SugarCRM, San Francisco, California, United States: The SugarCRM Platform

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SugarCRM is a challenger brand in the multi-billion-dollar CRM sector. Sugar’s cloud-based low-code/no-code CRM platform targets high-growth midmarket companies that often lack the in-house technical expertise/support of larger companies but know that winning is about mixing a killer product and innovative service with an effortless customer experience.

Sugar is incorporating generative AI into its platform to supercharge sales, marketing, and customer service. Newfound “out-of-the-box’ productivity gains do the work to empower teams to deliver exceptional experiences while helping them to work faster and smarter in the following ways:

Generative AI for Sales dramatically enhances sales productivity and effectiveness by composing personalized and compelling emails and sales copy, data-driven and persuasive ready-made call scripts, and sales proposals infused with real-time customer intelligence.  

Generative AI for Marketing takes marketing automation and personalization to the next level, maximizing impact through creation of ultra-relevant, personalized marketing campaigns, landing pages and emails, automatic translation, and smarter segmentation.

Generative AI for Customer Service accelerates knowledge and value exchange by summarizing case history and service tickets, creates personalized user guides and product documentation, and enables agents and customers to quickly find answers and resolve issues.

This comes on the heels of adding digital self-service capabilities to the platform to enable digital engagement across the entire customer journey, helping B2B sellers keep pace with customer demands. Sugar’s vision to expand digital self-service goes beyond traditional customer service and support and throughout the entire customer journey including the advent of deal room scenarios, online contract negotiations, collaboration with channel partners, and easy access to all relevant business documents and transactions.

A key Sugar value proposition has always been the platform’s notable extensibility. 

End-users are benefitting from Sugar’s dedication to supporting deeper ERP and CRM data integration via single platform that gives teams the ability to do “whitespace analysis” and discover hidden up-sell, cross-sell, link-sell and switch-sell products and services more effectively.

Sugar’s new partnership with sales-i delivers key capabilities to improve B2B sales performance within the manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution sectors via enhanced customer insights, analytics, and intelligence powered by AI and ML.

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Sugar is creating a different kind of CRM that lets the platform do the work, as validated by third-party industry analysts and experts in the CRM sector.

In a report by Nucleus Research (impartial/non-vendor sponsored), compared to Salesforce, Sugar users can lower TCO by up to 32% while delivering similar functionality. These benefits translate to faster time to value and improved ROI. Nucleus analyzed 37 SugarCRM customers and found those opted for Sugar in lieu of Salesforce for: Overall ease of use, higher levels of customer support, a single ecosystem for sales/service/marketing, and access to a strong third-party marketplace.

Additional industry analyst accolades include Sugar being named:

• Winner - CRM Watchlist - Paul Greenberg, President of The 56 Group, LLC
   
• Leader - CRM Technology Value Matrix - Nucleus Research (third-year running)
   
• Hot Company - "Hot Companies to Watch in 2023” - Nucleus Research
   
• Exemplary - 2023 Customer Experience Management Value Index - Ventana Research
   
• Winner - 2023 ROI Awards - Nucleus Research
   
• Leading Vendor - ShortList for Sales Force Automation - Constellation Research
   
• Challenger - 2022 Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms - Gartner

Sugar customers are also recognizing the company’s excellence. With a Net Promoter Score of 90+, customer satisfaction for Sugar is far above industry average for SaaS/CRM solutions. 

Sugar celebrated its thriving user community milestone: 10,000 SugarClub members worldwide and continues to rank a midmarket leader for CRM by G2. Customer reviews on G2 point to Sugar as the choice for “flexible, easy-to-use and customizable CRM.”

The latest release of the SugarCRM Platform (version 13.2) became generally available in October 2023.

Sugar has been at the forefront of harnessing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics to automate anything, accelerate everything, and anticipate what’s next. And now, it is integrating generative AI into its platform for breakthrough productivity and improvements. 

Additional innovations include verticalized capabilities, notably to support the robust and complex customer engagement needs of manufacturers. Sugar is an industrial-grade CRM that automates anything, accelerates everything, and anticipates what’s next. The flexible and powerful platform does the work to power modern marketing, sales, and service for manufacturers.

A new strategic partnership with SYSPRO emphasizes Sugar’s focus on enhancing the synergy between CRM and ERP solutions to bridge the divide between the front and back office, helping to transform intricate ERP data into actionable insights for sales, marketing, and customer service teams. 

Additional strategic partnerships – including sales-i for predictive B2B sales intelligence, and Mobileforce to support field service management and integrated quote-to-cash sales execution – further demonstrate Sugar’s commitment to strategically align to mid-market industrial buyer demands, are easy-to-use, and which enable time-to-value, efficiency, and productivity.

On addressing mid-market buyers’ needs, Sugar CEO Craig Charlton, says: “The mid-market is a very pragmatic sector. They don't have the tolerance for multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects where it's a Lego City that you must build yourself from the ground up. They want applications that work out-of-the-box. It's not a science experiment. It's all about time to value.”

When you think about industries such as manufacturing and distribution, companies in these sectors are running on slim margins, so they're more mindful about time-to-value, efficiency, and productivity.”

Furthermore, Charlton explains why Sugar is focused on mid-market businesses in a recent CRM Magazine article titled SugarCRM Shifts Focus to the Mid-Market: “Mid-market businesses are looking for actionable insights and guidance on how to do things better. These organizations also want flexibility with solutions that can shift to meet their changing needs, a value that SugarCRM delivers. We have an incredibly flexible platform that enables you to model the application to enshrine what makes you unique in everything you do," Charlton said.

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Sugar’s focus on product innovation to make the hard things easier for sales, marketing, and service teams is paying off. 

At Sugar’s fall analyst summit, the company shared its strong performance over the past year, with 93% recurring revenue. Also, Sugar is seeing a clear shift to its ideal customer with 20% YoY ARR growth and 115% net retention for Tier 1 accounts (>$200K), and 11% YoY ARR growth and 106% net retention for Tier 2 ($60K-$200K).

Dubbed “the world’s most loved CRM platform” by ValiantCEO, Sugar has helped thousands of companies in over 120 countries boost productivity, fuel business growth, and achieve high-definition CX to engage customers in the moments that matter.

Mid-market organizations are achieving breakthrough business outcomes with Sugar:

• Advocate Construction digitally transformed its go-to-market and sales operations from customer doorstep to the back office. Field sales representatives, armed with tablet devices, are empowered with accurate product availability, while integration with 225 insurance providers streamlines reimbursements, speeding time-to-revenue.
• Casabaca Toyota implemented a digital sales funnel and now converts 3% more leads, while creating loyal customers. This, in addition to launching an appraisal system within Sugar for used cars, generating a 70% increase in the number of cars appraised and increasing conversion rate from offer-to-buy by 5% in the first two months of implementation.
• >Funds2Orgs freed up 50% of sales professionals’ time by automating lead emails, tracking inventory and fundraiser status, and simplifying workflows across teams. 
• Kelly-Moore Paints has seen a 20 to 25% reduction in the time sales reps need to access data; a 50% reduction in the time needed for pricing change approvals; and 30% reduction in the time to make name, address, and other changes to customer records.
• Neenah Paper improved average marketing campaign open rate from 25 to 30% and its click-through rate from 12 to 15% -- well above industry average rates.
• rfxcel increased accuracy of its sales forecasting - 7 times out of 10, Sugar’s AI engine, SugarPredict, accurately predicts that a sales opportunity is “more likely” to be won.
• Tax Saving Professionals accelerated marketing campaign creation 10x, while reducing marketing workload.