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This question has been closed, and points have been awarded.
What's A Good Crm?
Posted By: cureforpanes* on 12/20/2006 6:23 AM (CST) 75 Points
What is out there (CRM wise) that would be good for a small business?

I see there is a lot to chose from, but what have you tried that would be good in this situation? Also ease of use is important. Price is also a factor.

thanks

Paul

Posted by: adammjw Accepted Answer
12/20/2006 7:29 AM (CST)
Let's put the question the other way round. What do you need in CRM or expect of the solution?
What kinds of problems you want to solve it with it?
Can you estimate a ball park figure what sort of added value( cost efficiency, sales increase, etc.) you can attain with CRM-wise solutions?
How many customers do you serve? We cannot offer you any reasonable suggestions unless you support us with some more info.

Regards

Adam
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/20/2006 8:12 AM (CST)
Let's say a small customer base of 500 on up to 2000.

I hope to achieve better, more detailed customer management.

I am looking for software, not a service.
 
Posted by: adammjw Member Response
12/20/2006 8:47 AM (CST)
If you plan to go for a full-fledged CRM software I suggest you have a look at : www.salesforce.com
The best you can get on the market.
Look at the demo, register and find out for yourself if that's what you're expecting of the tool.

Rgds

Adam
 
Posted by: W.M.M.A. Accepted Answer
12/20/2006 10:08 AM (CST)
What type of a budget do you have? Would you prefer in house or online?
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/20/2006 1:20 PM (CST)
within the $200 range, online or in-house.
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/20/2006 1:28 PM (CST)
I would also like it to be able to do mass emails for offers and such.
 
Posted by: W.M.M.A. Member Response
12/20/2006 3:20 PM (CST)
I haven't heard of any for that price, that accomplishes what you are seeking.
Sorry.
 
Posted by: stevea Accepted Answer
12/20/2006 5:06 PM (CST)
Dear Paul

Your price is bonkers or you have gone insane!

With your window cleaning business and your excellent website (I looked at it, all of it, when I answered your last question) with its web-forms, I am guessing that you wish to manage both customer relationships (CRM) and prospect relationships (PRM, my invention, so you won’t find much about that particular acronym on the web yet!)

In addition you might wish to offer customer service aspects from the package in order to speedily resolve any issues arising from on-going work and perhaps an e-marketing facility so that you can send out different special offers to prospects and valuable customers.

If your web-listing and marketing initiatives drive a lot of prospects to your website, it might also be useful to have the ability to respond automatically to completed web forms and to have the software flag you should a request to quote or any other urgent email or web originated communication comes in.

Firstly, my disclaimer: Unimax Solutions is a Maximizer Business Partner and I am qualified to consult on a range of CRM packages including ACT, Goldmine, SalesLogix and half a dozen others, so don’t let my bias sway you in terms of your eventual choice.

Although we host CRM applications, you have said that you want a software package, not a service. Salesforce.com is a hosted service and whilst it has many strengths for a lot of applications, it is not one of the packages we are involved in. Personally, I tend to shy away from the ASP model (Application Service Provider) which they use, as in all cases we have been involved in, we have either inevitably hit application areas which cannot be met without extensive and expensive add-on work or found that the on-going costs rapidly overtake the up-front cost of a purchased, server based solution.

The issue of the number of records is also a bit of a red herring these days. Unless you are looking at a customer and prospect base which runs into the hundreds of thousands or millions, most commercial packages will handle the database. Where many low-cost packages do fall down is in their ability to maintain a coherent relationship with more than one contact per record, each with their own alarms, calendar, emails, notes, documents and tasks. If you are involved with commercial accounts, perhaps with many locations where your team will carry out the work, is vitally important to keep this lot together in one record. If this is the case, then I would discount ACT!, Outlook Variations and to an extent Goldmine, where there are impotent subsidiary contacts and one main one.

When looking at the package, the cost of the software is often first and foremost in a buyers mind. This is a false economy, as the cost of getting it to work how you want it to work and ensuring that your users are adequately trained is usually as much as the software. Regardless of the purchase and setup cost, a correctly specified and correctly configured system should pay for itself and then generate profits and improvements in efficiency in the way in which you are able to conduct your business.

Some systems have become renowned for having configuration and running costs which are through the roof. SalesLogix is one such package, mainly because it does very little out of the box and users tend to end up with a sizeable bill every time they discover that they need additional functionality. I feel that this is a little unfair and is probably due to a minority of greedy resellers trying to extract as much revenue from unsuspecting clients as possible.

