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B2C / B2B with Sugar (Accounts ? Contacts ? Both ?)

Frédéric Rinaldi

Hello guys,

I want to know how you handle, with Sugar, your customers that have a B2C AND B2B business.

At first, we decided to use the ACCOUNT's module to handle the customer (could be a B2B so core fields or B2C so additionnal fields for first name last name etc.) ; that way, we stay easy with core features like opportunities or cases management that are linked to the account etc.

Of course, we faced minor limitations (for instance with the outlook core plugin).

But today, with the Sugar Market solution, the contact becomes a key module and the synchronization processes are centered on this module (and the Leads one).

So on one hand, Account is the central part for Sugar and, on the other hand Contact is the central part for Sugar Market (or other Marketing automation solution).

How do you handle that ?

You duplicate the info (for the B2C) and create an Account AND a Contact ?

You use the Contact for B2C and Account/Contact for B2B so you have to customize you CRM to manage both for Cases, Opportunities etc.?

You "trick" the marketing automation tool by override the core api to query the "correct" module according to your business model ? Other way I don't think about ?

Any feedback is welcome.

Fred

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  • Agree with 

    When we work with banks, telco, insurance, automotive, some e-commerce, and not only we use "Account" to collect and account data about Subjects of Doing Business ( = Organizations, Households, Individuals) and "Contacts" to collect and account data about People who represent this Subjects of Doing Business. "Lead" we use to collect and account data about an interest of a particular Person to a particular product in a particular channel.

    It helps to manage situations when one Person represents many Accounts simultaneously (organizations and/or households, and is a client as an individual) and demonstrates different interests: as company' manager, as a son, as father, as a fisherman :). 
    It also helps manage situations when an Account is in several relations to CRM system owner (Customer/Partner/Competitor/...) each one can be in a different status (Prospect, Former, Active, Not relevant)

    Anyway, this model works well with any marketing systems since all MA systems operate by Lists of contacts.

    Of course, it requires adding many data populations and syncing algorithms, changing the OOTB data structure (at least, Contact has relation to many Accounts and an Account has different blocks of data by type), and efforts to configure smart restriction to data access. E.g., If I have access to the Contact as a Person of a particular Account, what I have to see about this Contact as representative of other Accounts. Such restrictions depend on the industry: for banks, it's obligatory to know about such relations, but for e-commerce, it's not. 

    Sugar gives absolutely flexibility with data structure, and Logic Builder gives absolutely flexibility on the level of data processing inside Sugar. If a MA system doesn't provide ABM capabilities, we add custom logic on the Sugar side to manage marketing lists and tune marketing processes.

    This approach also helps to solve one more important challenge: providing compatibility with new powered features from SugarCRM. 

    Integroscrm.com
    We make work in Sugar
    more convenient and efficient

Reply

  • Agree with 

    When we work with banks, telco, insurance, automotive, some e-commerce, and not only we use "Account" to collect and account data about Subjects of Doing Business ( = Organizations, Households, Individuals) and "Contacts" to collect and account data about People who represent this Subjects of Doing Business. "Lead" we use to collect and account data about an interest of a particular Person to a particular product in a particular channel.

    It helps to manage situations when one Person represents many Accounts simultaneously (organizations and/or households, and is a client as an individual) and demonstrates different interests: as company' manager, as a son, as father, as a fisherman :). 
    It also helps manage situations when an Account is in several relations to CRM system owner (Customer/Partner/Competitor/...) each one can be in a different status (Prospect, Former, Active, Not relevant)

    Anyway, this model works well with any marketing systems since all MA systems operate by Lists of contacts.

    Of course, it requires adding many data populations and syncing algorithms, changing the OOTB data structure (at least, Contact has relation to many Accounts and an Account has different blocks of data by type), and efforts to configure smart restriction to data access. E.g., If I have access to the Contact as a Person of a particular Account, what I have to see about this Contact as representative of other Accounts. Such restrictions depend on the industry: for banks, it's obligatory to know about such relations, but for e-commerce, it's not. 

    Sugar gives absolutely flexibility with data structure, and Logic Builder gives absolutely flexibility on the level of data processing inside Sugar. If a MA system doesn't provide ABM capabilities, we add custom logic on the Sugar side to manage marketing lists and tune marketing processes.

    This approach also helps to solve one more important challenge: providing compatibility with new powered features from SugarCRM. 

    Integroscrm.com
    We make work in Sugar
    more convenient and efficient

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