May
29
2009
How Executive Buy-In Effects CRM Acceptance

Last week I wrote about the six reasons why CRM acceptance is still a problem. Today I’m going to dig into the first of those reasons, executive buy-in, in detail. We’ll also look at some examples from Epicom’s client projects to illustrate my points.

First, let’s consider why executive buy-in is so important.

If a senior executive authorizes the purchase of a CRM system, shouldn’t that be enough to lend weight to the project and insure its success? It turns out the answer is typically “no” and for four reasons.

  • Executive vision is not well understood. When an executive decides to purchase a CRM, she typically has a vision in her head about what the system will do for her business. But this vision is seldom captured and understood by the employees and vendors implementing the system. The result is misaligned objectives and disappointment with the final system.
  • Executive vision is not complete. Most executives purchasing CRM systems do not fully understand system capabilities. Why should they? Most executives are not CRM professionals and even if they have used CRM systems before only a few have been through a CRM deployment hands-on. So even when the executive articulates a clear vision for the system, it seldom contains the detail needed to be actionable — and it is subject to change.
  • Project objectives change. CRM deployments involve the identification of business processes to be automated, gathering of system requirements, and design of a final solution. Throughout this process, new things are learned, requirements uncovered, and system capabilities discovered. As a result, the original vision of what the system will do often changes significantly from the start of the project to the end.
  • People do not take the project seriously if executives are not involved. Employees will take seriously those things that leaders take seriously. If an executive spends time actively involved in a CRM deployment, then the employees working on the project will take the project more seriously. If an executive signs the paperwork for a new system and then walks away until the deployment is complete, the chances that the system will actually meet expectations and solve real business problems is significantly reduced.

So, what should be done about these problems?

The best solution is for executives to actively participate in the system implementation. By rolling up their sleeves and spending time on the project, they can avoid nearly all of the pitfalls outlined above. But senior executives and business owners are busy people. What if they simply can’t afford to spend the time required?

Then they should do the following:

  • Articulate the importance of the project to the entire organization. This can be done during an employee meeting or in an email to employees. Either way it needs to be done repeatedly during system deployment so that the message is reinforced.
  • Delegate the responsibility for the project to a trusted lieutenant who is respected in the company. That lieutenant should have regular access to top executives to deliver status briefings and to resolve questions about system requirements and project priorities.
  • Publicize the status and results of the project throughout the organization. Employees are often reluctant to attach their full enthusiasm to a project until they understand the organizational and political implications of the project and until they understand the potential risks and rewards of their involvement. By publicizing a CRM deployment and highlighting the people involved in the success of the project, executives are signaling the critical importance of the project. That’s not just good project management, its also good leadership.

    • On Monday I will write about an Epicom client that experienced many of the issues outlined above and ultimately overcame them.

May
22
2009
End of Version Announcments

SugarCRM has just announced the dates that all currently supported versions will be retired. It is imperative that you upgrade before those dates so that you can be sure that you will continue to receive security updates.

  • Version 4.5.1 – September 30, 2009
  • Version 5.0.0 – January 31, 2010
  • Version 5.1.0 – March 31, 2010
  • Version 5.2.0 – December 31, 2010

Once a version is retired SugarCRM will no longer provide customer support, maintenance patches or bug fixes.

May
22
2009
Six Reasons Why CRM User Acceptance Is Still A Problem

One of the biggest issues facing companies that deploy a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is user acceptance. Over the years the CRM industry has gained lots of wisdom about user acceptance but I’m still surprised to see how many companies struggle to get their users to buy in and actually use CRM. In this post I will outline what I see as the top six reasons why user acceptance is still a big problem for so many companies. Then in a series of future blog posts I will dive into each of these reasons in detail, exploring why each is such a problem and offering some guidance on overcoming user acceptance pitfalls, based on Epicom’s experience working with our customers.

The decision to purchase and deploy a CRM system is usually based on solid business logic. But once the decision has been made to deploy, many projects go off track. Here are the top reasons why.

Lack of Executive Buy-In

Sure it was the Senior VP of Sales or the CEO of the company who came up with the idea to deploy CRM in the first place, but these people are seldom actively involved in the deployment project. The reasons why, the ramifications, and ways to correct this situation, all hold valuable lessons on how to improve system acceptance.

