What is the best CRM software for small business?

Hi Jim,
I found SugarCRM - http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/download/sugar-suite.html as a great place to start. It is extremly easy to load and configure on your company's hosting site/server. There is a PRO version as well. But, most important, The Community Edition is FREE! It comes with tutorials etc. to get all of your staff up to speed. The support for this program is outstanding.

I hope it works well for you.

George

Microsoft CRM Dynamics Online and BPOS, SharePoint Online

I would agree with the consensus here that online makes most sense. I have worked with many on premise and online solutions over the years.

My personal favorite is Microsoft Dynamics CRM which is available until June 30th 2011 at a promotional price of $34/month/user. That is a good value for a product that has great depth in both sales and service and can function as a document management solution to boot. It runs from Outlook or a browser and looks just as good in either.

The customization is drag and drop and there is an army of people ready to help you with it. I've been doing CRM since it was SFA, I replaced my self-built system with Act! 1.0 in 1989 when I was selling Great Plains software. I've used GoldMine, Salesforce, Sagecrm and SalesLogix extensively and will tell you that MS CRM 2011 is, in my opinion, the easiest to customize but at the same time the most extendable which for very small businesses is critical as they all operate in unique ways.

Here's a product that my company recently released that has CRM functionality:
http://www.spiraltrac.com

You could also go with 37signals.com, with their HighRise web application.
http://highrisehq.com/

If you need a "Kitchen Sink" CRM solution, there is also SalesForce:
http://www.salesforce.com/

I personally like hosted solutions just for the simple fact of being able to access the data anywhere you have internet access.

Hi Jim,

Hosted CRM is the way to go if you do not want to invest upfront on software and hardware cost. Software licenses are costly and you need to check if the CRM provides you with mail server, not just a mail client that still needs to be connected to your ISP. And don't forget that you still need to do the maintenance of the software and hardware.

You also need to check the features that covers most of your needs. You need the software to do things efficiently and effectively. Things like finding information, setting up automated tasks, generating charts. You should be able to do it conveniently. You can search information in Borneosoft CRM using the same simple text like you search any popular search engine. We also provide automated RSVP facility for you to set up meeting or event.

And not to forget storage when you choose hosted CRM. Some might event charge for 100MB storage but we are giving it free with no time limit. Our paid edition gives 1GB storage.

I hope this helps for you to make your decision. Please check http://www.borneosoft.com

Kind Regards,
Luke Tan
luke.tan@borneosoft.com

Hi Jim,

I would start by looking at ZOHO.com - its a free CRM system (along with providing a host of other applications) and oftentimes is a great product to get you started without spending a fortune. Naturally, you can upgrade to a PRO version for a small fee, but the basic version oftentimes is more then enough depending on the size of your business.

Your other option is SalesForce.com which is great, but costs significantly more money and again, it really depends on the size and scope of your business.

Hope that helps get you in the right direction! Good Luck!

Tim McMahon
Partner
The BizCats
www.thebizcat.com
"We Review Cool Online Tech to Power Your Biz Success!"

Jim,
I have been investigating CRM for my own company and have found a solution that seems to fit our needs very well. It's called SalesFusion and incorporates CRM with email marketing, lead scoring, marketing automation, landing pages, lead nurturing, and analytics to analyze your results - all in one platform. Or, if you already use Salesforce, they can can integrate with it.

It is a SaaS product, so you would need to evaluate your comfort level with that aspect. The monthly cost is very reasonable compared to other solutions we looked at, so I would suggest that you check it out. Good luck.

Jim,

The place to "start" is within your company. So far all I know is your's is a small company. How many people will use the system? Where are they located? What are you selling? How do you sell it? Who are your customers--are you B2B or B2C? Do you have a web site? Do you want to integrate CRM with your web site? Who are the consumers of the information captured by the system? What reports do you need? How will you deliver information to the consumers?

Because the concept of CRM is not always clearly established, step back and think about how you would go about making a different kind of purchase, say a truck. What are you hauling and how far? Plumbing tools around town or molten aluminum 4 states away?

Josh

Jim - I would say hosted is a necessity... it can be very expensive to get everything in terms of servers up and running and it can be a major time investment for IT staff.

Hope this helps. Call me with questions... 866-353-8357 Ext: 2028

-Seth

CRM is essential for growing businesses, but it is important to carefully select your CRM partner. This blog article “Don’t Make a CRM Buying Mistake : 7 Points to Consider Before Selecting Your CRM Solution” has advice on selecting a CRM solution. » Commence CRM Blog
http://www.commence.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/20/dont-make-a-crm-buying-mist...

MyOfficeCRM will be in beta test for the next 6 months, this software caters to the small to medium size business and offering 180 days free of charge, but also offers Managed Hosted as well as On-Premise. As small to medium size businesses are demanding more customer centric tools, this software packs a lot of punch.

Deciding what type of solution you need should depend on where you are in your business cycle. If you don't want to manage the process and focus on your business than I would say Managed Hosted would be a good solution, if your a small business with no IT Staff then On-Demand would work well. If you are a pretty established business then On-Premise would work, specially if you have control issues and security issues.

intelecrm is designed for small businesses. It is an online CRM built on an open source model. With a flat fee, unlimited user pricing model starting at $20 / month, it is about as affordable as it can get. A good whitepaper comparing it to two other popular solutions can be read here - http://www.intelestream.net/en/whitepapers/sugarcrm-versus-salesforce-com-and...

