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Disclaimer: I really like SalesForce.com as a CRM choice. I have therefore come to know it best, and to expect any other CRM to deliver the functionality and dependability that I have come to expect from SFDC. I don't care if something else costs less if it is unreliable or short on features.

That said, I also love supporting the little guy and prefer open source over closed systems in general. I'm a Firefox user, not an IE person, for example. So I wanted to love SugarCRM and have an option I would be proud to offer clients who can't afford SFDC prices. How unfortunate then for my review of SugarCRM to reveal it to be way too buggy and annoyingly planned to be able to recommend.

First let me say the things I like about Sugar. I like that you can change how your user interface is arranged whenever you want. You can simply change the theme shown in a dropdown field on the home page to change colors, arrangement of the object tabs (horizontal or vertical), and more. You can also create new home page views that mash together various components, such as lists of all your Opportunities, Accounts, Leads, etc. with graphical charts based on reports. In SFDC you get similar customization ability, but it is pretty much limited to just one view of the home page. You can't name a bunch of configurations, save them all as links, then switch from one to the other at the click of a button whenever you want.

I also love that Sugar includes an integrated project management component, though I couldn't get it to actually work. But to get to the downside later, let me just say that it is nice to not have to hunt for, install, and pay for an add-on, such as DreamTeam's $40/usr/mo pricey though excellent app. Sugar starts up day one with the feature there, and you can see Gantt charts at the click of a button, if you crave that sort of view of tasks on a project.

Of course, the thing most to love about Sugar is the price. You can get it for free if you want to download the community version and install it on your own web server running PHP. You then have to maintain it yourself, but there are a lot of IT people who know PHP, so if you have in-house IT with those skills, you will probably be fine. If you want an on-demand solution within the SaaS model, Sugar offers several options, each of which is less expensive than SFDC. For the Professional Edition of each, you pay $30/usr/m with Sugar and $65/usr/m with SFDC. For Enterprise Edition it's Sugar $50/usr/m and SFDC $125/usr/m. (In a later article I will review Zoho CRM, which is even cheaper.) Comparable Sugar editions also contain more features than the similarly named SFDC edition. For example, Sugar's PE includes workflow and campaigns at no extra charge.

A year ago there would be a long list of important functions available within SFDC that are simply missing in Sugar. Not so any more. Sugar has pretty clearly been copying SFDC like nobody's business. They even use the exact same list of picklist/dropdown values sometimes, such as for Opportunity/Sales Stages. Now it seems to be less a matter of having the function listed as included and more a matter of getting it to work.

Take the project management feature I mentioned earlier. I created an Account, created a related sales Opportunity record, and then created a project off that Opportunity. Great. But then when I added tasks to the project record, I simply could not get them to show on the Gantt for that project. It clearly says the task is related to the right project when I create or later edit the task, but when I go to the project the tasks don't actually get related. How is anyone using this?

This is in an area where I have no expectations coming from SFDC, because SFDC has no native project management. I just want it to work. But an area where I do have expectations set by SFDC is when it comes to working with Opportunities and Products. I expect the system to do things for me, like calculating the Opp Amount based on which Products I've added. Sugar doesn't do that. I also expect it to allow me to create an independent Price book from which I can pull products for any Opportunity. Sugar has me create each product as a unique entry related to a specific Opp, like Opportunity Products within SFDC. Nowhere did I find an actual price book that could be set up by admin or management staff then accessed by users.

On the admin side, I was annoyed by the handling of picklist/dropdown values. I think of each field in terms of what object the field is related to, regardless of what type of field it is. There is a difference to me between a Type field on an Account versus an Opportunity versus a Case. I don't expect to have to go to one location to find all of them, but in Sugar you do. You edit most fields on an object-by-object basis, but dropdowns are treated specially. They are all accessed in one central location. I could get over this, not expecting every CRM to have made the same decisions as SFDC, and willing to accept I better include the name of each object within the name of the field if it is a dropdown if I want to be able to find it later to edit the value options in the list. However, the thing is also buggy.

I tried at least 4 times to make changes to the Sales Stage field to either add a new value or edit an existing one, and each time it said it was saving my changes, but clearly did not. When I went to the separate page for editing the Sales Probability (an unnecessary step in SFDC, since the two fields are edited together there), my changes from Sales Stage are gone. When I then go back to Sales Stage, sure enough, not saved.

