Report: Salesforce and Sugar Compared
Updated: March 13, 2014
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
Naming ConventionsCompany Backgrounds
Salesforce.com, Inc.SugarCRM, Inc.
Product OverviewsSalesforce
New ReleasesEditions and PricingData Storage
SugarDeployment OptionsUpgradesEditions and PricingData Storage
Data Centers and StatusSalesforceSugar
Browser SupportSalesforceSugar
Device SupportSalesforceSugar
Third Party EcosystemSalesforceSugar
Sales & Delivery ChannelsSalesforceSugar
Login and Password SecuritySalesforceSugar
UI & NavigationSalesforce
General NavigationRecord Navigation
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SugarGeneral NavigationRecord Navigation
Variable Record LayoutsSalesforceSugar
User OptionsSalesforceSugar
Point & Click Configuration and CustomizationSalesforceSugar
Advanced Development & APIsSalesforceSugar
SearchSalesforceSugar
Duplicate Avoidance, Detection and MergeSalesforceSugar
User Access PermissionsSalesforceSugar
WorkflowSalesforceSugar
Reporting & DashboardsSalesforceSugar
Email IntegrationSalesforceSugar
Office Suites IntegrationSalesforceSugar
Data Import and IntegrationSalesforceSugar
Web Lead CaptureSalesforce
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SugarEmail Marketing and Marketing Automation
SalesforceSugar
Customer ServiceSalesforceSugar
Enterprise Social NetworkingSalesforceSugar
Social Media IntegrationSalesforceSugar
Online Help & TrainingSalesforceSugar
User ConferencesSalesforceSugar
Legal Notices
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IntroductionThis report is a factbased comparison of Salesforce® and Sugar.
For those who work for or who consult to an organization that is moving toward a new CRM solution, this report can be viewed as a starting point. From here, we encourage deeper evaluations, which should include listening to each vendor’s representatives present their competitive strengths over the other’s application especially as these strengths pertain to your organization’s business needs.
We also recommend following a structured process for selecting a CRM system.
While we have attempted as much as possible to keep this analysis a statement of facts, we expect that advocates for each solution will find areas that appear slanted in the direction of the other solution.
The analysis mainly focuses on outofthebox functionality. However, there are several references to especially popular third party applications.
Most links in this report are to web pages that are within the domains of the respective vendors, but it’s possible that some links will become stale over time.
Not all features and functionality of the respective systems are compared in this report. We will add additional comparison points in future editions.
To discuss any of the differences in greater detail, please contact us at 18007994539.
Naming ConventionsThis report will separately reference salesforce.com® (the company) and Salesforce (salesforce.com’s flagship product). The product marketed by SugarCRM® is known as Sugar.
What are commonly known as database “tables” are known as “objects” in Salesforce and as “modules” in Sugar. These respective naming conventions will be used where appropriate.
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Company Backgrounds
Salesforce.com, Inc.Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, and went public in June 2004. Salesforce.com was a pioneer in developing software as a service (SaaS), which is now commonly called cloud computing. The company has stated that it has over 100,000 customers. Salesforce.com’s current run rate is over $4 billion in annual revenue.
Salesforce.com, Inc. is traded on the NYSE under the symbol CRM.
SugarCRM, Inc.SugarCRM, Inc. was founded in 2004 by John Roberts, Clint Oram, and Jacob Taylor. SugarCRM is best known for its Web application, Sugar.
SugarCRM uses a Commercial Open Source model and has two types of customers. There are customers that use the free, open source version of Sugar that can be downloaded from SugarForge.org. There are also paying customers that have subscribed to one of the Sugar corporate editions.
SugarCRM, Inc. is a privately held company. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Walden International and New Enterprise Associates. In August of 2013, SugarCRM secured $40 million in funding from Goldman Sachs.
Product Overviews
SalesforceSalesforce.com only offers its product as a hosted, subscription model. It does not offer an onpremises version.
Furthermore, Salesforce is only available on a multitenant, shared instance platform called the Force.com™ platform. With Salesforce, there are no options for a dedicated instance or a dedicated server for a given customer.
While salesforce.com has achieved high scalability for its application, for a variety of reasons, it has split its offering into multiple instances.
To supplement its core product offering, salesforce.com has acquired a number of other
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technology companies in the CRM and social media spaces. Acquisitions include Jigsaw, Radian6, Buddy Media, Assistly, Heroku and ExactTarget.
