This year’s SugarConnected on Tour offered us the opportunity to see how some of SugarCRM’s customers use and interact with our systems and how they ensure proper adoption rates. Gayle Richardson, CRM and DPO Manager at Juniper Education, and Andrew Ord, Product Owner at Rightmove, joined us on our last SugarConnected on Tour panel to discuss all things CRM adoption and how their companies fuel growth with SugarCRM.
Juniper Education: From Siloed Data to SugarCRM Wizards
Like many other businesses, Juniper Education struggled with siloed data from different legacy systems. As an expanding company, mainly through acquisitions, standardizing and accessing relevant data company-wide was a real challenge. Another challenge faced by Juniper was improving CRM adoption rates at a company level, especially in new teams acquired through mergers.
Due to rapid growth, Juniper had to follow the rhythm of business and grow with it. Gayle mentions that the most challenging part was dealing with different processes and systems due to their mergers and acquisitions. However, once the data from their legacy systems got migrated to SugarCRM, all teams had a complete view of all contact information, the same dashboards, reports, KPIs, and, most importantly, they had access to real-time information. This allowed them to make decisions fully aware of the broader context.
In terms of adoption, Juniper Education are wizards. While lacking a training department, Juniper took a hands-on approach to increase adoption within new teams joining the company. Here are some best practices Gayle says worked wonders for them:
- In-house training videos
- Dedicated Slack channels
- Documented processes in training documentation
- Using learning tools, such as Quizlet
Another strategy that Gayle says helped Juniper boost adoption rates within acquired teams was starting as early as possible. In the negotiation phase, one of the main goals was to identify legacy systems and processes and integrate them into Sugar. With a huge customization potential, Sugar enabled Juniper to incorporate some of the acquired companies’ best practices into a wider strategy.
How SugarCRM Helps Juniper Education Fuel Growth
A 360-degree view of your customers and their needs gives you growth opportunities. And this was Juniper’s case, as the company focused on upselling opportunities after implementing our CRM.
Instead of working to bring in new customers, SugarCRM helped them identify how the company positioned itself in relation to its existing customers. Now, the company has a full view of the sales funnel. With each new acquisition and product catalog expansion, Juniper can expand on the products offered to each existing customer.
Rightmove: Creating Game-Changing Moments to Boost User Adoption
Although Rightmove has a different business profile than Juniper Education, Andrew Ord, Product Owner at Rightmove says that the company faced similar challenges in user adoption.
Highlighting the day-to-day benefits of using Sugar it’s the key to ensuring high adoption rates with customers and internal teams. When you offer teams a clearer understanding of the opportunities, objectives, key results (OKRs), accurate forecasting, and how these relate to company-wide goals, you can drive higher CRM adoption rates, says Andrew.
Once the initial adoption phase was nailed down and users started to log into SugarCRM daily, being able to add value to their day-to-day tasks kept them motivated to continue using the software. Once users log data into Sugar, they gain more visibility into internal processes and operations, customers, collaborators, and their needs.
Rightmove has recently implemented Sugar Connect, an email client add-in that lets you work with your Sugar data without navigating away from your Outlook or Gmail account. The visibility offered in their daily meetings and, most importantly, the personas they’re discussing with, allowed Rightmove to accelerate their Marketing and Support efforts as well. Selling this added benefit to users has also contributed to increased adoption.
Complex Needs, Simple Solutions
A simple solution to accelerate company growth has been backcasting: setting goals for the future and working backward into the present to achieve them. An example of this is going fully digital. Rightmove has completely ditched paper, allowing its customers’ full digital access and control over their membership. Currently, at Rightmove, all purchases go through an Account Manager.
This strategy allows the company to scale quickly and offers a more precise vision of the company’s long-term goals and strategy.
Wrapping It Up
We had so much fun at this year’s SugarConnected on Tour! So, what did we learn from our customers this year?
All businesses have different needs, but finding out-of-the-box solutions with powerful customization potential can accelerate adoption rates while solving recurring daily problems. Flexible solutions also eliminate operational siloes, offering you a 360-degree view of your customers and business.
Want to learn more about how having the right CRM solution can empower your sales teams to aim higher and achieve more? Download our 2023 CRM Buyer’s Guide for the full scoop.