It is also worth noting that even in the eyes of the CRM publications (www.crmguru.com is a good place to visit, but it is a vast site with as many opinions as there are subscribers and a bewildering amount of conflicting information) that most CRM implementations fail to deliver their objectives. This is in part due to vendors trying to sell their own brand of software, regardless of the client’s needs and the desire of most clients to pare down the costs of installation, configuration and training to a level where they don’t end up with something which works, is used by untrained staff who stumble through the day to day use whilst missing out on the features which would have delivered the greatest benefits had they only known about them. DIY in CRM, from the user manual is possible, but most clients have a business to run and spending six months to learn how to do what we can knock off in a few days is about as useful as getting a window cleaning technician to build a ladder!

List out what you want it to do, in order of importance. About 20 topic headings is probably about the maximum you should go for, but if you are really focussed, 5-10 might be your answer. Also consider:

How many people will use it?

Do you require remote access? This can be via the web or from a synchronised laptop if you are travelling around, visiting accounts and prospects.

Will you use it for lead handling?

Do you want it to form the basis of sales forecasting?

Is it desirable to use it to analyse sales activity?

Do you want it to store the actual work history or just the enquiries and orders?

Are you going to use it for mailings and e-mailings?

What is your office email system – will it integrate?

Will it interface seamlessly with your web applications?

On the basis of what I’ve seen of your company so far and your desire to have an in-house solution, your shortlist should include:

Maximizer Enterprise
Sage CRM
Microsoft CRM
Sugar CRM

Given your business needs I would rule out ACT! as you probably need more relational capabilities and a few contacts for the larger accounts with perhaps multiple addresses. Likewise custom patches on Outlook are out! Goldmine is probably too configuration heavy and light on the contact side, but have a look.

SalesLogix, Microsoft CRM, Pivotal, Onyx, Siebel and Oracle are all overkill

Salesforce.com is hosted. (And they don’t appear to like me!!!)

There are dozens of others, and many which are written for a specific industry, to include purchasing and billing templates. Some of these are quite good, but they rarely match reliability and configurability provided by the millions of man-hours which have gone into the software made by the names I have mentioned.

Nothing I’ve mentioned work smoothly, out of the box, without a little professional help and anyone who says that they do is telling fibs! They are all easy to learn if you have been trained, it’s just that some take a day to train on the basics (Maximizer, ACT! And some take longer!

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/20/2006 5:54 PM (CST)
Nice reply....I have been contacted by some online host with some great sounding systems at a decent monthly rate.

To answer some of your questions Steve:

How many people will use it? 1

Do you require remote access? This can be via the web or from a synchronised laptop if you are travelling around, visiting accounts and prospects. Not at this time.

Will you use it for lead handling? yes

Do you want it to form the basis of sales forecasting? I don't think so

Is it desirable to use it to analyse sales activity? yes

Do you want it to store the actual work history or just the enquiries and orders? work history is most important actually

Are you going to use it for mailings and e-mailings? yes

What is your office email system – will it integrate? aol lol
 
Posted by: darcy.moen Accepted Answer
12/21/2006 9:16 PM (CST)
Paul,

I would recommend you take a look at two opensource systems.

SugarCRM (the opensource version, NOT the commercial one) at www.sugarcrm.com.

The other is Vtiger (a fork of SugarCRM) at www.vtiger.com

My preference is for Vtiger. There are a few add ons that simply rock. Add ons such as:

- MS Outlook syncing
- You can use vtiger for email marketing
- you can keep a library of 'canned' messages ready
- there is contributed code to integrate vtiger CRM into a web site CMS as well as integrate into a kick butt e-commerce app.
- you can do some project management and order tracking with it.

I've set up a sandbox (demo) web site for a few of my drycleaning clients to have a look at this nifty little system that costs a wholloping ZERO dollars to acquire. If you wish, I'll set you up with the keys to log in and take it for a spin, no commitment, no sales pressure. Maybe you and I can hook up and talk via telephone and I'll give you a guided tour after the holidays.

There are third and fourth recommended open source systems I could also present, but they are just a little short of what you need. Lots of choice out there for no or low dollar, isn't there.

Hope this helps you.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network
 
Posted by: dennish Accepted Answer
12/21/2006 11:18 PM (CST)
There are several "open source" CRMs available which are essentially free. Googel open source CRM and you find quite a few.

Dennis
 
Posted by: stevea Member Response
12/22/2006 4:51 AM (CST)
Darcy / Paul

I’d certainly look at Sugar CRM, but open source? Just how long can you devote to setting it up? Out of the box it does nothing and unless you want to learn it from scratch, configuration involves paying for consultancy to bring it up to the level of the other’s I mentioned, but without personalisation. Paul’s got a business to run!

And then there are the ongoing bugs and fixes. They are inherent in all software packages, but with open source, you are expected to sort them out yourself by ploughing through a few thousand pages on the user forum.

Darcy, I recognise that you are more switched on than most, but how long do you think that it would take to set up Sugar Open Source to meet Paul’s requirements?