Salesforce.com internally developed a collaboration product called Chatter. Chatter is available within all Salesforce editions at no extra charge and is also available as a free, standalone product.
New ReleasesSalesforce has three major new releases each year. The release names are based on the season and year e.g. “Spring ‘14”. For the most part, these new releases are fully transparent with respect to existing customizations. Customers do not have to pay extra for new releases.
Salesforce.com provides extensive release notes in advance of each new release.
Editions and PricingSalesforce’s Sales Cloud is available in five different editions, which range in price from $5 per user, per month to $300 per user, per month. Each edition is the same underlying product, with specific features and functionality either switched on or off, depending on the edition (PDF). The most popular edition, Enterprise Edition, lists for $125 per user per month. The Professional Edition lists for $65 per user per month. Normally, a 12 month commitment is required. A longer term commitment, such as 24 months, can result in lower pricing.
The Salesforce.com Foundation provides free and/or deeply discounted licenses to certain categories of organizations such as 501(c)(3) corporations and B corporations.
Data StorageAll editions of Salesforce have a minimum of 1 GB of data storage and 11 GB of file storage. The total available storage can be higher on the Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Editions as there is also a peruser allocation on these editions. For example, the data storage on Enterprise Edition is 20 MB times the number of users (with a 1 GB minimum). File storage is 612 MB times the number of users (with an 11 GB minimum).
Each record in most Salesforce objects is deemed to use 2 KB of storage. Additional data storage can be purchased in 50 MB or 500 MB increments. Additional file storage can be purchased in 10 GB increments.
SugarOn its SugarForge.org open source site, Sugar offers its free, Sugar Community Edition (CE). With SugarCRM’s open source model, third party developers can publish functionality on the SugarForge.org development site.
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In the past, patches that were created by third party developers were rolled into the corporate offering. In February 2014, SugarCRM announced that there are no plans to release a version 7 of the Community Edition.
Deployment OptionsCustomers can deploy Sugar in five different ways:
Sugar OnDemand Sugar Private Cloud Onsite, behind their company’s firewall Public cloud, with a hosting service such as IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Amazon EC2,
Rackspace, or Microsoft Azure Through a SugarCRM partner
All options are singletenant on the database instance. While Sugar OnDemand is multitenant on the application instance and has multiple customer databases stored on the same physical server, the Sugar Private Cloud has full data isolation which means that no physical resources are shared with other SugarCRM customers.
SugarCRM customers have the option of moving their Sugar instance from one hosting environment to another.
The original platform chosen for Sugar was the LAMP stack Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. If a customer chooses a deployment option other that the SugarCRM cloud, the customer can choose among multiple operating systems and database options.
UpgradesSugarCRM’s current release is Sugar 7.1. SugarCRM provides automatic updates and upgrades for Sugar OnDemand customers. For implementations other than Sugar OnDemand, the customer has control over the timing of upgrades.
Editions and PricingSugarCRM offers three different editions of its product: Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, and Sugar Ultimate.
Sugar Professional costs $35 per user per month. Sugar Enterprise is priced at $60 per user per month, and Sugar Ultimate costs $150 per user per month. Billing is annual.
The Sugar license pricing is the same regardless of which of the three hosting options a customer decides on. For some hosting options, there can be additional costs. For example, if a customer decides to host with Amazon EC2, Amazon’s hosting charges would be in addition to
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the Sugar licensing cost.
Data StorageStated data storage limitations only come into play with the SugarCRM OnDemand SaaS option. An organization using Sugar Professional is allocated 15 GB of storage. Sugar Enterprise allows up to 60 GB, and Sugar Ultimate up to 250 GB. Additional storage can be purchased.
A customer can configure storage as needed if they deploy Sugar onsite. A customer can request and pay for the appropriate amount of storage if a public cloud option is chosen.
Data Centers and Status
SalesforceSalesforce.com’s service is collocated in multiple, toptier global data centers. Salesforce.com publishes its data center security and disaster recovery information on its trust.salesforce.com site.
Salesforce.com does not own the data centers in which its customers are hosted, partly because it runs its entire customer base on a few thousand servers.
Salesforce.com does not have a publicly accessible Service Level Agreement (SLA). According to this source, Peter Coffee of salesforce.com said that SLAs are “formulated in confidential discussions with individual customers.”
SugarSugarCRM does not publish information about the hosting center locations for Sugar OnDemand or Sugar Private Cloud.
