Sugar Automate - Smart Guide or Microsoft Project

Sugar Automate and Microsoft Project serve different purposes.

When using SugarCRM for fast-moving products like insurance or credit cards, the sales process requires efficiency and well-defined stages. Sales and support reps follow a focused process to move opportunities or cases quickly from one stage to another.

In these scenarios, the sales pipeline or case life cycles are shorter and well-defined. Sugar Automate helps guide representatives with defined steps, especially in typical B2C usage. It helps track how many opportunities were moved from one stage to another within a day or week.

In Sugar usages like "Sales Funnel" where the life cycle is longer typically for B2B scenario, Sugar Automate may not be applied.

Our blog https://www.bhea.com/blog/how-to-implement-sales-pipeline-funnel-management-using-sugarcrm/ may help in differetiating Pipeline compared to Funnel.

So if your sales process is for shorter duration to sell products or service, you can use Sugar Automate to define that customer journey well and make your reps focus on moving from one stage to another step by step.

Sugar Automate definitely does not have any project management features.

Thanks for answering. In fact Sugar Automate Smartguide does have some project management features.

We use Sugar Automate Smartguide for recurring processes, analysis within the logistics sector as follows:

• Collection of data
• Analyse current data
• Design RFQ and supplier list
• Distribution of RFQ with deadline
• Deadline follow up
• Analysing incoming offers
• Presentation for the customer
• Customer selects suppliers for negotiations
• Choosing suppliers
• Agreements with supplier (s)
• Final report

What would be the advantage using Microsoft Project in stead of Sugar Automate Smartguide?

Peter

I see Sugar Automate as a great tool for managing the sales cycle of the project, or simple project delivery steps, while MS Project has more features for managing the delivery of complex projects as it  allows you to not only define the steps of your project but also develop a schedule, manage dependencies, assign resources, and do time tracking for teams of people, as well as managing the budget. 

When you are dealing with many people who all have to complete their part in a given order and on schedule the dependencies become crucial. It's the difference between selling and shipping materials to a construction site and managing the actual construction of the house where you need to coordinate your trades and make sure things are done in a timely fashion and no one is sitting around waiting for the the other guy to finish his bit.

So whether you choose Sugar Automate or MS Project really depends on the complexities of the project.

I would say, don't over-complicate things if you don't need to. If a step by step guide to make sure you don't miss anything is all you need, then Sugar Automate should do the job quite well.

FrancescaS

I see Sugar Automate as a great tool for managing the sales cycle of the project, or simple project delivery steps, while MS Project has more features for managing the delivery of complex projects as it  allows you to not only define the steps of your project but also develop a schedule, manage dependencies, assign resources, and do time tracking for teams of people, as well as managing the budget. 

When you are dealing with many people who all have to complete their part in a given order and on schedule the dependencies become crucial. It's the difference between selling and shipping materials to a construction site and managing the actual construction of the house where you need to coordinate your trades and make sure things are done in a timely fashion and no one is sitting around waiting for the the other guy to finish his bit.

So whether you choose Sugar Automate or MS Project really depends on the complexities of the project.

I would say, don't over-complicate things if you don't need to. If a step by step guide to make sure you don't miss anything is all you need, then Sugar Automate should do the job quite well.

FrancescaS