalized and coordinated service to customers. A financial services and automotive company, Rodobens implemented the solution to “drive a customer-centered transformation in our business,” according to Samara Brizante, the firm’s CRM director.
Image Credit: Screenshot via SugarCRM.