If a customer deploys Sugar through one of the public cloud service providers, such as Amazon, the service level agreement is specific to the provider.
Browser Support
SalesforceSalesforce supports recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari. Salesforce.com publishes supported browser versions.
Sugar
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Sugar supports Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer and Safari. SugarCRM publishes supported browser versions for each version of Sugar.
Device Support
SalesforceIn late 2013, salesforce.com introduced the Salesforce1 Platform. Concurrently, the Salesforce1 Mobile App was announced. Salesforce.com publishes an app for iPhone and iPad and one for Android.
Using the Salesforce1 Platform, Salesforce apps can be built and customized and then deployed to mobile devices. Compact layouts for mobile devices can be created for any Salesforce standard or custom object. Mobileenabled Visualforce pages can be added to the screen layout for mobile devices.
Salesforce Labs offers a simpletouse iPhone application for field salespeople called Logger. This, as with all Salesforce Labs apps, is not an officially supported application.
SugarSugarCRM offers SugarCRM Mobile for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets.
SugarCRM Mobile works with all Sugar OnDemand subscriptions. All Sugar configurations and custom modules can be made available on mobile devices.
Third Party Ecosystem
SalesforceSalesforce.com manages its own thirdparty application site, AppExchange. The AppExchange also has applications from Salesforce.com’s internal, Force.com Labs. There are over one thousand applications listed on the AppExchange.
All applications must be certified and pass a periodic security check. All AppExchange applications are installed with the same series of clicks.
Some of the apps are free and some are paid. Not all applications are compatible with all editions of Salesforce. For example, many apps require Professional Edition or higher.
Sugar
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Sugar’s third party applications site is called Sugar Exchange. Sugar Exchange is a marketplace where Sugar users can can download apps that provide additional functionality. Certified listings undergo a 90point certification checklist.
Applications can be browsed by category, by edition or by Sugar version.
Sales & Delivery Channels
SalesforceSalesforce is sold directly via a team of Account Executives and people in other named sales roles. Account Executives normally team up with a Salesforce partner when implementation services are requested by a prospect. For opportunities that a Salesforce.com partner registers, the partner receives a referral fee on the first year’s subscription revenue.
SugarSugarCRM sells directly and also has three types of partner programs. The Channel Partners program has two levels: Basic and Platinum.
Login and Password Security
SalesforceSalesforce defaults to twofactor authentication (a.k.a. 2step verification) for org access. After a new user’s initial login, each time the user tries to login from an unrecognized computer or device, Salesforce emails a verification code to the user. The user must key in the verification code in order to log into Salesforce. This two factor authentication can be overridden by the setting of Trusted IP Ranges by an administrator.
In the Enterprise Edition and higher, certain IP ranges can be restricted from login access altogether, as defined within user Profiles.
Salesforce allows for setting password policies, including: password expiration duration; how many old passwords are remembered; minimum password length; and password complexity.
Salesforce supports authentication via identity providers such as Active Directory with the implementation of Single SignOn (PDF).
SugarSugar uses a unique username and password to authenticate users. Sugar has native support
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for LDAP and SAML authentication
There is a free third party application for SSO, Active Directory & LDAP integration and multifactor authentication called OneLogin.
Password requirements can be created to enforce parameters such as minimum password length. Mixed case and/or special characters can also be enforced via password requirements. Sugar allows for validation with reCAPTCHA or Honeypot.
UI & Navigation
Salesforce
General NavigationSalesforce displays different objects across the top part of the screen. Each user can have their own set (or sets) of tabs, as defined by “Apps”. An App is a collection of tabs that appears on the screen in a specific order.
A left sidebar shows Recent Items and allows for users to quick create new records. The sidebar also contains the Recycle Bin, where user deleted records reside for 15 days before they are permanently removed from the org.
There is a global search box in the top of left of the browser window.
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Recordtorecord navigation all occurs within a single browser tab or window. No new tabs or windows open by default. If a user wants to open a record in a new tab (or a new window), the user must force a new tab to open by clicking the right mouse button and selecting “Open in new tab”.
The browser Back and Forward buttons work for navigating back and forward within the application.
Record NavigationWithin each record, Salesforce displays sections of fields for the current record (and optionally fields from a parent record) at the top of the screen. Below these sections are related lists of records from other objects.
Users can either scroll down the record’s page to view related lists, or they can make use of hover tabs near the top of the screen. Hovering the cursor over a top tab will cause a related list to drop down from the hover tab.