There are other little things that are just annoying if you've been spoiled by SFDC usage. For example, when you create a new field, instead of entering the label first the way you want users to see it (written out with spaces, etc.) and then having the system translate that into the form it needs to work with the field so you don't have to, it goes the other way around in Sugar. You supply the version formatted for the machine and then you also supply the one formatted for the user. Another example is, when you want to edit a page layout you have to do it twice, once for what the record looks like when it is being edited and again for what it looks like when it is being viewed. Now if you are going to frequently be making those two views different, I guess this is a great feature to have. I've never had it nor missed it in SFDC, but if I did, maybe I'd consider it a benefit instead of a cumbersome and unnecessary chore.

In general I found SugarCRM to be buggy. They have added a lot of features recently to make it more like SFDC (Self-Service Portal, etc.) but it just isn't reliable. Take a look at the frequency of patch releases in the announcements section of their support forum and you'll get an idea of just how buggy, but trying SugarCRM yourself is probably the best proof. Give SalesForce.com a try also, then let me know what you think between the two.

Labels: CRM

Confession, I avoid Apex like the plague. I don't want to know it myself, and don't expect any of my clients' in-house SFDC Admins to want to know it either. Yet whenever an Apex solution is created for them (by someone else at AspiraTech, never me) the client is forever dependent on a developer to maintain that functionality for them as their business process and related needs change over time. That is just not the way I like to work. I am all about teaching a person to fish instead of just giving them a fish. I love the ongoing relationships I have with my clients, but I want those relationships to be focused on my assisting them with additional solutions, not just tweaking the ones they already have because they are unable to adapt them themselves.

So I look for solutions that are provided within creative use of the standard user interface, VisualForce pages (which I then teach them to maintain), and AppExchange applications that have any needed Apex baked in.

One of my favorite Apps is Form Assembly. Though the product was originally created as a standalone website form service like Survey Monkey, it has grown to be something far more powerful than that with its SFDC integration.

With Form Assembly you can update any object in SFDC through your company's website. Want to collect feedback from your customers and have it added directly to their Contact record? Create a form using FA. Want to have forms on your website generate new records on a custom object you created, such as event registrations? FA feeds directly into custom objects. How about those pesky "Stay-in-Touch Requests" that send Contacts to a form to update their contact information, but then submit the form results to you as an email, requiring data entry to get the new info into their Contact record? Once again, FA to the rescue.

FA even offers PayPal integration, conditional fields (which SFDC does not offer), and calculated fields. I could go on and on about the many things I love about the app, and one of the best is its amazingly affordable $34/user/month price tag. Remember, the only user who needs the FA license is the one who will be creating the forms.

Honestly, the only thing I can say against FA is that they have made the puzzling decision not to make free trials available for even a week. I was therefore unable to demonstrate any of the SFDC integration for you in screenshots. The only trial I could access is one hosted on their site that is not integrated with SFDC, and even then you only get 2 hours of access, beginning as soon as you click the "Test Drive" button in AppExchange.

Come on folks. What do you think we are going to do, create a bunch of forms week one then not buy the service? It's only $34 per month! And it's such a great product, of course customers will want more than a week's access --though not us developers; hence our need to be able to access it to test use cases for our clients before putting them live in their systems. Give developers ongoing access without the ability to host forms on any site other than FA's and no ability to receive data from some critical field, like email, if you are really afraid of folks stealing access. And give the general public full access for just a week so that they can try it out without having to spend any money up front.

Apart from the irrational paranoia of the vendor, it really is a no-lose product, one every SFDC user should really consider implementing. With Form Assembly you get cross-object action without needing any Apex. One form can feed into multiple objects, creating needed records that are interdependent at the click of a "submit form" button. Skip the Apex and get Form Assembly.

Labels: CRM, Integration, Recommended_Apps, SaaS

When you go into a store, you expect there to be staff there whose primary job is to help customers like you find the products you want as efficiently as possible. If you wind up wandering around on your own for too long, unable to find what you're looking for or anyone who can answer your questions, you are likely to leave in frustration, empty handed.

So when it comes to your business and the customers wandering through your website, do you provide "in-store" assistance? Enter LivePerson, a technology that connects your sales staff with website visitors in real-time.

With LivePerson you can set business rules that alert sales staff when website visitors are engaging in certain behaviors that suggest they may be a high value potential sale that is about to head for the door. Sales staff can then reach out to them and essentially ask, "Can I help you find something?" If the person responds that they would like assistance, a chat conversation begins.

