Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about SugarCRM drawn from our latest Value Index research, the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology built on evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria and derived from RFP responses and a vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated SugarCRM and 21 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product — Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability — and two related to the vendor — TCO/ROI and Vendor Validation. To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Customer Experience (CX).

SugarCRM develops customer information management systems for sales, marketing and service teams. It was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking 10th overall in this Value Index evaluation. SugarCRM performed best in Vendor Validation, where it ranked eighth.

SugarCRM originally approached CX through the lens of sales teams with a CRM application. In transforming the portfolio into a fuller customer experience management (CXM or CEM) suite, the company has rapidly built out its sales-related components. This makes sense because there is an increasing awareness on the part of buyers that CX should be pitched internally as a revenue-generation process. SugarCRM also acquired AddOptify as a process automation engine and journey management tool.

SugarCRM performed best in Customer Experience, notably performing well on measures of customer commitment efforts, clarity of product roadmap and help for buyers in building and articulating their business cases. To improve in the overall ranking, SugarCRM should focus efforts on Reliability, specifically by providing performance metrics for data and users and clarity around the company’s investment priorities.

This assessment was based on SugarCRM’s CXM products available in October of 2022. Since that time, the company has released updates to Sugar Sell that include enhancements to reporting and analysis functions.

SugarCRM, like all vendors in this space, should continue working towards a holistic, integrated CX platform that addresses the needs of users across the enterprise. Connecting workflows from marketing, sales and service teams should be a key priority.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of CXM software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.