Sugar
General NavigationSugar has a set of tabs for access modules in the top bar. The top bar also has a global search box and a “quick create” button.
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Module dropdown menus display options for creating records, viewing reports, seeing recently viewed records and seeing favorites.
Record NavigationData for the active record can be seen in the top section of the screen. A Show More / Show Less link allows for expanding and collapsing the top section.
Related modules appear below the top section. Related modules that contain data which is accessible to the user display in color. Related modules that do not have data are grayed out.
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A right hand section displays dashboards. Users can have multiple dashboards. Within each dashboard, there are multiple Dashlets.
Variable Record Layouts
SalesforceIn the Salesforce Enterprise Edition and higher, there can be variable screen layouts within an object (fields, field order, related lists, related list order and pick list values) as defined by Record Types. Record layouts can also vary based on user Profile.
SugarIn Sugar, variable layouts by user or by type of record can be scripted using Sugar Logic.
User Options
SalesforceIn Salesforce, users have the option to customize their tabs and to set the appearance and order of related lists within each object. Users also have access to email settings, such as a
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signature, for emails that are sent from within Salesforce.
There are a number of follow and notification options that pertain to Salesforce Chatter.
SugarSugar users have a number of options. A user can set navigation bar tab order and also hide specific tabs. A user can select Locale Settings such as date, time and currency format. A user can also select a specific theme for the user interface.
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Point & Click Configuration and Customization
SalesforceIn Salesforce, an administrator can add new fields to an object via point and click. Field types include: Auto Number; Formula; Rollup Summary; Lookup Relationship; Checkbox; Currency; Date; Date/Time; Email; Number; Percent; Phone; Picklist; MultiSelect Picklist; Text; Text Area; Text Area (Long); Text Area (Rich); and URL.
New objects can also be added. A new object can either have a lookup relationship with a parent object, a masterdetail relationship or a manytomany relationship.
SugarIn Sugar, an administrator can add new fields. Field types include: Address; Checkbox; Currency; Date; Datetime; Decimal; Encrypt; DropDown; Float; HTML; IFrame; Image; Integer; MultiSelect; Phone; Radio; Relate; TextArea; URL; and TextField.
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New, custom modules can be added. A custom module can be related to any other module as one to one, one to many, many to one or many to many.
Advanced Development & APIs
SalesforceIn Enterprise Edition and higher, Salesforce allows for advanced customizations using Apex,
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salesforce.com’s proprietary development language, as well as Visualforce, which is used for custom user interface design. Apex is also the language used for creating Triggers.
Functionality developed with Apex and Visualforce can be added to the Professional Edition by way of a managed package. Some managed packages also support Group Edition.
Salesforce.com provides a sandbox environment in the Enterprise Edition and higher for developing and testing customizations and code. The Enterprise Edition’s included Developer sandbox can be created as a snapshot of the production org, but the sandbox does not inherit any production data. It has a 200 MB storage limit. Paid sandboxes include the Developer Pro, Partial Data and Full.
Salesforce Enterprise Edition and higher have a variety of different APIs. APIs include: REST; SOAP; Chatter; Bulk, Metadata; Streaming; and Tooling. The REST API Developer’s Guide is also available as a PDF.
Code examples in the API documentation are Java and C#, but the APIs can be called from a number of client side languages, including Ruby, PHP and Perl.
Salesforce.com also provides an IDE that’s based on Eclipse
SugarSugar has Web Services APIs for integrating with other applications and PHP & JavaScript APIs for extending the Sugar functionality.
Documentation is available for REST and SOAP APIs. SugarCRM provides an online developer guide.
Search
SalesforceSalesforce has a global search. When a user enters a full text or partial text (wildcard) string in the Search box, Salesforce parses through all text fields (as well as several other field types, such as phone and email) within a standard set of objects, such as Accounts and Contacts. Search results are grouped by object.
A Search All link allows a user to expand the search across all objects, including Activities and Attachments.
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Chatter feeds can also be searched for the same full or partial text string using the Search Feeds button.
Filter fields can be added to the search results for any object so that users can narrow the results of a global search. An administrator can add any fields from an object as filter fields within the search results for that object.
In Salesforce, Views can be used to create multicondition, dynamic searches. Views only allow for filtering on fields within an object. Reports can be used to to view records based on crossobject filters.
