SugarCRM as an application, or as a development platform?

I was intrigued to see this post on CIO.com about using SugarCRM as a development platform. (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to SugarCRM.) I know and use Sugar as an application. This was the first I've heard of someone using it as a development platform:

While SugarCRM delivers the basic CRM functions that most small to medium sized organisations need, we have realised that SugarCRM's greater value lies in using it as a development framework for building vertical industry specific business applications. Its highly extensible architecture reduces development time significantly, almost by 50-60% based on our experience.

I haven't asked SugarCRM if it has any OEM partners, but perhaps it's time? This could be a great way to make SugarCRM the "Intel Inside" of CRM-related business applications. I know that companies have OEM'd Alfresco (my company), JasperSoft, and other open-source applications. Now SugarCRM gets in the mix....

Indeed, perhaps this is one of the primary values in any open-source application: There's a lot under the hood that could be used for complementary or completely different applications. It's a chance to take the foundation and create an entirely new application from it.

[scrollinondubs]

Matt, that's interesting. I've been getting acquainted with Sugar over the past week and actually just posted a bunch of thoughts from configuring it and using it to make calls: http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2008/08/07/sugarcrm-observations-tips/

It's a pretty miraculous piece of software and I don't have many complaints at all. I heard that the underlying architecture is clean so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that others are using it as a foundational piece to build entirely different applications. That's very cool to see and has to give the Sugar developers warm fuzzies to hear that.

Sean

Matt,
Very good point. I believe lots of customers were already using SugarCRM as a development framework since it was the version 4.0 or 4.2 two or three years ago. It has implemented a great architecture but the problem is people won't pay much for the framework product.

[mcatling]

Hi,

I am new to this forum.... but a couple of comments regarding SugarCRM as a development platform.

For my customers and our own internal use, a key aspect of any CRM is the ability to customise and make the customer data centric to most other aspects of customer work. So a good development environment is key to any product that we use. The ability to extend and add capabilities is what wins us business.

I find that most CRM systems and the discussions around them focus on the call centre and the sales cycle. I understand that, as it is a key customer interaction. However I believe that any customer focussed work should be part of a CRM system.

Let me give you an example of how we have SugarCRM setup for our customers.

Typically we only have one account with maybe 6-7 member companies. Typically we have got 1 to 10 framework orders with the individual accounts. Most of our revenue comes from work in delivering large complex projects within those companies. So making sure all customer related work, which is chargeable, is a key management concern.

We use the SugarCRM CE Accounts, contact, task, document, case, projects and bug standard modules, but heavily modified to match our customer projects. We manage our revenue streams with new modules....

* Risks (evaluation of all project deliverable or customer related risks and mediation required);
* Issues (Project related, not bugs or cases);
* Asks (customer questions/inquiries about existing or new functionality);
* Change requests (CRs) (Actual orders for work to be done);
* Product release management;

We have typically 70-100 technical design and development engineers working with this system, with a customer portal for them to check the status of various CRs etc.

The ability to relate all of these to each other and to the standard modules is a big benefit and very flexible... it is also fairly easy to set up with SugarCRM 5.0 and even better with the soon to be released 5.1.

Some would argue that this is a project delivery solution.

I would argue that it IS CRM as all our sales and product delivery, bug management requirements are completely customer facing and revenue generating.

As soon as you get out of the "Normal" CRM call centre, high volume sales, Help desk focussed area you need to develop new modules.... You could use a separate project management system "Artemis", "RPM", "Clarity" for example but then you have to start integrating systems. I think it is better to have one authoritative database, with any system which has customer interactions using that database.

To do that you need to have a good development framework and set of tools in the base CRM system.

We have found that with SugarCRM release 5.0 (5.1) we have a good MVC development framework and it has been fairly straight forward to develop the additions we need for the project management side of things. I have a growing list of other customer related requirements that are not standard CRM features... but being able to use a common framework and database it will be fairly easy to extend.

I think that is where tools like Salesforce and Siebel have scored. It is easy to develop in this way outside of the normal CRM... and Voila.... customer lock in.

Sorry for the extended post. I hope it helps others looking at CRM systems some point to consider.

Best regards, Malcolm