CRM investigation
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If anyone here can make a helpful suggestion about Customer Relationship Management software, thanks. I need to implement something; no clue as to what that something may turn out to be; but I know I need something now. Google and Bing took me down various paths, and honestly, I was overwhelmed at the number of choices. I wound up at a download site called CNET.COM[^] from which most of the members of this following list were obtained, by asking it to show me freeware CRM packages. The response list contained more than two hundred items. So,,,, With no knowledge of what to ask, how to evaluate, etc., I'm looking at these seven... PIPELINER[^] TOP SALES[^] EQMS Lite (Free Edition)[^] SONAR[^] BusinessTracker[^] CRM Express Free[^] TBF CRM[^] I welcome feedback from personal experience, as well as other suggestions about other freeware. My current need is to organize 110 business cards picked up at a recent trade show. The
I would recommend using the open source version of SugarCRM to start.
Eric
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If anyone here can make a helpful suggestion about Customer Relationship Management software, thanks. I need to implement something; no clue as to what that something may turn out to be; but I know I need something now. Google and Bing took me down various paths, and honestly, I was overwhelmed at the number of choices. I wound up at a download site called CNET.COM[^] from which most of the members of this following list were obtained, by asking it to show me freeware CRM packages. The response list contained more than two hundred items. So,,,, With no knowledge of what to ask, how to evaluate, etc., I'm looking at these seven... PIPELINER[^] TOP SALES[^] EQMS Lite (Free Edition)[^] SONAR[^] BusinessTracker[^] CRM Express Free[^] TBF CRM[^] I welcome feedback from personal experience, as well as other suggestions about other freeware. My current need is to organize 110 business cards picked up at a recent trade show. The
I do a lot of heavy data work with enterprise CRM systems (Sales Cloud, Oracle CRM OnDemand, etc). My particular job is getting the data in/out of these systems by writing code to synchronize with other systems or sources (external lists, legacy databases, customer-facing web apps, etc.). If I may be so bold, a couple of suggestions: First, go with a free version. I'm with the guys who suggested SugarCRM. I've never used it professionally, but I played around with it to learn how it compares with the other products I use. Second, each of your requirements fits well into a normal usage of a CRM system. However, you're going to have to translate your data into the lingo of CRM world for it to fit well. It's not hard, but it's a basic hurdle I had to get over when I started. This is all general, but it's kinda how CRM systems look at the world. For example: There are two kinds of "people" according to CRM systems: "Leads" and "Contacts". Contact is someone you have some interaction with (in your case, the business cards...so they would all be contacts), while a Lead is someone that you haven't really met, so far (say, you bought a list of people who might be interested in buying your widgets). What you are looking at is most likely a Contact record per business card, with added custom attributes for the Contact record (earlobes, initial impression), and Account/Company records that those people are associated with.
- Where/when/how did I meet these guys ? --Contact detail
- What does this company do ? --Associated Account record
- Into Which category[categories] does this company fit ? --Associated Account record
- Company size --Associated Account record
- Name, address, phone, E-Mail, website, --Contact detail
- Initial impression of the place/people/operation/etc. --Custom Contact detail
- Others we are working with who are also involved with this/these/them --Related Contact record
- History of our phone calls, E-mails, Dinners, whatever --"Activity" entry
- Whether their earlobes are attached or not --Custom Contact Detail
CRM systems are pretty flexible, once you get your brain wrapped around their world view. SugarCRM looks like a good system with all the same capabilities as the big boys, and it will probably handle all your needs without any real cost but your time and the electricit
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This might help a bit, scroll down to Features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CRM_systems[^]
Thanks, really, but I don't even know the vocabulary, so that page overwhelms me with jargon.