SugarIn Sugar, the top bar contains a Global Search field. Global Search allows a user to search, using two or more characters, across any module.
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Within each module, a user can perform either a Basic Search or an Advanced Search. A Basic Search is a search on a single field within the module.
The Advanced Search allows a user to enter values into multiple fields. An Advanced Search can be saved for future reuse.
Duplicate Avoidance, Detection and Merge
SalesforceIn Salesforce, a user can check for any records that match the Lead record that the user is currently on. Results will display potential matches across the Lead, Account, Contact and Opportunity objects.
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Up to three records can be merged into one. Salesforce provides an interface for selecting the “best” data fields for the Master Record (winning record) from each of the matching records. The losing record or records go into the Recycle Bin.
SugarSugar checks for potential duplicates on record entry based on matching text in key fields such as Account Name.
Sugar allows users to merge up to five records in any module.
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User Access Permissions
SalesforceSalesforce Enterprise Edition and higher has multiple levels of record and field user access permissions.
Basic, record level security can be set up with Roles. A Role Hierarchy defines access to records based on an organizational hierarchy. For example, Role Hierarchy can be used to enforce the fact that the vice president of sales can see all records owned by all salespeople, even though each salesperson can only see records that he or she owns.
User Profiles can be used to define object level permissions. Each user is assigned a Profile. Within each User Profile, standard object and custom object permissions can be defined. Levels of object access include: Read; Create; Edit; and Delete.
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Within a Profile, several dozen administrative and user settings can be enabled or disabled.
Sharing Rules are automatic exceptions to organization wide sharing rules. There are two types of Sharing Rules that are available through the user interface.
Record ownerbased Sharing Rules allow for sharing of records among users based on Groups to which those users belong. For example if two users both belong to a Group called “West”, those two users can be set to share records, even though organization wide sharing rules determine that those two users do not share records.
Criteriabased Sharing Rules allows for exceptions to organization wide rules based on values in one or more fields. For example, if customer support representatives should only see customer records that are owned by salespeople, but not their prospects, a criteria based Sharing Rule could enforce this.
Permission Sets are an additional layer that can be placed over the user profile’s base set of permissions.
SugarSugar uses Role Management to define module permissions and field level permissions for each user. For example, a support representative can be assigned a role that does not have access to the Opportunity module.
A Role can also restrict access to certain fields within a module. For example, a Role can be set up that does not allow users who are assigned that role to edit an Account “Bill To” address.
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Users can have multiple roles assigned to them.
Teams are used to determine what users have access to which records. Each Team can have one or more users associated with it. When a user is assigned to a Team, that user’s Reportsto user and any other upline users are also assigned to the same Team. One or more Teams can be assigned to a record in any module.
Each user is set up to have a default Team or Teams when the user creates a new record. A user can manually override what Team or Teams are associated with a record when they add or edit that record.
Workflow
SalesforceIn Salesforce, Workflow Rules can be triggered by record creation or record editing. If a record meets certain criteria on creation or edit, a Workflow Action can automatically run. Workflow Actions include: schedule a Task; send an email alert; update a field; and send an outbound message (an XML message sent to a listening service).
Salesforce Workflow Rules include Approval Processes. An approval process specifies the steps necessary for a record, such as a sales quote, to be approved as well as who must approve it at each step.
SugarIn Sugar, Workflow is triggered based on field Conditions within a module. Conditions can be defined based on a field that: changes to or from a specific value; changes to any value; or
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contains a specific value. A fourth condition can be that a module changes and a field in a related module contains a specific value.
Alerts and/or Actions can result from any of the Workflow Conditions. Possible Actions are: update fields in the module; update fields in a related module; create a record in an associated module; and create a record associated with a module that’s related to the target module.
Reporting & Dashboards
SalesforceSalesforce has a drag and drop report writer that allows users to create reports in tabular, summary or matrix format. Fields from a report’s objects, as defined by a Report Type, can be clicked and dragged by a user to add columns and to create groupings.
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Reports can have associated charts. The Chart Editor allows for defining a chart type and chart data points.
Enterprise Edition and higher include Custom Report Types, which allow an administrator to define which objects to display to users when they create reports and to also define relationships
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among these displayed objects for crossobject reporting. Up to four objects can be associated with a Custom Report Type.
In Enterprise Edition and higher, reports can be automatically delivered via email on a scheduled basis to licensed Salesforce users. Report data appears within the body of an email as formatted text.
