OK, here's the (not so) short background story...
I work for a smallish company (8 engineers, 2 support staff) and for the past year we've been using SugarCRM Community Edition. I'm having problems getting the others to use it because we've had various issues - mainly getting the MS Outlook connection working - the 3rd party plug-in we use is just rubbish and doesn't seem to work most of the time. The CE also lacks the workflow features I think they would find useful. So the time has come to look into a "proper" CRM.
I am all for upgrading to Sugar Pro as it has built in MS Office plug-ins (correct?) and the workflow features missing in the CE version. However, my colleagues are put-off by the cost of paying for multiple users every 12 months. They want me to look into an "on-premises" option that we can run from our own server and just pay for once. I don't even know where to begin - all the articles I've read seem to assume you already know how CRM's and servers work.....and I don't. Sugar CE was already installed when I started here, so I'm starting from scratch. We don't have an IT person and we really only use the server for shared storage.
Can somebody point me in the right direction, using small non-technical words? I have to provide a report for a meeting on Friday
Also, is this something MS Exchange can do? I've never used it before but somebody mentioned I should like into it.
Thanks chaps
I work for a smallish company (8 engineers, 2 support staff) and for the past year we've been using SugarCRM Community Edition. I'm having problems getting the others to use it because we've had various issues - mainly getting the MS Outlook connection working - the 3rd party plug-in we use is just rubbish and doesn't seem to work most of the time. The CE also lacks the workflow features I think they would find useful. So the time has come to look into a "proper" CRM.
I am all for upgrading to Sugar Pro as it has built in MS Office plug-ins (correct?) and the workflow features missing in the CE version. However, my colleagues are put-off by the cost of paying for multiple users every 12 months. They want me to look into an "on-premises" option that we can run from our own server and just pay for once. I don't even know where to begin - all the articles I've read seem to assume you already know how CRM's and servers work.....and I don't. Sugar CE was already installed when I started here, so I'm starting from scratch. We don't have an IT person and we really only use the server for shared storage.
Can somebody point me in the right direction, using small non-technical words? I have to provide a report for a meeting on Friday
Also, is this something MS Exchange can do? I've never used it before but somebody mentioned I should like into it.
Thanks chaps
