SugarCRM as a Customer
Interaction Platform
Liz Smith
Regional Vice President
Emea Channel Sales
SugarCRM Inc.

Agenda
Why SugarCRM as a platform?
Paradigm Busting Value: Great out of the box functionality
Flexibility: Create Powerful Business Processes easily
Control
Brighthouse Networks: Sugar as a Platform in the Cable
Industry
Case study with SugarCRM Partner: Levementum
Challenges:
Aggressive growth resulted in disconnected sales and delivery process
Solution/Approach
Results
Questions?

Create Powerful Business Processes Easily
Create custom fields,
objects and modules
Design workflow
processes to fit your
business
Control visibility and
access at the field
level

Leveraging Sugar as a Platform:
Bright House Networks
Bright House Networks is the nation’s 6th largest MSO
2.4 million customers in several large markets including:
California:Bakersfield
Alabama: Birmingham
Michigan: Detroit
Indiana: Indianapolis
Florida: Orlando & Tampa Bay
Bright House Networks provides
Digital Phone
High-speed data (HSD)
Video-on-Demand (VOD)
Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVOD) and the immensely popular,
Digital Video Recorders (DVR) available to them.
4

Challenges for Bright House Networks
Visibility into demand Phone
and delivery BHN
Mail
Phone
Regional
Fax
Mail
Resellers
Attachment
Fax
E-Mail
Attachment
Phone E-Mail
Mail
Customer
Fax
BHN Corporate Construction
Attachment
Phone
Mail
E-Mail
Customer
EMS/
Fax
Location
CEM
• Duplicate Opportunities Phone
Attachment
• Inflated forecasts Mail
E-Mail
• Price erosion due to reseller Fax
competition Customer
Attachment
Support
• Hard to relate opportunities
E-Mail
and to actual business won
5

Challenges for Bright House Networks
Contracts & SLA Phone
BHN
Mail
Phone
Regional
Fax
Mail
Resellers
Attachment
Fax
E-Mail
Attachment
Phone E-Mail
Mail
Customer
Fax
BHN Corporate Attachment
Construction
Phone
Mail
E-Mail
EMS/
Customer
Fax
CEM
• Inconsistent enforcement of Phone
Location
Attachment
contracts Mail
E-Mail
• Long contract cycle times Fax
Customer
• False Starts on Construction Attachment Support
• SLA violations
E-Mail
6

Challenges for Bright House Networks
Contract Compliance Phone
BHN Regional
Mail
Phone
Fax
Mail
Resellers
Attachment
Fax
E-Mail
Attachment
Phone E-Mail
Mail
Customer
Fax
BHN Corporate Attachment
Construction
Phone
Mail
E-Mail
EMS/
Customer
Fax
CEM
• Lost value on unmet purchase Phone
Location
Attachment
commitments Mail
E-Mail
• Difficult to relate transactions Fax
and costs to specific contracts Customer
Attachment
Service
E-Mail
7

Challenges for Bright House Networks
ROI
BHN Regional
Resellers
Phone
Mail
Customer
Fax
BHN Corporate Attachment
Construction
• Billing and Remittance is labor EMS/
Customer
CEM
intensive Location
• Long and error prone process
can lead to under-billing
Customer
• ROI is difficult to assess – but Service
critical given capital intensity of
business
8

Disconnected Sales & Delivery Process
Construct- Service
Sales Contracts Billing Support
ion Delivery
Customers List price Registrations Quoting Contract Compliance / Debits
Products and channels Regional Price Opportunities Contracts Customer volume Point Of Sale
Portfolio mix MPPs Samples Deal Analytics commitments Commissions
Future pricing Order Capture Approvals
Discounts
With an “over the wall” approach companies are
challenged to manage revenue and cost and
customer satisfaction as one continuum driving
many of the margin and “satisfaction” leaks
9

Needs…to Value Proposition
Traditional CRM Doesn’t solve the Problem
Delivery goal was a “Customer Information Bus”
Need for custom modules and complex workflow and integrations eliminated
many “Black Box/API” solutions (i.e. Siebel, SF.Com).
CRM as a Service Platform, not merely as a Service
The solution needed to be a platform for process expansion – not simply a
utility.
Cost, Quality, Speed
SugarCRM provides paradigm-busting value:
Higher Quality - through the Open Source movement
Faster Delivery – by virtue of architecture, platform, and community
Lower Cost
10

The Approach and Solutions
“Light House” – Orlando/Central Florida first
Process Driven Solutions
Key tactic: Creation of a X-functional core team, to dictate need and
priority based on business value and risk
Custom Module Development
Expansion of the Customer Definition
Service & Asset Management
Contracts Automation
Construction Management
Complex Integration
SOA driven integrations for:
for Remedy, Custom Systems
Mash-ups for Construction
Legacy Integrations
for Mainframe billing
11

The key? Adoption!
Identified the key agents of change , and set expectations
constantly. How? By ratcheting the expectations down slowly.
Don’t overpromise (easy to do with SugarCRM).
Multiple Brown Bag and “…change is coming!!!” sessions
Communicate as often as possible. Leveraged internal artifacts
(newsletters). This was not a skunk-works project.
Prescriptive Training
Using SugarCRM’s materials as a baseline, we customized the
training to fit the process. Deliver training & classes in a prescriptive
and focused way (and do as much as possible face-to-face)…..”you
don’t eat at the grocery store”
Continuous Knowledge Delivery
Developed an in house training program with Bright House University
to deliver training on an ongoing basis
12

Outcomes/Takeaways?
Wildly successful implementation
Tampa and others lining up to deploy
BHN is a subscriber to an Ongoing Support Service
Industry Solution is under development
What resonated with the customer?
In order of importance
Control of destiny
Feasibility of Process Vision…given technology platform
Implementation Cost
Ongoing TCO
Technology
13

Why Sugar?
Paradigm Busting Value
Shatter the COST-SPEED-QUALITY paradigm
Control of Your Own Destiny
Low risk, Web 2.0
“SugarCRM is to Enterprise Business Applications” as
“Linux was to Enterprise Operating Systems”
14

Thank you!
Questions