The Professional Edition and higher includes Customizable Dashboards. Multiple collections of reportbased charts can be arranged on a tab as different Dashboards. Salesforce has a default Adoption Dashboard which provides information about what extent different users are using the application.
Also in the reporting category, Salesforce has Forecasting functionality. Quotas can be set per salesperson, and then Opportunity forecast categories can be correlated with quotas, by time period.
SugarSugar allows users to create reports with a Report Wizard. A new report can be created from scratch or an existing report can be saved as a new report and then modified. There are four available report types.
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When creating a report, the wizard progresses through: select a module; define filters; define criteria to group by; choose display summaries; and select chart options.
A chart can be added to a report. Five chart types are available for reports: horizontal bar; vertical bar; pie; funnel; and line. Charts can be displayed below a report and charts can also be added to the layout on a Home Page.
Email Integration
SalesforceSalesforce provides a free plugin for Microsoft Outlook® called Salesforce for Outlook. Outlook 2013, 2010, and 2007 are supported. Supported Microsoft Windows® versions are Windows 8,
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Windows 7 (64bit and 32bit), Windows Vista® (32bit only) and Windows XP (32bit only). Microsoft Exchange Online or Microsoft Exchange Server is required on the back end.
Salesforce for Outlook includes the Salesforce Side Panel for Outlook, which displays Lead and Contact details inside of Outlook.
Salesforce also provides a form of universal email integration called “Email to Salesforce”. Each org has its own defined Email to Salesforce address, which, when BCC’d on sends or on forwards of inbound email, will automatically associate sent/received emails with Lead or Contact records in Salesforce that have a matching email address.
Salesforce leverages Email to Salesforce for its email integration with Google Apps for Business. When an org is enabled for Google Apps, clicking the email address in a record will launch a Gmail send dialog.
There is a also a third party integration for Gmail called Cirrus Insight.
SugarSugarCRM provides a downloadable Sugar PlugIn for Outlook. There is also a Sugar PlugIn for Lotus Notes.
Sugar also has its own email client so that emails can be sent/received and archived within Sugar.
Sugar Email Archiving allows for attaching emails to records by blind carbon copying a Sugar email archiving address on sends or by forwarding an inbound email to a Sugar email archive address from any email client.
There is a third party integration app for Gmail called Collabspot.
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Email Merge
SalesforceSalesforce allows administrators and users to create email templates. Templates can be text,HTML, or they can be defined using Salesforce’s Visualforce markup language. A template can be used to send a single email to a Lead or a Contact. A view can be used to send to multiple recipients. Email merges are server side they are processed and sent from Salesforce servers. Salesforce also offers email tracking for HTML emails and will track each open by the recipient.
There is a daily mass email limit of 1,000. There is also a per send limit of 250 forProfessional Edition and 500 for Enterprise Edition.
SugarSugar users can create email templates and, through the use of Campaigns, send an email to a group of Contacts.
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Office Suites Integration
SalesforceSalesforce has addins for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word that are packaged as Connect for Office. The Excel addin allows for connecting to Salesforce data. Excel’s VLOOKUP function can be used to combine data sets. Pivot tables and charts can be used for reporting.
Connect for Office is currently compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. It requires Microsoft Office 2000, XP (2002), 2003, or 2007.
Extended Mail Merge is available on request from salesforce.com. Extended Mail Merge is a server side merge that supports up to 1,000 records per merge and works with Firefox and Apple Mac OS in addition to Microsoft Windows and IE.
In addition, there is a popular third party app for Salesforce is a merge tool called Conga Composer.
Salesforce also allows for linking existing Google Docs to records and creating new Google Docs.
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SugarSugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise include plugins for Word and Excel. The Word plugin allows for mail merge template creation within Sugar.
There is a third party Sugar Exchange app for integration with Google Apps Calendar, Contacts and Docs.
Data Import and Integration
SalesforceSalesforce has a wizard for importing records into the Lead object. It also has a wizard for importing records as Accounts and Contacts as a single operation.
In the Salesforce Enterprise and Unlimited Editions, an application called the Data Loader can be used for importing data into any Salesforce object. The Data Loader has a graphical user interface, but can also be run in command line mode. Command line mode supports using relational databases as sources and targets, which means that the Data Loader can also be used for integrations.
There are third party products such as Jitterbit for migrating data to Salesforce and for integrating data with Salesforce. Third party service providers are also available for data migration and integration.
