SugarCRM Tutorial

click2try Tutorial

SugarCRM

SugarCRM

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SugarCRM


Contents Introduction .............................................................................5

Getting Started .........................................................................6

Creating a Team .......................................................................7

Creating an Account .................................................................8

Creating an Opportunity ...........................................................9

Creating a Lead.......................................................................11

Viewing Your Dashboard.........................................................13

You're on Your Way! ...............................................................14

Resources...............................................................................15

SugarCRM


SugarCRM


Introduction

CRM applications are powerful tools for any enterprise that has customers, suppliers, prospects, investors, or stakeholders of any type. Although CRM applications are most often thought of as sales and marketing tools, you can take advantage of their powerful features in many kinds of organizations, including private enterprises, non-profits, government agencies, and community efforts, just to name a few.

SugarCRM is one of the most popular and well-supported customer relationship management (CRM) tools available. As a Web-based application, SugarCRM provides almost universal access, from any device that supports a standard Java-enabled Web browser. In this tutorial, youll work through a few critical tasks, such as:

Creating a Team Defining an Account Creating an Opportunity Creating a Lead Viewing Your Dashboard

Special Note: You can work through each of these tasks in any order you like, but in this case, we've ordered the tasks in a typical sequence to make it easier for you to understand.

SugarCRM


Getting Started

When you first sign in to the SugarCRM application, you'll see the Home page. The Home page contains a set of dashlets, or dashboard widgets, that give you a quick view of your status. Dashlets include the JotPad, where you can make notes. Other dashlets let you see your:

Top open opportunities Scheduled calls Meetings Leads Accounts Open cases

And there are many other dashlets available that can help you keep track of specific elements of your projects. You can also create your own dashlets for specific solutions.

Note: Anytime you see a red asterisk (*) next to a field in SugarCRM it means that the field is required.

SugarCRM


Creating a Team

While you can use SugarCRM very successfully as an individual user, the system lets you create Teams also. A team is a great way to aggregate team members' tasks, leads, opportunities, and more. Because we'll have a large team of fundraisers, we'll set up a simple team.

To create a team:

1. Click the Admin link at the top of the SugarCRM window. This displays the Administration Home page.

2. In the Users section, click the Team Management link.

3. On the Teams Home page, click the Create Team link in the left menu panel. This displays the Teams page.

4. Enter the team name, and then click Save. You'll see your new team listed on the Teams Home page.

SugarCRM


Creating an Account

Accounts are especially helpful if you work with multiple contacts within one organization. The account represents the organization, division, or department. Sometimes you may start by defining one account, but as your relationships within that organization grow, you may need to define additional accounts to better organize the various relationships you maintain.

To create an account:

1. Click the Accounts button in the main menu. 2. Click the Create Account link in the upper left menu panel. 3. Enter a name in the Name field. 4. Click the Select button next to the Team field to choose the team. If

there are already teams defined in the list, you can also choose one of those.

5. Click the Save button. You should now see your new account on your Accounts page, as shown below.

6. Scroll down the Accounts page.

You'll see that you can create any type of SugarCRM object that you want, including, but not limited to:

SugarCRM


Activities Notes and attachments Contacts Leads Opportunities Contracts Quotes

That's all there is to it! You've now defined an account in SugarCRM.

Creating an Opportunity

Opportunities are potential deals. Let's say you have a strong lead into Company XYZ and from your research, you know they are very interested in partnering on large-scale construction projects. You can define the SugarCRM opportunity as a chance to develop a partnership, sell products, secure funds, or any other type of potential relationship. In a sales organization, sales managers typically define an opportunity as a particular deal, for specific deliverables. In many cases, these opportunities are self-defined by way of a request for proposal (RFP).

In SugarCRM there are several locations where you can create different elements. In this example, let's stay on the Accounts page that shows the account you just created.

SugarCRM


To create an opportunity:

1. Click the Create button at the top of the Opportunities section. This action expands a small form that you can fill in to create an opportunity that will automatically be associated with your account. If you want to go to the full version of an object form, just click the Full Form button.

2. Enter the name of the opportunity. You'll see that the Account nameanother required fieldis already filled in with your active account.