Just as in a store the sales assistant could either tell the customer which aisle to find the needed item in or walk them over to it and put it right in their hands, the LivePerson assistant can do the same. They can either explain the answer to a general question if that is what the customer needs, or find the product the person is looking for and "push" that page to the customer, so that they don't have to do anything themselves to navigate to it.

This is just one feature of what the LivePerson (LP) system can do for your business presence online. This business use alone has routinely accounted for a 20% increase in sales for the businesses who have implemented LP, which you can find out more about by reading their success stories. Customer post-sales support is another major area in which LP's approach to customer relationship success offers tremendous value.

I came across LivePerson when I was evaluating chat software services for a SalesForce.com CRM client who wanted to integrate chat with their SFDC customer service app. The two technologies work seamlessly together, with lead, account, contact and case data passing easily between the two applications. Check out this integration plug-in on the SFDC AppExchange.

My client wound up going with just one LP seat license to start, just to get a sense of how it would work for them, since they were skating a very thin profit margin at the time. (I would generally advise a more comprehensive approach to integrating the technology into one's business process, if you can possibly afford to do so right now.) The cost for them was a little under $100/month, which isn't the cheapest chat you can find, but it is the best value. With LP you get far more than just a chat application. You get a business system, complete with reporting and optimization services provided by LP. You are coached and guided through not only implementation of the technology, but through the fine tuning of your business process so that you take full advantage of what the technology can do for your business.

The return on investment with LivePerson seems to be so definite that it is hard to make the business case for not using it. That is, if you do in fact want people who visit your website to come away satisfied with their experience, while your bottom line takes a marked ascent.

Labels: Integration, Recommended_Apps

Keep your reader recommendations coming. It is reader feedback that led me to Intervals, a truly superior solution for project management and client invoicing within one integrated web-based application. If you’ve read this blog in the past, you will be well familiar with how much I love Harvest, appreciate Basecamp, and loathe eProject/Daptiv. Enter Intervals, the killer app.

Time Tracking, Tasks & Invoicing

Intervals is both a project management and invoicing system. Its conception of the word "task" is more a part of project management than invoicing. Compared with Harvest, a pure invoicing system which views a "task" as something you charge for, Intervals requires a lot more work to get out an invoice.

Intervals forces you to plan ahead to create tasks in advance, or else feels like dual entry (task and time) when you go to enter time towards an invoice. Annoying when you are spontaneously deciding on tasks to do and just want to quickly enter the time, the way Harvest works quite well.

In Intervals you can track billable time within a “general time” bucket that includes no task, but that can be confusing if you are jumping between activities and want to detail them on the final invoice. I prefer Harvest’s quick and easy way to create new tasks and track time against them at once, rather than as two separate steps.

Within Intervals, you can just click an icon to start tracking time on the very next screen after creating the task, but at that point there will be no access to the "work type" drop-down list, unlike when you select the button “add time to this task” after creating the task or start the time recording on the "Time" tab. And then after you stop the timer and want to actually "apply" the time to the task, it is necessary to then enter the worktype info in another dialogue box, so basically it is the same as using the button in the beginning and having to complete two screens.

In Harvest less is entered when creating the task and the click of an icon button applies that first set of entries to populate all the data that will later be invoiced. That approach is much more streamlined, involving only half the data entry for each task, which really adds up.

I like that Intervals includes due dates on tasks by default, which Harvest doesn’t, since it isn’t thinking of a task as a “to do” so much as a billable unit of time. Instead of having it be so easy to create new tasks and log time against them as in Harvest, one is more prone to have fewer tasks and then keep returning to them in order to log time against them over several days. It isn’t that you can’t use Harvest in just as “organized” a way as Intervals. It's just that it is so easy to be sloppier in Harvest that there is a greater likelihood you will be.

In Intervals time tracking is a part of project management, and invoicing is an outgrowth of the fact that you already logged the time against a project. In Harvest time tracking is done solely for the sake of invoicing. If all you need is well organized, super quick and easy invoicing, Harvest is your solution.

Project Management Evaluation

Just as Intervals can be compared to Harvest when it comes to time tracking and invoicing, it can be compared to Basecamp when it comes to project management. Basecamp also includes time tracking features, but since they don't extend to include invoicing, it is an incomplete solution, requiring the addition of another app like Harvest to complete the job.