SugarSugar allows for importing Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and Cases in several different formats.
There are a host of third party products and service providers available for performing data migration and integration.
Web Lead Capture
SalesforceIn Salesforce, a wizard allows an administrator to generate Web form HTML based on selected Lead fields. This HTML can be added to any Website.
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SugarWithin Campaigns, a Lead Form Wizard allows for generating lead form HTML. A lead form must be linked to a Campaign.
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Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
SalesforceWith the acquisition of ExactTarget, which itself had previously acquired Pardot, salesforce.com now offers both email marketing and marketing automation solutions as part of its product family.
The ExactTarget, Buddy Media, and Radian6 acquisitions have been blended into the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud.
Sugar
SugarCRM does not own a marketing automation tool. However, NetResults can be fully integrated with Sugar. INBOX25 is an email marketing and marketing automation tool designed for Sugar.
Customer Service
SalesforceSalesforce.com offers Case management in its standard Sales Cloud in the Professional Edition and higher. Features include WebtoCase, EmailtoCase and a SelfService Portal.
With the Spring ‘13 release, Communities was added to Salesforce, which salesforce.com offers for its own Salesforce Success Community site. There is an additional cost for Communities.
Since Salesforce has builtin email services, threaded email communications between a Case owner and a customer, within a Case, can be set up without any external components.
Salesforce.com offers enhanced customer service functionality as part of the Service Cloud. The Service Cloud is a more expensive user license ($135 per user per month for the Enterprise Edition) that adds a number of components, including service console view, Web chat, Salesforce Communities, knowledge base, social customer service, and service contracts & entitlements (SLAs).
SugarCase Management is available in all Sugar editions. Users can view customer service history (including customer requests and responses) and examine case management metrics about
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how cases have been managed.
Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Ultimate editions include the Customer SelfService Portal.
Enterprise Social Networking
SalesforceSalesforce’s Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) platform is called Chatter. Licensed Salesforce users are automatically Chatter users, each org also comes with 5,000 Chatter Free users (for internal users) and 50 Chatter External users.
Files and links can be associated with Chatter posts. Chatter feeds can be enabled for any object. Up to 20 fields per object can be tracked. When a field is tracked, changes to that field update the Chatter feed for that object.
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Each user can select from a variety of Chatter email notification options, based on their personal preferences.
Salesforce allows for the creation of Chatter Groups. If a Group is made private, people outside the organization, such as customers, can be invited to the Group and can log in using a Chatter External user license.
Salesforce offers both desktop and mobile Chatter clients.
SugarSugar’s ESN tool is called Activity Stream. Users can communicate with one another on issues that relate to specific records. Record changes can be logged.
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Social Media Integration
SalesforceSalesforce has a feature called Social Accounts and Contacts which allows a user to view recent Twitter activity for a Contact or a Lead. The LinkedIn integration will pull in the person’s picture from LinkedIn and also display the person’s title. LinkedIn provides a subscription for a more comprehensive integration.
The Facebook integration displays the person’s Facebook picture and includes a link to the person’s full profile or Page.
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The Service Cloud allow allows for monitoring social media platforms such as Twitter for customer issues.
SugarSugar allows displaying a Contact’s or an Account’s Twitter feed in a Dashlet. Clicking Reply will launch Twitter’s native “Reply to a Tweet” screen in a new tab.
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Online Help & Training
SalesforceSalesforce.com provides Help & Training as part of its customer success community. The success site includes a searchable knowledge base, FAQs, documentation, videos, an Ideas exchange, Answers, and other resources.
Salesforce also publishes a catalog of virtual and live training courses.
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SugarFrom the Help link, users can navigate to online, indexed documentation.
Sugar has a support page on their website that includes a knowledge base of FAQs, an online library, webinars, notes, guides, podcasts, and forums. Users can also register for live training sessions in their area.
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User Conferences
SalesforceSalesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce user conference is held in San Francisco in November.
SugarSugarCRM’s annual conference is called SugarCon and is held in San Francisco in the spring. This conference is for SugarCRM customers, prospects, developers, community members, and partners.
Legal NoticesSugar, Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, Sugar Ultimate, SugarForge.org, SugarExchange, Sugar Mobile, Sugar Mobile Browser, Sugar Mobile Plus are registered trademarks of SugarCRM, Inc.
Salesforce, Salesforce1, Force.com, Chatter, Apex, Visualforce and salesforce.com are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.
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