Perfect CRM. Part 2

After writing an article about the needs of "salespeople" in CRM, I began to deal more closely with this topic + to my surprise, I received many suggestions from habrakollegs to write such a system and sell it together, look at their already finished CRM-ku.

Let me remind you that my main requirements were: online + convenience + low price.

Who cares about the CRM topic in relation to small companies - my findings and thoughts on this subject.

So, what is CRM and to whom and why is it needed. In fact, CRM is needed not only in the sales department, but also in all company employees who are associated with working with clients. In large companies (telecom, banks) these are such large systems as Oracle Siebel, MS Dynamics CRM and other monsters. In such systems, in addition to automating operational work (making contacts, keeping records of negotiations, invoicing and opening cases), there are many bells and whistles such as BI, marketing campaigns or collaboration.

In small companies, salespeople and other employees working with a client most often need the following:

1. Base accounts (organizations) and contacts
2. The ability to quickly access it is better online
3. Negotiating history
4. Reminders (like, after 3 months do not forget to call the client)
5. Keeping minutes of meetings, recording calls, in short, see the entire history of relationships

There are good options under the cut:

First we used BCM (Business Contact Manager) from MS .

Advantages:

• tied to Outlook, can bind all incoming and outgoing mail to your account

Disadvantages:

• failed to use out of office
• when Outlook slows down, and it slows down often - BCM also slows down

Then I went to the SalesForce workshop and used their CRM for 30 days.

Advantages:

• unrealistically fast, for good reason among their customers there are such as Citibank and other large
• a lot of bells and whistles and the ability to write business processes

low price for 1-3 people: 5 tanks per month, but if higher, prices are completely different
online :)
very convenient client for iPhone (well, very convenient) and synchronization at the highest level

Disadvantages:

• I could not agree with her when exporting the database from Excel - I did not want to perceive the Cyrillic alphabet. Although I do not exclude that these are my glitches, but on the other hand in Zoho, it was 4-5 times faster and no mistakes
• despite the gorgeous synchronization with an iPhone - synchronization with Outlook for a two-in-one with a minus.

Then I was offered to work with qCRM (the guys read my article on Habré and wrote to me, which is nice)

Advantages:

• small functionality, almost 100% matches my requirements (there is nothing superfluous)
• really simple and convenient interface

Disadvantages:

• slows down

And finally, what I finally use (for now) is ZOHO CRM

Advantages

• FREE! (for three users, of the limitations of the demo, the most unpleasant thing is that there is no distribution of access rights between managers)
• online :)
• almost the same functionality as the famous salesforce
• It works a little slower than SF, but this is enough for comfortable work
• there are no troubles with export-import - this is important, because you need to transfer all your old base (from Excel or Outlook) to the new CRM

Disadvantages:

• there is no normal mobile interface yet, but only today the news came out on the blog that a mobile interface for ZOHO-DOCs is ready, and CRM is coming :)