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If anyone here can make a helpful suggestion about Customer Relationship Management software, thanks. I need to implement something; no clue as to what that something may turn out to be; but I know I need something now. Google and Bing took me down various paths, and honestly, I was overwhelmed at the number of choices. I wound up at a download site called CNET.COM[^] from which most of the members of this following list were obtained, by asking it to show me freeware CRM packages. The response list contained more than two hundred items. So,,,, With no knowledge of what to ask, how to evaluate, etc., I'm looking at these seven... PIPELINER[^] TOP SALES[^] EQMS Lite (Free Edition)[^] SONAR[^] BusinessTracker[^] CRM Express Free[^] TBF CRM[^] I welcome feedback from personal experience, as well as other suggestions about other freeware. My current need is to organize 110 business cards picked up at a recent trade show. The
SugarCRM (Played with, never officially used). But I have 3 clients who love Act! It is a heavy windows client. (www.act.com) But it has been around forever, and it works fairly well and is mature. For me, I would rather pay for stability than deal with installation issues. I prefer thick clients over web interfaces, and I love things that export to Excel. HTH
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I would recommend using the open source version of SugarCRM to start.
Eric
Totally missed it. My search for the term SugarCRM led me to some bizarre pay'm site that I closed in five seconds (worried that I picked up yet another malware disaster). A good link will be welcome. No clue why Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the entire internet all hate me.
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I do a lot of heavy data work with enterprise CRM systems (Sales Cloud, Oracle CRM OnDemand, etc). My particular job is getting the data in/out of these systems by writing code to synchronize with other systems or sources (external lists, legacy databases, customer-facing web apps, etc.). If I may be so bold, a couple of suggestions: First, go with a free version. I'm with the guys who suggested SugarCRM. I've never used it professionally, but I played around with it to learn how it compares with the other products I use. Second, each of your requirements fits well into a normal usage of a CRM system. However, you're going to have to translate your data into the lingo of CRM world for it to fit well. It's not hard, but it's a basic hurdle I had to get over when I started. This is all general, but it's kinda how CRM systems look at the world. For example: There are two kinds of "people" according to CRM systems: "Leads" and "Contacts". Contact is someone you have some interaction with (in your case, the business cards...so they would all be contacts), while a Lead is someone that you haven't really met, so far (say, you bought a list of people who might be interested in buying your widgets). What you are looking at is most likely a Contact record per business card, with added custom attributes for the Contact record (earlobes, initial impression), and Account/Company records that those people are associated with.
- Where/when/how did I meet these guys ? --Contact detail
- What does this company do ? --Associated Account record
- Into Which category[categories] does this company fit ? --Associated Account record
- Company size --Associated Account record
- Name, address, phone, E-Mail, website, --Contact detail
- Initial impression of the place/people/operation/etc. --Custom Contact detail
- Others we are working with who are also involved with this/these/them --Related Contact record
- History of our phone calls, E-mails, Dinners, whatever --"Activity" entry
- Whether their earlobes are attached or not --Custom Contact Detail
CRM systems are pretty flexible, once you get your brain wrapped around their world view. SugarCRM looks like a good system with all the same capabilities as the big boys, and it will probably handle all your needs without any real cost but your time and the electricit
THANK YOU !!!
David Days wrote:
... you're going to have to translate your data into the lingo of CRM world ... it's a basic hurdle ...
Consider me to be the TWIT OF THE YEAR[^] at this moment. Forward to about 2:00 in that vid clip and you'll get a good depiction of where I am right now with my current CRM knowledge and the very hurdle you have described. I can't thank you enough for the elementary vocabulary lesson. Major help; ultra turbo major big help for sure. Vocabulary is half the game.
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I would recommend using the open source version of SugarCRM to start.
Eric
Is this the correct site ? http://www.sugarcrm.com[^]
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THANK YOU !!!
David Days wrote:
... you're going to have to translate your data into the lingo of CRM world ... it's a basic hurdle ...
Consider me to be the TWIT OF THE YEAR[^] at this moment. Forward to about 2:00 in that vid clip and you'll get a good depiction of where I am right now with my current CRM knowledge and the very hurdle you have described. I can't thank you enough for the elementary vocabulary lesson. Major help; ultra turbo major big help for sure. Vocabulary is half the game.