Project management is the one area in which I thought Intervals might not outshine the competition. User interface preferences vary a great deal from person to person, as do business processes from company to company. I recognize others may have a very different view of this, but when I compared the Basecamp and Intervals user experiences, again I wound up solidly preferring Intervals. The user interface is more intuitive, easier to read, and easier to navigate. There are also a number of pre-made reports that can be quite helpful.

Like Basecamp, the Intervals project management approach is more about organizing communication around tasks that have been done or need to be done by different people. It is less Gantt oriented than a software like eProject/Daptiv, which seeks to imitate MS Project within a SaaS app. I don't mind losing the Gantt view, but the one thing I couldn’t find in Intervals that I did want was a way to make one milestone/task’s start dependent on another’s completion. When one task gets pushed back, this affects all subsequent tasks, but how do you show this in Intervals without having to manually edit all subsequent tasks/milestones that should be dependent? The answer is found within their user forum:

“We used to use Microsoft Project heavily for all of our projects and we found that we spent too much time tending to and tuning the schedule. Intervals deliberately does not have task dependencies the way traditional project management solutions work. Via trial and error we found that Gantt charts are great at scheduling and articulating the steps to build something, but aren't that useful managing the day to day tasks of getting the work done. Intervals is very strong on the task tracking and getting things done side, but weak on the scheduling side. The milestones and light scheduling piece we [have implemented] strengthen the scheduling side quite a bit. You [can] create a milestone, attach tasks to it, and manage the tasks and milestones via a calendar view. You [can] drag and drop and move tasks and milestones around. It is definitely not traditional task dependencies, but it is a different way to approach the issue.”

The other major feature of traditional PM where Intervals takes a different road is resource allocation. To quote their user forum once more: “Intervals does not feature traditional resource allocation. We are working on a periscope report that will show how much work has been assigned vs. how much is done, but it is different than the resource allocation found in traditional project management (no resource leveling for example). It is meant to answer the question of "how much work do we have on the books" and can be filtered by client, person, project, etc. It may or may not do the trick depending on your needs.”

Like Basecamp, Intervals is taking a non-Gantt approach to project management. I find that the calendar editing function within Intervals is easy enough to use to make it pretty easy to manually move dependent tasks when you want, and at least with Intervals I can pick any timeframe I want to see in calendar view (unlike Basecamp).

To sum it up, as one of Interval’s customer testimonials proclaims: “At the end of the day, the core platform of Basecamp™ did not focus on time, work flow and reporting, which is where Intervals excels.” Amen.

The Costs

Pricing of Intervals is done by the number of projects, whereas in Harvest it is done by the number of users. With Intervals, for only $20 per month I get up to 15 projects with unlimited users (both staff and client users). In Harvest I get unlimited projects, but am on a plan that allows for only 1 user and pay $12 per month. Of course, since Harvest isn’t a project management app, you may not need more than one person to be able to log in, just whoever generates invoices. Still, the Harvest price point jumps from $12 for 1 user to $40 for 5, so if you do need more than one person entering their time in the app, you're going to pay for it. You can’t pay the same $20 as for Intervals and get 2.5 users, and this is just the time tracking and invoicing feature set we're talking about.

Basecamp's pricing for a plan that includes time tracking on each project, but no client invoicing, is $49/month for unlimited users and 35 projects. So combining Basecamp with Harvest would cost $61/month, and get you project management, time tracking related to projects that can be exported into the invoicing app, invoicing, a 35 project limited, unlimited PM users, 1 invoicing user, plus 10GB of document storage.

With Intervals, for a third that price I get the features of both Basecamp and Harvest within one integrated package, and the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. At that price, I do get fewer projects and less document storage - 15 projects, 1 GB storage - but there are still unlimited users, so clients can be invited to contribute to mark tasks as done and view project progress. For my company, 15 projects is sufficient, since you can activate and deactivate projects at will, and we are never working on more than 15 projects at once. It would be nice to have more native storage which would obsolesce our use of ftp to share files during data migrations, but it's not a deal breaker.

Needless to say, I will be canceling my Basecamp and Harvest subscriptions at the end of the next billing period, and making the switch to Intervals. Try Intervals out for 30 days yourself to see if it is an approach that will work for your business.

(Special Nice-To-Have: Intervals creates a permalink page for each task, so that contributors can conveniently be directed to that specific task page.)

Labels: Project_Management, Recommended_Apps, SaaS