BlogKey learnings at SugarCon 2018

Every SugarCon is an event of the year for us, and this one was the best so far! So many truly exciting things at the same time. Exchanging new ideas, listening to keynotes from experienced field professionals- gurus in Sales, CRM and IT. Networking opportunities with customers and partners, new friends and direct feedback. All this is priceless especially when handled in a fun way! Our team got really busy with all of the follow-ups these weeks, and I just love it!

I’d like to share some of the key things learned.

1. While having lots of focus on disruptive technology and innovation, Sugar team is also reminding us about the importance of existing relationships and recurring customers. Quoting Larry Augustine: “Did you know it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one? Statistics tell us that you are 14 times more likely to sell to an existing customer than a new prospect.” It is natural to pursue new customers but retaining existing customers and building long-lasting relationships is invaluable as in most cases new customers will value the feedback of your existing ones.
2. I am a big fan of Sugar Hint, which searches the web for additional information on users and pulls it into SugarCRM and thus saving you a lot of manual work. New additions to Hint will deliver proactive and configurable customer alerts for signals and interesting moments, including funding, personnel changes, general company announcements and M&A activity.
3. New awesome functionality available in the latest SugarCRM release for:
   • Quotes Configuration
   • New Data Visualizations
   • Advanced Workflows

   Video overview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbJ9BxrsTLA

4. It was great to hear live feedback on highly requested IT Sapiens Analytic Reporting Tool features by customers, which extend the Sugar core functionality:
   • Common filters are often required, in order to be able to easily see results by team, region, user or a product group across several charts at the same time. With our new dashboard solution this is available along with fancy chart types like gauge, funnel, geographic charts and 3-axes chart (where you can add different scales together like count and amount of opportunities and see how they correlate together over the time).
   • It often takes a lot of effort to put reports together to be printed and look good. With IT Sapiens Analytic Reporting Tool you can get a really nice PDF report output containing several summary tables in your own preferred style using Excel for templates. Once a template is created, you can forget about it, as it can be easily scheduled regularly via e-mail as PDF or Excel, saving you a lot of time.
   • Snapshots and Historical Data – business trends over the time.
   • Calls, Meetings, Tasks and Emails available in the same report: both detailed list and summary.
   • Our customers are happy as they have a lot of power creating various reports without a need to be a programmer. With our easy to use interface you can create summaries, charts and report layouts, even add your own calculations.
5. Cooperation & networking Most of all I actually learn and get inspired by those informal talks to experienced, wise people – so many of them are all gathered together at the same place, I want to catch every minute of it! Cooperation is one of the key success factors in every business, and seeing success in helping each other brings joy to your soul. “Eventually it is all about people” SugarCRM people say,– it is something, what the worlds smartest and most successful and independent people usually say as well. No matter how smart, strong, wealthy or independent you are, it is always important to have good people around you. SugarCRM and SugarCon is is definitely the place to find them! Happy to be at the right place.