How One Organization Uses Sugar Mobile and the Mobile SDK
Last month at SugarCon, we had the pleasure of visiting with MacAllister Machinery’s Matt Hamilton (IT Trainer / Project Leader) and Pat Conner (Group Sales Manager). MacAllister, a longtime SugarCRM customer, is the leading Caterpillar dealership in Indiana and Michigan with 30 locations and growing. MacAllister is also one of our most forward-thinking users of the Sugar Mobile App and was an early beta tester of our Mobile SDK.
The majority of MacAllister’s sales reps are rarely in the office, and often on location at job sites. The company has always needed a mobile CRM app that was easy to use and allowed its sales reps to log their calls and customer visits on a daily basis. Many years ago, the company decided to build its own custom mobile CRM app from scratch because they didn’t see anything on the market that would fit their needs. While the app works, there are some limitations. There are long development times to make changes and it was only available for the iPad.
When SugarCRM approached MacAllister about testing its Mobile SDK, the company used it as a catalyst to change its mobile CRM strategy. They quickly found the mobile SDK allowed them to enhance the Sugar mobile app a lot easier and faster. What used to take months, now took days. As a result, MacAllister is now “all-in” on Sugar Mobile. Whenever Pat Conner gets on a sales call or talks to his sales team about a customer, the first thing they do is open the Sugar app on their phones.
Furthermore, when Pat recently interviewed a candidate for a new position, the conversation turned to mobile CRM apps (as any good interview should). Pat asked the candidate to share the app he was currently using; so they did a side-by-side comparison of apps based on Salesforce and Sugar. “Right then, I knew we made the right choice, the Sugar app was faster, it was customized, it was easier to use and just works.,” he said.
Check out the SugarCon main stage session with MacAllister for more details.
As a reminder, Sugar Mobile is available for all Sugar Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate customers. All existing installations should be upgraded to Sugar Mobile 6.0 through the phone or tablet’s native upgrade functionality.