Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Before you buy anything, I suggest you step back and make a list of exactly what you want to do with the data. There are far too many salespeople pushing software...
The situation is kind of like...

Here's your CRM Solution - Now what was the problem?

You might check out salesforce they seem to have some reasonable solutions. You can also do a free trial.

I have been using ACT by Sage and have liked it, but am a much smaller company than that.

Mike

I agree with the comments above-you definitely need to know what you want to do with the software.
However, having said that, it does make sense to keep track of customer conversations, meetings, correspondence etc. in one place at the very least. It is far more efficient than chasing information in a variety of places such as email, hard copy files and handwritten notes from telephone conversations.
I worked for a period of time in my family printing business and we used ACT!. We have approximately 150 customers and it worked very well to bring efficiencies to account management. Especially when you have multiple people communicating with an account, it is great to have all the records in one place.
I will caution that any CRM system is only as good as the information that goes into it. It works great as long as everyone does what they are supposed to do in maintaining it. I had a very difficult time convincing salespeople of the benefits. Often salespeople do not like administration and do not see the point of participating in a CRM system. I have seen this in a few companies. I would not make any investment no matter how small until you are convinced that you have buy-in on this.

Linda Whitehead
Zuz Marketing

Hi All,

I am in agreement with most of the above :)

I would definitely steer clear of salesforce :)) The company name is perfect because they are going to try to FORCE you to buy their product :)

In fact, 80 clients is a very small number so it all depends as mentioned above what exactly you want to know about the customer interactions.

I would also like to add this thought regarding CRM.

The acronym is supposed to stand for 'CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT'. Unfortunately, in recent times, it has all too often become 'AGGRESSIVE SALES TACTICS'. (salesforce is a case in point).

In your case, Your company provides a long term service to a few elite and very valuable clients so I would imagine that you want to be very very careful about the type of communication and interaction that you make with these customers.

ACT is indeed a very nice very simple to use Contact manager and you can track all activities and conversations and make little calendar alerts and reminders to let you now about deadlines for submissions and items that you promised to do for a customers and be sure to deliver on time.

There are pleny of other nice conatct managers like this.

You could also quite easily use a simple online solution such as CEntral Desktop, Base Camp or ACE project which I am a fan of.

Nowadays, Database management has become so universal that the lines are really blurred between what is a project management tool, a contact manager or a CRM system and they all have similar multifunctions that can be adapted to your needs.

I guess the main message here from all the posters is 'You don't need to spend tons of money for this'.

A $50.00 oer month solution is more than enough for 80 customers :)

Good luck

Matthew

I would strongly recommend you to go for Salesforce.com. I have been using it for last 5 years and so far I got what I wanted. A happy customer relationship, Customized reports on Leads, Opportunities, Cases, Accounts, Budget and so on.

You should register for a free trial period.

A well-designed solution on index cards will outperform a poorly implemented best-of-breed solution every time.

Be cautious. Just because you want to implement such a system does not mean that this will fly with the senior partners.

One point raised above was that your firm has a limited number of high-value clients, and that the firm needs to be careful of aggressive sales tactics. I wholeheartedly agree (with just about everything written above, by the way). But not only will the firm is all be concerned, but individual accounts and partners can and should be concerned about how the system will change their relationship with their clients, and they can and should also be concerned about the increased administrative burden.

If this were my project, I would make sure I had a high-level support from senior executives at the company, and not just a personal desire to make things better.

We use Salesforce.com Group Editions and it is affordable for 5 seats. Gives you many of the great Salesforce features without too much expense.

Alternatively, check out the free and open source SugerCRM. It has some great CRM features, but will require some tech knowledge.

Good luck!