One of my clients spent 6 weeks and ended up with a very nice system which he could have had out of the package from ACT or Maximizer for $200 and half a day’s training for a single user – all boxes ticked. With hindsight, as a company owner, he estimates that with his time being worth £800 a day, the open source solution “Cost” him about £7000 and a trip to Paris to placate his girlfriend for all the late evenings spent throwing bricks at his laptop. And then the bugs manifested themselves, such as dumping all his records into his outlook calendar as repeating appointments and replicating them via MS Exchange to everyone else in his company. That alone took about a day per member of staff to sort out!

Forgive me for my bias against “Low cost” DIY solutions, but apart from when you were starting out, when was the last time you invented and then built a dry-cleaning machine?!

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/22/2006 5:50 AM (CST)
After a lot of thought and my total belief in letting a "pro" handle this, I think hiring a service would be better than in-house.

Not only do I run this business, I hope to start a information business also. That means I do not want to waste a lot of time figuring out software. I really do not want to waste any come to think of it.

I am caught up in running and operating my company and I am for sure going to hire some pros to help manage certain areas. Customer management and marketing are priority.

We will talk after the holidays Darcy
 
Posted by: twood* Member Response
12/22/2006 11:49 AM (CST)
I agree that open source is a bit of a time consuming task. Rencently, I have noticed that combination software modules that are web based are on the rise in popularity.
Appointment scheduling software, web based that maintains customer information, sends out notifications, doubles as an online database of names and extensive CRM capabilities for $29.00 a month ( $299) for a year.
Appointment-Scheduling software that doubles as CRM software and no download, upgrades etc required. I am researching with this company to introduce the concept of mutli-tasking this software.

Tammy
 
Posted by: Jo Masterson Accepted Answer
12/22/2006 1:00 PM (CST)
Hello,

If you need to manage multiple functions of your service business, things like:
- CRM
- Service/Work orders
- Detailed Customer notes
- Service History
- Maps and directions
- Scheduling
- Equipment / Inventory
You should check out some of the Service Management Software packages. Most have CRM built in and our shares data with QuickBooks. This type of solution is good for businesses that perform services because in keeps all of your data in one system. You can learn more and see a free video about this type of software at: www.High5software.com (Starts at $695)

If you use QuickBooks, also checks out their list of add on products at: http://www.marketplace.intuit.com/ Hope this helps and is not to much of a plug for our products.

Jo
High 5 Software
 
Posted by: CarolBlaha Accepted Answer
12/22/2006 8:15 PM (CST)
How about N/C?? Freecrm.com. There is alot of free features to this software and then its add on as you need.

Carol

Sell Well and Prosper tm
 
Posted by: darcy.moen Member Response
12/22/2006 9:07 PM (CST)
Steve Alker & Paul,

When was the last time I built a drycleaning machine? Hmmm....actually, I rebuilt three..including manufactured an entire new (and better) distillation unit and put humpty back together for one. I have designed equipment for the industry too. In the drycleaning business, you have to spin a wrench and innovate, but that was a different life...I've moved on.

I've wrote code (RSS Reader for Mambo 3.14) and released it to the open source community, and lots of other things since my drycleaning plant ownership days.

Steve, please do not make the assumption that I advocate Paul doing it all by himself. In some open source systems, DYI (do it yourself) is the only support offered. In Paul's case, I recommended two suitable systems. I also offered Paul a guided tour of the 'sandbox' web sites that I just happen to have set up for Demonstrations. What you may have missed, or not thought of is: the Customer Loyalty Network offers support, lessons, and advice how to integrate open source systems into business operations.

Clients may wish to retain us as 'work out buddies' for a few sessions until they get the hang of it, or retain us on an as needed basis, or retain us until goals are achieved. Not much different than selling a commercial application and support, only difference is...no application acquisition cost. A similar, but different business model than yours.

At present, I have two clients (billion dollars in sales each) using open source systems that the Customer Loyalty Network has assisted integrating into their business operations, and I have a series of mid sized and small business clients deploying the same OS apps in their businesses.

Paul, it don't matter to us what kind of golf clubs you bring to the golf club; Custom set of Pings or a set you picked up at a garage sale....we'll be more than happy to help you find your swing and get your handicap down. It'll be up to you if you want to bring us along with you on the course, leave us in the Pro Shop, or meet us in the Club House for a pint and discuss your game.

Looking forward to our conversation.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network
 
Posted by: cureforpanes* Author Response
12/23/2006 7:19 AM (CST)
I like my Guiness ice cold :)

I have been contacted by a few helpful people with some interesting systems to offer.

I do not mind if you come on here and peddle your stuff to me, this is stuff I need.

Paul
 
Posted by: carrie77 Moderator Response
1/2/2007 6:05 AM (CST)
Hello Everyone,

I am closing this question since it's more than 2 weeks old. We do this to reward the contributions of participants in a timely manner + to give increased visibility to the newer questions.

Thanks for participating!
Carrie (Production Editor)
 


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