CRM Database Software ., Any Suggestions.,?

[AshokanKid]

Hello All;

One of the mainstays of any online business and building of same is going to be a client (CRM) database. I am just beginning the research, dev and implementation of business model(s) and would like to start out right with a good SW solution for customer management if anyone has any suggestions.

Are there any specific products that anyone is using or could recommend for a generic customer resource capture and manage online situation? Thanks ~!

Peace &

Be Well~!

SC

[TimW]

It depends on your purpose, and what information you need to capture. Act, for example, dealt with contact management, and thus it was difficult to schedule something on the calendar unless it was associated with a person (i.e. "go pick up dry cleaning" was hard, but "call Jane Smith about XYZ" was easy to set up).

The plus side of Act was you could capture nearly any piece of information about a customer/client/person you could imagine.

Outlook, at the other end, has some integration between the calendar, email and contacts, but I wouldn't call it great.

I use Quickbooks for my accounting and retailing software, and Intuit has a customer manager program that I only played with for a while. It appeared to integrate a reasonably good contact management software that could interface with sales orders, etc., from Quickbooks that were associated with a particular contact.

So if Jane Smith ordered 15 widget from me, it'd show up in her Contact section, so I can see what Jane has done. Quickbooks has some BASIC features of this (I can look up Jane and see her activity, and some limited contact info).

So, it depends on what your purpose, needs and information requirements are.

[AshokanKid]

Hi Tim;

Yes., I have brick and mortar clients who I support using Quickbooks and so I play around with it some myself. I am thinking that there may be something more appropriate for online business that will dovetail more easily with a web site backend AND be more scalable for automated input of info.,

I am really only just getting started with this and with my current web sites all e-mail, customer service, contact info, handling of orders and shipping, then follow-up was done by., ME., which is NOT very scalable., and so now I am looking to find and implement something on the ground floor of my new business(es) before they grow to anything less manageable by my one person staff.

My initial aim is to plan to sell / market more info based products and possibly some hard goods as well, but with a large focus towards automation and keeping myself as much OUT of the equation as possible. Something that I have NEVER done in any of my previous businesses and now see as a major hurdle in freeing myself from the daily or even weekly need of babysitting my biz.

There are many shopping cart solutions out there and by meshing those with a MySQL DB to complete the CRM circle this might just do the trick. There are obviously great products out there even if they are custom built, because Amazon, Dell and others are certainly using more than what I currently have implemented.,

Will continue the search and perhaps even call and ask some other successful online biz folks and see what they are using. ?

Best to you.,

SC

[Peter Bowen]

Sugarcrm. open source msql/php

nuff sed

[FrozenCanuck]

Peter - I was going to suggest SugarCRM as well, since a friend recommended this to me. Problem for me is that I don't know anythign about configuring it.

I have a muse idea that involves an online database that I intend to create and sell as a subscription service to specific professionals who need such a solution. I have done the research (because I am an expert in the field) and there is absolutely no such solution that exists for my target market. The global market is probably 10,000 customers and I expect my penetration to be fairly low, such as perhaps 5% at best, so I might get 500 customers and I'm thinking of charging $200 per year (so it is very easy for the customer to expense to his employer), means $100k per year possible income prior to expenses.

My feeling is that since the database is very SIMPLE but needs to be totally customized for my target market, I was going to hire some PHP MySQL developer to do this for me. I figure if I can pay ~$4k to develop the application then I breakeven after signing up 20 customers for a year subscription. But I'd test the market first.

In any event, I'm going off topic, but Peter do you know if Sugar CRM can be customized to simply track very BASIC stuff such as logging outbound calls to clients, logging details of the conversation (like web 2.0 tags) and then using the history log to compare against a list of "target top clients' to produce an automatic call list for the following week, etc? Would it be customizable such that if I wanted my DB web program to tell me when I last spoke to XYZ client and what the discussion was about, would it be able to do this easily so a total dummy could use it?

Do you know any amazing developers who work with Sugar?

[AshokanKid]

~

Hi Peter;

Thanks for the recommendation for SugarCRM., I'm doing a Demo DL for research testing and checking it out now.,

By the way, I also went to your own site some time ago by way of one of your other posts that I read., looks good & I even DLed your SW, tools and demo, e-course, etc. to play with.

My "problem" is that I am one of those one man consulting operations who does EVERYTHING myself from ads to billing to servicing clients and so the only real outsourcing (hiring of outsiders) would be if I wanted to book myself for more hours., which I am looking to get away from~! :-)

SInce I am the only "brains" in this particular operation I am afraid that any "system" is only going to go so far and then I will be back at my brick wall again., and with automation only doing so much for me., alas.,

Which is why I am here and working to develop other income streams of a more passive nature that I can then automate correctly right from the start. Your system approach is a great product idea for the typical brick and mortar type biz., hope you are doing well with it.

Thanks again for the input. All the Best to You and Yours for a Happy Holiday Season~!

SC

~

[Peter Bowen]

SugarCRM doesn't have to be customized to do the basic stuff - it does it already. Why don't you download and install a copy or play with the demo on one of the many servers out there and see what it can do.

I like it because it's scaleable and the cost is reasonable (free is always reasonable).

I doubt that your business model is so unique that you'd have to spend thousands getting something developed - chances are good that if sugar can't do it built in then someone else has already done the development and that can be had at a reasonable price.

A friend has recently built a filemaker front end for a sugar database - that gives him a whole lot more flexibility with the raw power of the mysql database behind it. (I just said "raw power" when talking about a computer application - I'm embarrassed).

Hi SC

Thanks for your kind comments.

- I see the problem. I'd suggest reading some Dan Kennedy - he talks extensively on selling your knowledge rather than your time.

I was told that when you're selling time you have to have a great marketing system in place so that you can charge each new client a little more than the previous ones and then as they accept you drop off the lowest paying guys who are often the least profitable.

Basically you don't sell every hour at the same price.

Cheers

Pete

[travelerjjm]

Be sure to get the 5.0 version of SugarCRM. It is said to have lots of cool new features!

[ncl209]

Check out Auric Prospector. www.aurictechnology.com

On-demand and inexpensive. Plus, the set-up is super-easy since they walk you through everything, and all the customer service and training is free.

There's also a free contact-management software available at www.octopuscity.com.

Full disclosure: I work here! But only because it really is the greatest CRM... Sugar is hard if you don't know how to program it. Give us a call and ask for Nicole

[wrkgmom]

You mentioned you're looking for a CRM - customer relationship management software. But then some others mention contact management solutions...which in my mind are very different.

If you're looking for a CRM - I would highly recommend Salesforce.com or MSCRM Live, which is their competing product to SFDC that was recently launched. SFDC is very scalable and that's why I like it. Mom and Pops and Fortune 500's use it. Good Luck!

[thomas.rampart@gmail.com]

I suggest you check out Mailware's customer database (http://www.mailware.com/mailware/mailware-features/customers/customers-database/). Mailware uses CRM but also icludes a back office system and a multi channel manager.

Thomas Rampart

[adam.sn]

I'm not sure if it's been said yet (as I haven't read every post)... but check out www.Zoho.com. It's 100% free, is an incredible CRM tool and integrates with every other business tool you could ever need as well.

The best part... it's all cloud based, meaning your outsourced staff can manage it all from a web browser without any specialty software. My company uses it :)

Cheers
- Adam