Glad to help--just talking from (painful) experience. Other vocabulary mappings (you can use or avoid as you see fit): "Opportunity": That's a sales opportunity in CRM-speak. Basically, you can use this record to store anything that would be loosely described as a sales process. For example, a sales process :-D, or a contract with someone, or a project, or an application for something. "Activity": Something that happened. Activity records are the go-to for "doesn't exactly fit but is associated with other type(s)". Generally, activity records are treated differently based on their individual types: appointments, meetings, phone calls, complaints, etc. CRM coding takes care of how it's presented (based on type). "Work flow" (or equivalent): CRM systems use a variety of backend magic to allow users to set up internal event-based changes to data. If you think of them as basically database triggers with extra bells and whistles, you're on the right track (some actually are DB triggers). So when someone adds a record, checks a box, etc. you can set up a bunch of crazy stuff to happen (change values, change Oppty sales stage, send an email, etc) Hopefully that'll get you started, and you'll be able to ignore stuff you don't care about and concentrate on what you want to happen. Good luck!
vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare --The answer to Minos and any question of "Why are we doing it this way?"
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SugarCRM (Played with, never officially used). But I have 3 clients who love Act! It is a heavy windows client. (www.act.com) But it has been around forever, and it works fairly well and is mature. For me, I would rather pay for stability than deal with installation issues. I prefer thick clients over web interfaces, and I love things that export to Excel. HTH
I played with SugarCRM about a year ago, because "Act!" was such a beast to manage from an IT standpoint. Random template corruption, database file access problems, database backup failures, database restore failures, and poor customer support. Management didn't want to change how they did things, so we "upgraded" to Act! web-based two months ago. Still had the random template corruption two weeks ago. I wouldn't call buying Act! "paying for stability".
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I played with SugarCRM about a year ago, because "Act!" was such a beast to manage from an IT standpoint. Random template corruption, database file access problems, database backup failures, database restore failures, and poor customer support. Management didn't want to change how they did things, so we "upgraded" to Act! web-based two months ago. Still had the random template corruption two weeks ago. I wouldn't call buying Act! "paying for stability".
Alderin, Thanks for the information, I will keep it in mind. I have never had to restore the DB other than Moving to another machine. I did have some initial configuration issues, all of which were firewall type issues. But once running, I had never had the problems you mention, but admittedly, these were 1-2 person companies. More users might mean more problems. For this OP It sounded like he is a one man shop for the time being. Finally, my experience is a few years old, admittedly. So, as always, buyer beware!
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I do a lot of heavy data work with enterprise CRM systems (Sales Cloud, Oracle CRM OnDemand, etc). My particular job is getting the data in/out of these systems by writing code to synchronize with other systems or sources (external lists, legacy databases, customer-facing web apps, etc.). If I may be so bold, a couple of suggestions: First, go with a free version. I'm with the guys who suggested SugarCRM. I've never used it professionally, but I played around with it to learn how it compares with the other products I use. Second, each of your requirements fits well into a normal usage of a CRM system. However, you're going to have to translate your data into the lingo of CRM world for it to fit well. It's not hard, but it's a basic hurdle I had to get over when I started. This is all general, but it's kinda how CRM systems look at the world. For example: There are two kinds of "people" according to CRM systems: "Leads" and "Contacts". Contact is someone you have some interaction with (in your case, the business cards...so they would all be contacts), while a Lead is someone that you haven't really met, so far (say, you bought a list of people who might be interested in buying your widgets). What you are looking at is most likely a Contact record per business card, with added custom attributes for the Contact record (earlobes, initial impression), and Account/Company records that those people are associated with.
- Where/when/how did I meet these guys ? --Contact detail
- What does this company do ? --Associated Account record
- Into Which category[categories] does this company fit ? --Associated Account record
- Company size --Associated Account record
- Name, address, phone, E-Mail, website, --Contact detail
- Initial impression of the place/people/operation/etc. --Custom Contact detail
- Others we are working with who are also involved with this/these/them --Related Contact record
- History of our phone calls, E-mails, Dinners, whatever --"Activity" entry
- Whether their earlobes are attached or not --Custom Contact Detail
CRM systems are pretty flexible, once you get your brain wrapped around their world view. SugarCRM looks like a good system with all the same capabilities as the big boys, and it will probably handle all your needs without any real cost but your time and the electricit
We've defined 4 type of "people": 1. Prospects - People in a purchased list or a business card etc. 2. Lead - When we've actually made contact with them. 3. Client - Some who with whom we are doing business. 4. Inactive - Someone we could not reach or is someone not wanting to do business with us. Depending one's business, I suppose you could expand the list. Although too much granularity would make it a bit unwieldy.