In this blog, I’m going to discuss what a CRM is, why you need one, and which one is right for you. You’re not going to find an analysis of the big commercial systems out there, because if you really want to spend that much money on something when a free alternative is out there, I have a bridge to sell you.
What is a CRM?
CRMs, or Customer Relationship Managers, are fancy address books on the surface. They handle all the day-to-day information sheet type duties that a Rolodex would have performed twenty years ago. Most of them, these days, also include all the functionality of a calendaring system, to-do lists, and even some billing/inventory control features. Most importantly, they are marketing tools. A good CRM will split your customers into one of the positions through the sales pipe. You’ll then be able to monitor the flow of a customer’s progress from initial lead, all the way through to the final sales process and even into customer support.
The power of tracking your sales cycle is unbelievable. If your data is good, you’ll be able to see which of your clients are making it easier on you, what types of customers they are, which of your sales people are making quicker, smaller sales versus which ones are taking longer, but bringing in bigger fish.
Why do I need a CRM?
We do a massive amount of custom CRM development these days. Tampa, being a huge back-office city, might have biased our experience with how badly this type of work is needed, but regardless of geography, CRM systems have become indispensable. Something as simple as call schedules (giving yourself notes and reminders to call clients back a certain time) can completely organize the way you do business. Imagine the process {Make Call -> Discuss with client -> Take Notes -> assign new status -> email marketing material -> schedule next call} all through the same interface and screen!
The beauty of an Open Source system is that your developers can integrate the rest of your business processes into one system. It might be easier to give you a few examples of things our clients have done, rather than trying to list possible concepts associated with this type of custom development.
- Many clients want their website contact forms to double as lead captures into their CRM (so they get an email and their CRM automatically has that contact stored in it and marked as a lead).
- We created a full business intelligence system for an investment banking client who wanted their sales staff to get custom aggregated news about a client and their industry, as well as finical data displayed on their call screens. This allows their sale people to sound like experts on a call to a company they’ve probably never heard of!
- Complete integration of a Content Management System and a CRM – we’ve built systems for membership-based websites, where the entire user database is actually running straight from the CRM. In other words, if a user on the website changes his or her email address, the sale department has the new email address instantly, and if they buy something on the site, the accounting software is automatically updated.
- Workflow systems can be put into place. For example, we created a system for a company that registered users for seminars on buying foreclosed homes (the registrations went straight into the CRM), then a sales person would be notified to call that registered user to make sure they were coming. Attendance was checked at the door (straight into the CRM) and then, after the session, the CRM sent personalized emails to the attendees, and then added the next round of sales calls to the sales folks’ screens.
Which CRM is right for me?
If you have a look at Wikipedia’s list of Open Source CRMs, you’ll probably just quit while you’re ahead. The 900-pound gorilla in the room is SugarCRM. It’s massively powerful, highly extendable, and very scalable. There are a number of issues with it, however. For starters, Sugar have gotten a little greedy, and have removed the their excellent reporting tools from the Open Source system, in an attempt to get you to sign up for the paid version. SugarCRM is often also a little too much for small-to-medium sized business. There are simply too many options and interfaces and features to the point where you might not actually use the thing out of intimidation. If you’re a little bigger or tech-savvy a firm, it is the only real way to go.
My personal favorite CRM system at the moment is vTiger. vTiger is based on SugarCRM (they share a lot of the same code), but it’s a little easier to handle. In fact, it’s what we’re using in the office at the moment. What’s fantastic about vTiger is its reporting (glares at Sugar) and it’s workflows. vTiger offers out-of-the-box workflow creation.
There are a number of other cool applications out there :
- CiviCRM is perfect if you’re a non-profit
- There is openCRX if you want to actually build something yourself that you plan to later sell
- Compiere is perfect if you have a Phd in Accounting
- epesiBIM is good if you are low on the features requirements, but high on the style
Basically, unless you fall into one of those two categories, I’d suggest using SugarCRM if you’re big, and vTiger if you’re small-to-medium sized.