The System Is Not Designed With Users In Mind

Managers, the consumers of information from a CRM system, are typically the decision makers when it comes to system selection and customization. But the real users of the system are the sales reps and customer support staff who must enter and manage information. Often little or no thought is given to the needs of these users and the system deployed often does not meet their needs. Ultimately, a CRM system should make users more productive. But all too often the new system is perceived (correctly or incorrectly) as additional work for already busy employees.

Lack Of Training And Orientation

We have learned over the years that there is no such thing as too much training. Training increases comfort with the system, allows users to become more efficient, and overcomes reluctance to change. But few companies invest adequately in training. Why is this the case and what can be done to make training more effective and economical?

Managers Are Not “Living In The System”

When managers do not rely on the information in a CRM system as the “gold standard” for decision making in the organization, how can they expect end-users to take the system seriously? By conducting the daily operations of the organization through the CRM system, user acceptance is reinforced, data quality improves, and decision making becomes more efficient and accurate. We call that “living in the system.”

System Use Is Not Aligned With Employee Compensation

One of the easiest ways to get employees to use a CRM system is to tie system use to their compensation plan. We’ll dig into this technique and offer some suggestions on how to make it work.

Poor Data Quality

At the end of the day, any CRM system is only as good as the data in it. During deployment, many companies migrate legacy databases from multiple sources, create large amounts of duplicate data, and don’t take the time to “scrub” data so that it’s valuable and meaningful to users. We’ll address techniques for making this process less painful and more affordable.

Stay tuned in the coming days for in-depth posts on each of these user acceptance issues. And feel free to post your own thoughts and experiences here on the blog or by email to me.

May
10
2009
Upgrade Your SugarCRM System Before It Gets Too Expensive to Upgrade

The majority of Epicom’s clients are currently running SugarCRM 5.1c with a few (including Epicom) that have opted to upgrade to 5.2. But a couple of our clients are still on the old SugarCRM 4.5.1 architecture.

Within a couple of months I expect that all of our clients on 5.1c will have migrated to 5.2 (we usually don’t push a new point release until a couple patches have come out, unless there is a critical bug fix in a new version that our clients need). But sometimes we run across companies running much older versions of SugarCRM. I’m always surprised to see that they have not kept up with upgrades and new releases. I’ve found that companies typically give one of five different reasons for not wanting to upgrade:

  1. They have too many code customizations in their CRM system that might have to be fixed if they upgrade.
  2. They had a bad experience with an upgrade in the past.
  3. They don’t want users to be unproductive while they learn how things have changed in the new version.
  4. They don’t know if the new version is stable and are concerned that it will have bugs.
  5. They can’t justify the time and expense to actually perform the upgrade.

Let’s look at each of these issues and figure out how to upgrade safely, smoothly, and efficiently despite the potential risks.

Code Customization

If code customizations have been done improperly then the first reason is significant and might be a valid reason for planning carefully before performing an upgrade. This is why we deploy only upgrade-safe customizations when we modify a client’s system. Poorly written customizations may very well need to be rewritten before an upgrade will succeed. But this is almost always worth the time and trouble because it reduces future support risks and opens the way to taking advantage of new features offered in new versions. Depending on your current release, security patches or major bug fixes that cannot be deployed because of poor customizations should be addressed immediately, even if a version upgrade is not planned.

Bad Upgrade Experience

Bad upgrade experiences are usually the result of poor planning or not following upgrade best practices. SugarCRM upgrade processes can be very complex and there are many opportunities for failure. It is imperative to make a full system (code and database) backup before an upgrade is made and to test the upgrade in a development environment before performing it on the production system. Epicom has performed so many customer upgrades that we have it down to a science. Just because you have had a bad experience in the past is not a good reason to resist upgrading. You just need the right plan and the right people performing the work. We can help you with that.

Lost Productivity

Training in advance of a major upgrade can mitigate lost productivity as users move from one version of software to another. We design and deliver training packages that can be tailored to your users specific needs. These can be delivered in person, via live web conference, or as a package of web-based screencasts. Keep in mind that new versions often offer new tools that will actually make your users more productive than they were before.

