Has anyone tried Maximizer's CRM 11 Entrepreneur & Team Edition?

Catherine: first off, let me say that I have been a Maximizer Business Partner since 1994. Back in the early days of Contact Management, I was also an ACT! Certified Consultant (I quit as an ACC after Symantec came out with a totally non-functional version, ACT! 3) and a GoldMine Certified Trainer (cut my ties with GM in 2000 - the product was too complex: 20% of our revenues and, as we offer free reviews of topics covered in our training sessions, 80% of our non-revenue generating user support!).

The problem with software today is that it is very powerful ... and that means very complex! Your best bet is to find someone who understands Maximizer thoroughly and can help you set it up for your business. If there is a Maximizer Business partner in your area, you can request that Maximizer give you the contact information for one. If there isn’t one, Maximizer software can help you ... or you can turn to someone like me, who offers virtual installation, tech support and training!

As a small-business person myself, I realized long ago that I can’t do everything. As an example, I created our web site years ago using Front Page. I have updated it a number of times over the years but realized recently that, if I want the web site to do what I want it to do going forward, I did not have the skill set to be able to do redo it ... not to mention the time required! Take a look at our website and you’ll see what I mean: www.e-reporting.ca is the URL.

So I turned to a member of my BNI chapter (as an aside, if you haven’t taken a look at Business Networking International as a source of referrals, check some chapters out in your area!) and signed a contract this summer to redo our web site.

Same thing when it comes to work around the house. I’m a klutz, a lousy painter ... and an even worse plumber. Better to make some bucks and hire a pro than to waste my time on it...

Why do I mention our website and my lack of construction skills? Because we cannot know everything! Better to find someone who has proven experience with a product who is able to help you get it up and running than to spend days trying to figure it out ... .and then doing it wrong!

As to Randy’s suggestion of SalesForce, the major problems with SF, besides the exploding windows, are:

1. The cost
2. They nickel and dime you to death for options & extras
3. The last time we converted a client from SalesForce, the fact that you cannot get your data in a standard database format like SQL: you get it in CSV files. Cost our client nearly 3K to convert the SF data (from a company they bought) into Maximizer!

SF.com’s Contact Manager Edition is so limited that it is essentially useless, unless the only thing you want to do is share calendars ... and there are free ways to do that!

So that means a minimum of SF’s Group Edition at $25 per user per month. If you have three users and use it for three years, that’s $ 2,700. Maximizer CRM 11 Entrepreneur Edition is $199 per user and, unless you have a complex business or need more than 5 users, it shouldn’t cost you more than a thousand dollars to get it installed, data imported, and to learn the basics of the program. At the end of three years (the usual life-span of most business apps before an upgrade is required), you will have spent less than half the money that SF will cost you.

Hope this helps you make an informed decision!

John

I have tried implementing this software, specifically the Entrepreneur edition, for one client. It is working for them, but not without it's challenges.
I suspect Salesforce would be a better bet, unless you are looking for significant report creation options.
Another online subscription model is DataSyncSuite.com, using SugarCRM and either Zimbra or Exchange integration. It is also tightly integrated with Quickbooks, not that I would ever go out of my way to promote Quickbooks!

Hi Catherine,

Considering
- IT support
- Infrastructure - Hardware Requirements
- Hosted solution
for Maximizer.

IT Support Requirements
With its sweet spot in small to medium size businesses, Maximizer has done a great job of making a product that is easy to install, has extensive, out-of-the-box functionality and is simpler to learn than many other CRM solutions.

For installations of one to three users in a peer-to-peer network without web access, a tech savvy friend or business associate can probably help.

Once you get into a server environment with larger numbers of users, and, especially if you want to enable web and mobile access, it's probably time to engage either a strong, IT savvy resource (they'll be learning Maximizer on your nickle) or a Maximizer business partner. Business partners will take the time to understand your business and help you to configure and utilize Maximizer to provide the most value and usefulness to you.

Infrastructure - Hardware Requirements
You can view or download the system requirements for all current Maximizer editions from this link:
http://mktgadmin.maximizer.com/crm11datasheets/SystemRequirements_MedRes.pdf
The setup and configuration requirements for a server environment can be somewhat complex, depending on the Maximizer services your expect to use. That's where you will need IT skills and/or a Maximizer business partner.

Hosted Maximizer Solution
As Certified Maximizer Business Partner and CRM consultant, we host Maximizer for some of our clients. All of the setup and infrastructure is handled for you and you can access your system either from a remote desktop, the web or from your Blackberry or other mobile communications device. This eliminates all of your internal infrastructure issues and give you anywhere, anytime access for all of your users.
You get all the simplicity of a hosted solution (like salesforce . com) and, at the same time, you get all of the power and functionality of Maximizer for a single price without all the nickle and dime add-ons. If you would like more information on a Maximizer hosted option, you could call in the U.S. at 952-955-7853.

Good luck with your project. Call if we can help in any way.

This also may be of interest,
A new social media interface module has just become available in Maximizer. It's a powerful addition to the already great functionality of the product.

Hi Catherine,

To be clear from the start - I work for Maximizer in EMEA.

Maximizer has been creating simple and affordable CRM for nearly 25 years and the Entrepreneur edition has been a popular choice for start-ups across the globe for many years. The new Version 11 Entrepreneur edition (released just 2 months ago) can be downloaded for the price of an iPod - and its quite straightforward to learn, use and maintain.

If you want to contact Maximizer direct we can arrange either a free trial or put you in contact a trusted local Maximizer Business Partner. There are plenty of real world case studies, customer success stories and free information/support that is accessible from our website www.max.co.uk. Alternatively, if you would you in the UK or EMA region and prefer to talk to one of our trained and experience team call +44 (0) 845 555 99 55 and they will be able to assist and guide you in your choice.

Good luck and look forward to hearing from you.

Maximizer is great but it's probably far too sophisticated for your needs. As John says, it's affordable, especially compared with SFDC. Lots of people are using SFDC but they are paying a lot and using very little.

Also with Maximizer and some other solutions, you will find it's cheap but there is a training burden which will probably fall on you in the early days, if you need to train other people to use it. It's not because it's terribly difficult but they are cheap and very sophisticated software which means there's a lot you can do, and everyone needs to use it in the same way, for the reporting to make sense etc.

With this choice, it depends a great deal on what you need to do. If you're handling a few 100 contacts, for one-to-one sales management, that's a very different thing from mass marketing to 10s of 1000s of contacts or running a telesales operation. How many products you have, whehter you have a low frequency, high cost product or vice versa. How you sell - by web/phone etc.

We review CRMs all the time, we've demo'd over 100 (and not just CRM but marketing automation, email marketing etc. too). We do a special report - matching your needs to the software for £1299 but if you'd like to be a guinea pig for one of our products in development, we can get you to fill in a questionnaire and recommend software, for £199 if you give us some short feedback afterwards on our product. If that's of interest, drop me a note: kate.mayfield at mayfieldsolutions.co.uk. We need a few more guinea pigs before we launch !

Good luck either way. Kate

I don't encounter Maximzer often, so I cannot comment intelligently about it.