Sugar CRM

[swguy]

There have been a few posts in the last little while about Sugar integration. I would like to hear from the people who are enthusiastic about this idea:

- how would you use it?
- what specific data would you expect to be transferred?
- what value does it add to the existing solution (handling fulfillment through the ZC Admin panel)?

I'm just having trouble understanding the business value of this idea, but I could be convinced by a compelling argument.

[ECM]

Hi there,
I've been toying with this idea for sometime. I'm not sure if ZC & Sugar are the correct marriage - ZC is targeted towards smaller scale business whereas CRM is targeted towards the middle to large scale organisation.

However, ask yourself these questions. 'What value does a large scale organisation derive from CRM that a smaller operation wouldn't'? 'Why is it something that the big boys benefit from that the smaller ones couldn't'?

CRM is touted as the way to get both a 360 view of your customer & a single view at the same time. Meaning, what are they interested in and why might they choose to buy/interact with us- customer profiling/segmentation/profitability, etc.

So, what I'd like to store for analytical purposes is the following:
1) Google analytics type of data - how they found me, what search terms were they using, referrers, sales channels, what pages did they visit (like User Tracking mod), when/where did they leave, value of cart, abandoned carts, etc. Much of this can already be captured via ZC & various mods.
2) Off-line channels - What off-line offers did they respond to, did they call the shop (if so, did I know them already), what publication, etc. ZC doesn't help here but Sugar might.
3) Reporting - I'd like reports that cut across both databases - how many leads from publication x (off-line) resulted in orders? What is average customer value for channel x (nice pie/bar charts, etc). Trend analysis re: products, channels, customer profiles, etc. Customer/contact clean ups - 'retire' dormant customers so that I don't waste resources chasing them, etc.

I'd also like to take this further - ability to add CMS type functionality to my ZC. Add a new landing page for product X, have a blog, perhaps a competition or some other teaser. Have multiple shops sharing a common cart (see gap.com) - send newsletters from my CRM based on shopping history, customer profile, etc. ZC has some of these tools but you need to really know the product inside out to realise many of them - multiple stores is a case in point. I'm not sure if the ZC customer history would lend itself to segmentation analysis, etc.

I've been looking at magento recently - which looks very promising re: many stores, CMS, etc, customer reporting, etc. Magento might just have raised the bar - ecommerce has moved on since ZC started and while its a great product at the smaller end, I'm not sure that it can compete in the market place where CRM starts to be seen as necessary.

Hats off to the ZC folk - they have done amazingly well. But whether ZC can adapt is an open question.

Eddie

[blackjm75]

SWG,

A Sugar CRM type integration would be a huge help for us for similar reasons to ECM.

The main thing is the increased tracking of what is going on on the site/marketing campaigns and easily viewable stats and visuals. The ability to download the data in CSV files etc would be vital to. Reports need to be customisable so you can segment the data as required.

Email marketing/a good autoresponder is a must and as with the stats lists of customers must be able to segment as required. A variety of timed/event triggered sending options are vital. The stats package must track things like click through rates of email marketing campaigns etc.

One thing that could help if you find it isnt possible to integrate a full CRM is the integration of google analytics (Im sure this would present just as many problems if not more).

J

[swguy]

Several Google Analytics integrations exist already; search the downloads section.

[blackjm75]

SWG - do they simply track you stats in google analytics and you have to log in to GA to see them or do they allow you to view the stats and visuals through your admin?

The later is what I has hoping for so its possible to view it all in one place.

J

[infocom]

I've been searching for a Zencart -> Sugar data integration as a client of mine wants to use a central CRM database to manage all contacts/customers/leads from the store, website, and contacts/leads they all get from their sales team. They are not a large company, but have sales people out and about and what them all to access the central contact store with CRM features.

I cant find any info on this, so am writing a little script to populate the SugarCRM database with customer data when they sign up. Its not too difficult if both databases are on the same server. Seems to be working OK, but need to also do an update script if a customer changes emails/address so Sugar updates too. I also need to write some sort of record for the CRM when a customer purchases something so thats recprded in the CRM too.

So in my opinion this is a useful took for those who have a cart AND a CRM, which may be a lot or people.

The ideal situation would then be to update Zencart if a SugarCRM record is changed too, but I may leave that for now and see if they have an issue.

There is a Zencart to vTiger commercial solution but not tried it, and not tired vTiger yet either so thats a possible solution
magneticone.com/PAGE-218-zencart-vtiger-crm.html