Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Hi,

You may check Zoho & Salesforce.... these are one of the goods ones.

In Zoho u find all applications related to your business activities.

Thanks!

Dear Gary

I’d like to answer your question directly-after all you asked what people are using, but I’d also like to use my experience in the field of CRM to warn you about adopting this particular approach to the subject. I’ve been involved in CRM and its associated services for over 20 years as a user, a supplier a consultant and as a developer of applications.

In all of that time I have never seen a CRM system out of about 2000 I have been involved in, deliver its goals or satisfy its users unless there is much more attention to the detail of specifying the system, establishing what you want it to do in total (Not just send out email campaigns – there are less expensive and less management intensive ways of achieving this.) 80% of CRM systems from 1997 onwards failed to deliver their assumed objectives and in almost all of those situations, the project managers and often the entire management responsible for specifying and implementing a system lost their jobs.

We would inevitably interview a prospective client to find out what they wanted to do, the scale of the system they envisaged, what their goals were and what were their likely future requirements. As a consequence, we got about a 90% satisfaction rating on systems supplied.

On the rare occasions where we supplied to a short but inadequate brief on the insistence of a client, it nearly always ended in tears – usually because there where gaping holes in their project which only become evident once the investment has been made. One client for instance wanted to use 200 licenses of Maximizer for their sales desk – no discussions other than technical compatibility and price per license took place. Only after the system was in place did I discover that the sole reason for specifying Maximizer was that using a TAPI interface you could dial telephone numbers from it! Next they wanted it to recognise incoming phone numbers – well, it’s better at that than Goldmine for instance, but without re-configuring everything (It wasn’t in the original brief) it wouldn’t do it they envisaged it. Next, would it handle their pipeline and sales forecast – well yes but not as envisaged in their as yet unseen master plan and not to my mind well at all, so the next 1000 licenses went to a competing software which did the other things well but which turned out to do the rest of their tasks badly.

If they’d spent a few hours talking things over in the first place they could have avoided a mess which must have eventually cost nearly a million in wasted projects. None of the CRM firms involved were at fault save for the fact that they accepted inadequate client instructions because the client had made their mind up on inadequate internal information.

A couple of years ago, for your application I would have recommended Maximizer based on your initial requirement and then asked you questions until we could see if it fitted with your actual requirement rather than your perceived requirement. I can’t do that at the moment because I am not sure about the current capabilities of Maximizer and its fit for your stated application, never mind what you really want to do.

When we could not agree on a way forward where both supplier and client were happy and could not resolve the differences, we would decline to accept the business because we would not willingly be party to eventual failure and disappointment – in any case we could usually get the business on the rebound at an enhanced margin (To cover sorting out the cock-ups already carried out) on the basis that we were at least honest in the first instance.

Many systems are specified on the cost per license and whether or not the system will do two or three things which appear to be important to the user at the time. All CRM systems will incur costs which make the cost-per-license irrelevant and well implemented ones will pay their way in months. Basing a purchase on two or three demanded features has never, in my experience, resulted in satisfaction.

Do feel free to discuss this further on the forum or get in contact directly– I apologise for not giving you the one line answers you sought such as “Use SFDC or use Microsoft Dynamics or use GoldMine or use ACT! or use Sage CRM ,” but it isn’t that straightforward. They’d all do what you ask and more – perhaps too much more, perhaps not enough. You really need to discuss this!

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Xspirt

You really have to do some research keeping in mind what your CRM objectives are. There are some white papers online that compare several companies. I compared the features, screens, demos, and costs of Landslide, Netsuite, Sage/ACT, and Salesforce and Salesforce won out. We bought the professional edition with 5 users for our small company, but it limits the number of emails that can be sent out at one time.
Good luck.

Dear Gary

We are not very happy with Act. We have been using it for some time and we feel that it is a little rigid for our needs.

We are looking to move to Sales force, but I recommend that you take your time and choose wisely. The investment in time to establish effective systems is a large one.

Not something you want to do to often

Good Luck

Lee Kenos