Why is sugar based on three contact types (Target/Lead/Contact)?

Question

This causes me several headaches:

a) We usually want to have an "Organisation Centric" view of data rather than person centric

b) When promoting (converting) through the levels it can result in people at multiple levels which complicates campaigns as it is tricky to avoid duplicates

c) Also when promoting custom fields need to be "handled" for level. Makes extra work for marketeers who are not developers/coders

Maybe I'm missing something?

Thanks

Dale

Dale Hyde · Accepted Answer

There are very valid reasons for separating them. Before I get into it, I'd like to correct your point about it being in three databases, as that's not the case. The various objects are stored in three different tables within a single database. The data in those tables in turn translates to three different modules. As for the reasons behind the three objects, bear mind that your use case is but 1 representation of how to utilize the system. Other organizations will vary and the product is designed with the flexibility to meet various needs versus one or only a few. That being said, I've worked with many customers that would find that adding all the records into a single module results in a polluted database. That's one of the primary reasons as to why you find that many CRM systems use the paradigm that you see in Sugar. It helps create a clear delineation between "active" customers and those that are being qualified (and what stage of qualification they happen to fall into). This also opens the door to run metrics such as seeing your lead conversion rates, or essentially, figuring out how many qualified leads are being converted to active customers during a given time period. It becomes much harder to do that if everything is in a single bucket because beyond the change to the "Status" field, there is no definitive way of knowing if the person is active or still being qualified. On the more technical side, the separation also simplifies security models and the ability to restrict access to data. I know of customers whose processes are basically such that the users doing the qualifying of leads never have access to contacts/opportunities/accounts. Those users essentially are used to do nothing else but work the leads to find out if there is an interest for the company's services/products. Once they have a positive answer on that question, the lead is handed off to a sales person to actually work the deal. I am sure there are other examples we could come up with, but i think you get the point. Different businesses have different approaches, hence the flexibility in the system. Per my previous post, if you feel you are better served by only using one module, Sugar allows that. Just be mindful that it might complicate other processes, such as the lead conversion metrics I mention.