New Version Stability

SugarCRM is a powerful and complex enterprise-grade software application. Like all other software of similar complexity, there will be bugs in new releases. The key to avoiding potential bug problems is to work with a partner that you know and can trust to monitor new releases and notify you when it is safe to upgrade. Some of our clients are operating on the bleeding edge and like to deploy new releases as soon as they are available, understanding that bugs might still exist. Others prefer to wait until a new release has been tested in the field to make sure there are no service-affecting problems. There is no set rule for when to upgrade, but Epicom tests and monitors the progress of bugs and their resolutions and makes a judgment call when we think the main issues have been resolved. We can often implement a hot-fix if a client upgrades early and then runs into an issue. By working with us you can also be sure that we will contact you immediately if their is a security update released for the version you are on. We keep track of what each of our clients is currently running and are very proactive in announcing security updates.

Upgrade Time and Expense

I firmly believe that the longer you wait to upgrade, the more expensive it becomes. Let’s take a look at a project we recently completed at Epicom as an example.

A new client recently approached us to upgrade their system that was running SugarSuite version 3.5.1. Since our clients are kept up to date on their releases I was a little surprised that people still are running version 3. I did some Google research based on search volume for different versions of SugarCRM in the first half of 2008 and found the following:

  • 1.44% of users are still on Sugar 3.x
  • 36.08% of users are still on Sugar 4.x
  • 62.48% of users are currently on Sugar 5.x

The danger of staying on an old version for an extended amount of time (besides the lack of support and possible security issues) is that it becomes complicated to upgrade to the latest version because of different prerequisites for different versions of Sugar. Chances are that if you are on version 3 of Sugar your server is running very old versions of MySQL and PHP. It is quite possible that your server is not properly patched for security issues with the OS and applications like the web server, MySQL and PHP.

You can’t upgrade Sugar 3 to Sugar 5.2 directly, you must go through a series of upgrades to accomplish this. Clint Oram (the co-founder of SugarCRM) keeps track of the various upgrade paths to get from an old version to the current version. To move from SugarCRM v3.0 to v5.2 (as our client wished to do) the following path had to be made:

  • v3 upgraded to v3.5.1
  • v3.5.1 upgraded to v4.0.1
  • v4.0.1 upgraded to v4.5.0
  • v4.5.0 upgraded to v4.5.1
  • v4.5.1 upgraded to v5.1.0
  • v5.1.0 upgraded to v.5.2.0

So customers really don’t save much money by not upgrading when a new version comes out because they still have to make most of these upgrades, and in the meantime they haven’t taken advantage of the incremental improvements in Sugar that could have increased user productivity and expanded the types of things that could have been achieved with Sugar.

But the problem is actually much worse than that, because some versions of Sugar require different pre-requisites (Apache, MySQL, PHP) than other versions, and some are completely incompatible with others. So if you are not on version 4.5.1 or better right now, then your upgrade path will include upgrading lots of software, not just SugarCRM.

For instance, to upgrade from Sugar 3.5.1 to 4.0.1 you need to be on a server that does not have MySQL 5 or PHP 5. Old versions of Sugar had some field names that later became reserved words in MySQL 5, and they also had a class name that clashes with a class name in PHP 5.2.

In the case of our client running 3.5.1, we had to use the client’s server to upgrade to 4.0.1 because it had old versions of MySQL and PHP that were compatible with 3.5.1 and 4.0.1. But once we upgraded to 4.0.1 we couldn’t use the same server to upgrade to v4.5.0 because v4.5.0 required MySQL 4.1.2 or newer, but not PHP 5.2 or greater (are you confused yet?). This server had MySQL 4.0.23. So we had to set up a separate server that had MySQL 4.1.2 and PHP 5.1.6 to upgrade from v4.0.1 to 4.5.0. Then we used that same server to upgrade from v4.5.0 to v4.5.1 (since v4.5.0 still can’t run on PHP 5.2). To upgrade from v4.5.1 to v5.1.0, we once again had to move their installation to a server that was running MySQL 5 and PHP 5.2. Technically SugarCRM v5.x still works with MySQL 4.1.2 and PHP 5.1.6, but we didn’t want to leave this client running on a server that is already out of date. Confusing, isn’t it?

It was difficult and time consuming (not to mention expensive) to track down old versions of MySQL and PHP, install and configure them, and then move the customer’s CRM system from server to server during different phases of the upgrade.