3. Fill in the Amount that you think this opportunity might be worth. Defining this amount allows you to use the many forecasting and reporting tools that SugarCRM offers.

4. Enter the Expected Close Date for the deal. 5. Select the Sales Stage that you're currently in with this account on

this opportunity.

6. If you want, go ahead and choose values for the other fields, such as Type or Lead Source. As you can see, even the short form allows you to define lots of valuable detail for each object.

7. Click Save.

SugarCRM


Creating a Lead

Leads are prospects for your product or service. You may have come across the lead through word of mouth, a referral, or as the result of your outbound sales and marketing program. Generally, leads need to be qualified by an account representative or salesperson before they can be considered a solid prospect, but each organization defines lead status in its own way. SugarCRM allows you to define leads and contacts, which can sometimes be the same person.

SugarCRM provides you with a wide variety of fields in which you can capture valuable data about your leads. Also, you can add significant value by linking a lead with a particular marketing campaign, if valid, by adding more detail to description fields, and by setting properties on items such as email addresses.

In SugarCRM there are several locations where you can create different objects. In this example, let's stay on the Accounts page that shows the account you just created.

SugarCRM


To create a lead

1. Click the Create button at the top of the Leads section. 2. Enter the Last Name of the lead. 3. Select the Team. Last Name and Team are the only required items.

Still, you can see below that SugarCRM gives you the capabilities to add much more information to each lead record.

On this page, you can continue to add contact information including email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, titles, departments, and much more.

SugarCRM


Viewing Your Dashboard

Now that you've completed the basic creation of your SugarCRM objects, you can view your status at a glance. Although SugarCRM provides a powerful reporting feature, you'll find the Dashboard perfect for getting a quick grasp of your current situation.

To view the Dashboard:

1. Click the Dashboard link on the main menu. This action opens the Dashboard and presents a number of graphical views of the data you have entered.

2. Click the Sales Dashboard tab.

3. Hover your mouse pointer over the My Pipeline graph. SugarCRM provides a quick bit of important data in a small bubble about that particular pipeline item. If you want more data, just click the bubble and SugarCRM displays a highly-detailed page.

4. Click the small pencil icon in the upper right corner of the My Pipeline graph. This displays a small edit dialog box that lets you change the labels, filter the items that will display in this graph, change the reporting dates, and even change the graph from a pipeline graph to a bar graph.

SugarCRM


5. Click and hold your mouse button near the line above the My Pipeline title at the top of the graph.

6. Drag the entire graph dashlet and drop it into another location on the page. You can move many objects in SugarCRM in this same way.

Take the time to explore the Dashboard, and customize it to view the items that are important to you.

You're on Your Way!

In addition to taking a look at just a few of the major functional areas of SugarCRM we've tried to give you a feel for getting around the SugarCRM application. There are many more powerful features and capabilities in the productyou've only scratched the surface. With this tutorial guide, you are on your way to exploring the powerful SugarCRM universe.

SugarCRM


Resources

Like almost all Open Source software, SugarCRM is supported by a strong user community. Additionally, SugarCRM follows a Commercial Open Source model and provides many different levels of service. In the spirit of the Open Source community, the SugarCRM team provides a large repository of free documentation and training materials. Additionally, you can also purchase fee-based training from SugarCRM.

For more information, start with these resources:

SugarCRM Documentation http://www.sugarforge.org/content/documentation/ Seriously, how great is this? Hundreds of pages of quality documentation for this versatile product, all online, all freely accessible.

SugarCRM University http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/university Free and tuition-based training. Start here to see some informative videos and walkthroughs.

SugarCRM Forums http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/ This is where the magic happens. A very active community of users and developers who are there to share.

SugarCRM Wikis http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page Youve got a couple of choices here. A great place to start if you want to learn about upcoming issues, or add your own comments to a living document.

CRM Outsiders http://www.crmoutsiders.com Yes, they seem to be unabashed SugarCRM supporters, but youll also find a lot of great information about CRM in general at this well-written blog.

Inside CRM Blog http://www.insidecrm.com/blog/ A well-written industry journal about all types of CRM applications and concerns.

Documents

SugarCRM Tutorial