We used CentOS 5.2 for this upgrade because it still uses PHP 5.1.6, so it was easy to get a server setup with the proper binaries for MySQL and PHP. But what really saved the customer time and money was Epicom’s virtual servers. By using virtual servers we are able to install and configure a new OS in a matter of minutes. Without virtual servers, we would have been forced to find old hardware to install the various OS and LAMP components necessary for each upgrade step. This would have taken many, many more hours.

So if you put off upgrading too long, it will be a lot more difficult to get a server setup with the old versions of PHP and MySQL necessary to run the upgrades. Right now you can still find old Linux distributions with active repositories of versions of PHP and MySQL that will work, but these are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

It is also important to remember that SugarCRM no longer supports many old versions of Sugar. So if a security hole is found in an old release, it won’t be patched and you will be vulnerable. Here are the current end-of-support dates for older versions of SugarCRM:

  • SugarCRM v4.2.1 and all older versions were retired on or before November 30th of 2008
  • SugarCRM v4.5.0 is being retired on February 28th, 2009

Although a retirement date has not been announced for SugarCRM v4.5.1 we are encouraging all of our clients to migrate to 5.1+ by the end of October 2009 (including people on v5.0).

Is it time for you to upgrade an old system? Contact us and we’ll help you develop a migration plan.

May
8
2009
SugarCRM Changes CEOs

SugarCRM announced today that John Roberts is being replaced as CEO by Larry Augustin, a veteran of the open source software industry. Augustin founded VA Software, now known as the Sourceforge, and served as its chairman from 1993 until 2002. Now Augustin is an investor and serves on the boards of a wide variety of companies, including SugarCRM. You can learn more about Larry’s background in this Wikipedia article or from his blog.

This is clearly a good move for SugarCRM. Whether Augustin stays at the helm for a short time or a long time, he is a high caliber player and he will bring some much-needed experience and perspective to Sugar’s leadership team.

Apr
21
2009
SugarCRM Wins CRM Excellence Award

Congratulations to SugarCRM! For the second consecutive year, SugarCRM has taken home the CRM Excellence Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s, Customer Interaction Solutions® magazine, the premier publication in the CRM, contact center and teleservices industries since 1982.

See the full article here.

Apr
11
2009
Creating Custom Quotes in PDF Format

Recently a customer approached Epicom to customize the output that the SugarCRM Quote module generates when converting a quote to a PDF file. PDF export is a handy feature in SugarCRM, but the resulting output leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically. Our client wanted the output to look cleaner and more professional. But they also had a list of feature changes to make the output more relevant to their business. We tackled both jobs.

Here are the aesthetic changes that we made:

  • Consistent Header and Footer – By default SugarCRM generates a horizontal line at the top and bottom of every page. Our client wanted their logo on the top left of each page and a title on the top right. They also wanted a customer initials line in the footer of each page. Since the SugarCRM quote module does not have custom headers and footers, we created this behavior with some custom code.
  • Higher Resolution Graphics – SugarCRM specifies a quote header graphic that is 867 pixels wide. This graphic is then reduced to a display width of 300 pixels which works out to be about 208 DPI when printed. Our client wanted a much higher resolution rendering of their logo, so they supplied us with a very high quality logo image and we increased the quality of the pdf output to match.
  • Widow and Orphan Protection – Sugar’s built-in quote generator has no widow/orphan protection, so table headings can end up at the end of a page while the rest of the table is listed on the following page. We customized the pdf generator to eliminate this problem. Now, if fewer than 3 rows of a table will fit at the bottom of a page, then the entire table is moved to the next page to prevent orphan rows in the table.
  • Header Repetition – Tables that span a page break are tracked and a copy of the table header is repeated on the second page for increased readability.
  • Alternating Shaded Lines – To increase the readability of long table lists, we customized two alternating shades of gray for the background in each line of the quote.
  • Table Reformatting – We added borders around the product tables, blue backgrounds for table headings, and created a stronger table layout for contact information.

In addition to these formatting changes, we also added some new functionality to the quote output engine based on our client’s business requirements.

  • We added relationships to the Contacts module so that each quote could be linked to and display three different contacts.
  • We added a note text area to the quote screens and included these notes in the PDF output.
  • We built a tool that allows users to customize the legal language on a quote based on language approved by the firm’s legal department. By choosing legal language options from a multi-select box in the quote screen, the user can now generate pdf output tailored to the needs of the customer. Behind this mechanism is a custom SugarCRM module that maintains all of the standard legal language. Only the firm’s attorneys have access to this module, ensuring that only approved legal language will appear on quotes.

The final product is significantly improved from the standard output. Here is a before and after comparison. First, standard SugarCRM quote output:

proposal__3721-1

And here is a sample of the output from Epicom’s customized pdf quote output generator:

order_10x_marketing_371

What’s really great about this customization is that it was done pretty quickly and inexpensively. Having access to the pdf generator source code meant that Epicom had total control over what went on the quote output, where is was positioned, and how it was formatted. Few CRM applications can give you this level of control for customizations.

Do you need to generate high quality quotes and orders that can be generated quickly? Take a look at SugarCRM’s quote module and give Epicom a call when it’s time to customize that output.

Mar
10
2009
James McGirr Joins Epicom

Today we are excited to welcome James McGirr to the Epicom team. James is joining us full-time as a software engineer. He’ll be working on a variety of customer projects, primarily focused around SugarCRM. James is originally from Chicago. He studied Physics at Carnegie Mellon University and worked on a Master of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. James has studied in Costa Rica, Germany, and Switzerland and is proficient in Spanish, German, and French, as well as English.

Once he gets up to speed, I expect James to become a contributor to this blog.

Next time you have reason to call the Epicom offices, say hello to James and join me in welcoming him. He is going to make a great addition to the team.

Mar
5
2009
SugarCRM Announces Express Edition

SugarCRM just introduced a new product called SugarCRM Express. Clearly targeted as a competitor to Salesforce.com’s Team Edition, SugarCRM Express is a low-cost way for small organizations to get started with CRM easily and inexpensively. Express is a hosted version of SugarCRM’s existing Community Edition, the open source product that can be downloaded for free from Sugar’s website. But what makes Express a great offering is that it is bundled with SugarCRM’s plug-in’s for Outlook, Word, and Excel. Before Express, customers could purchase these plug-in’s a la carte. But now the only way to get them is to purchase a commercial version of SugarCRM, either Express, Professional, or Enterprise.

I think Sugar needed a low-cost product like this. The existing commercial versions of Sugar (Professional and Enterprise) are great products but they are fairly expensive so lots of companies choose to use the free Community Edition rather than forking out extra money for all the extra features in Pro. With Express, companies looking at the Community Edition can get a hosted version very inexpensively and benefit from all of the capabilities of the Microsoft Office plug-ins.

SugarCRM Express comes in two sizes. $499.00 per year for 1 to 5 users or $799.00 per year for up to 10 users.

The big problem with Express is going to be the 10 user limit. Sugar’s goal is clearly to target Express as an entry-level product and then migrate customers to its more sophisticated (and expensive) big brothers. But for Express customers, moving from user 10 to user 11 is an expensive proposition. A company making that move today would see an increase in cost from $799.00 ($79/user/year) for 10 users under Express to $3,960.00 ($360/user/year) for 11 users on SugarProfessional. This huge cost increase results from the 10 user limit on SugarCRM Express. Any user wishing to add an 11th user must migrate to SugarProfessional at $360/user/year even if they don’t need the extra SugarPro features.

It will be interesting to see how Sugar handles this dilemma. I know that Salesforce has made some exceptions to the 10 user limit in certain cases when customers complained about the huge cost increase. Maybe Sugar will make some of the same compromises.

But even if they don’t, the Express product seems to be a step in the right direction for customers looking for a low-cost CRM with big CRM features.

Mar
4
2009
Open Source Companies Log Impressive Growth

I am pretty big fan of Matt Asay, who writes a column on open source software for CNET. I guess I have to credit Eric for helping me discover Matt’s blog but I’m now a regular reader. Today I read his post on how open source software companies are growing despite the economic slowdown. I guess I’m not surprised. Our business…which is primarily based on open source tools like SugarCRM and the underlying LAMP technologies…is booming. Frankly we didn’t expect to see much growth when the year began, but when your business is helping people save money while selling and marketing more effectively, an economic downturn is not necessarily a bad thing.

In this article, Matt validates what we have been seeing in our business. Namely, that the economic downturn is providing the catalyst for many companies to look at open source solutions for the first time.

And that’s good news for customers, for the open source industry, and for Epicom.

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