Hi Jim
among hosted solutions, ZOHO CRM is probably one of the most effective: very competitive prices, simple to use and most of all free for a maximum of three users! You can therefore try and configure the CRM service offered and decide later if purchase or not.
On premise side, instead, my experience is on Sugar CRM community edition 6.0: it's possible to download for free simply visiting the SugarForge web marketplace.
I tried personally this software, installing on my PC with extreme satisfaction.
Try both solutions and find the most suitable for your Company business needs.

Hi Jim,

As you mentioned that you are having small company.I would suggest you to start with ZOHO CRM,It has 4 modules sales,marketing,support and inventory.The best part is it is 100% web based ,no installation required and it is very user friendly and very easy to use.the best thing is you can try the trial version up to 15 days before purchasing it.just to go www.zoho.com

For any other query please feel free to contact me at rekha@pegasyssoft.com or 040-64576070

ANT crm, is an open, customizable, flexible, and powerful and inexpensive business solution.
1. You are not limited to a cookie cutter application- our implementation team will interview your company (20+ enterprise users) and quickly develop a customized crm that matches your business specifics and needs. We will then follow up with specific video training on your customized crm & will spend time training key employees. If you are not satisfied with the end result, there will be no required payment. We’re that confident in our system!
2. We have a completely integrated full package crm including: Email, Customer relations, Project Manager, Workflows, Video emails, Graphical Reports, inner company instant messaging, etc.. There is no need for 3rd party Add ons.

3. We offer powerful tools such as: Mobile Sync, File Sync(storage, backup, and internet access to all your computer files), Outlook sync, Video Email, Powerful Workflow automation & Project Manager, Drill down Views & Graphical Reporting, An Activity log that communicates with your ANT community (your business and crm users) with a social visual appeal (facebook look and feel)- you can comment off of any activity and email those comments to anyone within your ANT crm community.

4. ANT crm can easily be integrated with businesses of 10 users or 1,000 users.
5. We offer a very low monthly fee & a month to month contract. And we don't start billing until we get through the customization phase & have your business up and running.

Check us out at: http://www.aereus.com/ant

Jim,
For any small business I would recommend starting with a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. You get much better economies of scale and you do not have to beef up your internal IT staff to support an On-Premise software deployment. Most SaaS offerings can be priced by concurrent user or individual user ensuring you can size the solution appropriately for your organization, again without having to account for the hardware and infrastructure backbone. Also, most of these offerings are subscription based so it’s easier to account for the longer term Cost of Ownership. I would recommend Microsoft CRM on-line, Oracle CRM On-Demand, and SalesForce.com as all three are powerful enough to meet any CRM requirement. A small distinction here as well; this is not "hosting". True hosting involves purchasing the software licenses directly and then paying a vendor to host the software. This is a higher cost proposition initially and when a company is still maturing from a CRM perspective, SaaS is a safe starting point potentially leading into an on-site software deployment in the future.

I do somewhat hesitate to make a product recommendation not knowing your exact needs from a business and functionality stand point but from my experience in the industry all would be in a position to address pretty much and Sales/Marketing/Service/Help Desk requirement. If you’re doing something more along the lines of investigative case management, or more extensive social service type case management it will get a bit trickier.

Also, I saw a few recommendations for Open Source tools…You might want to steer away from that route. It is not that I have an issue with Open Source technology but you have to be very careful that it is based on a “commercially supported” platform. If you make modifications to the solution based on the availability of the source code and the software then breaks down you’ll end up having to pay someone to get it fixed, that can get pricey and eat up the money you saved on the solution in the first place. Commercially supported tools, even in a SaaS environment, are configurable and you have the peace of mind that comes with the customer support that would be made available based on your monthly/yearly subscription to the service. Just my two cents not being a programmer myself.

Good Luck
Steve Ohlhoff
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?id=452662&trk=hb_tab_pro_top

Hi Jim

You can start with SugarCRM. It is one of the best open source CRMs available on this planet. According to me, if your company is not ready to invest in hardware, hosted CRM would be the best option. The only minus point is that your information would be with them so it is very important that you find the good and reliable hosting service.

One more thing with sugarCRM is, it is easy to customize and they have very good partner program so if you get any problem in future you don't need to go to the SugarCRM Inc. You will find sugarCRM partner near in your area and you can ask them to fix the issue. I would recommend SugarCRM.

Good Luck
Ashish Joshi
Vist : www.inetprocess.co.in (your expert in CRM and DMS) solution

Hi Jim,

I will advice you to start with an open source application available freely on net such as Vtiger, Sugarcrm, Zoho etc. Later on you can upgrade your system; if needed or migrate to a paid system. Data migration is possible with these systems.

For any other query please feel free to contact.

Divaker

Jim,

The first question to ask is what do you need from the CRM System. Is it sales, service, field force etc.. Diving deeper, do you need contracts, self service, Integration, Marketing, Screen Pop etc. or is this more of a contact solution. Once you have these in hand, you can then start to narrow the field.

The discussion between On-Premise and SaaS boils down to a couple of things. First, do you have the IT staff to support On-Premise. Second, if a SaaS solution, are your requirements vanilla enough or will there need to be a lot of custom work. A SaaS solution should be readily available for a trial phase of a month or two. Also, SaaS should have a backout contingency after a year.

Sugar has been mentioned a couple of times. If you are looking pretty vanilla, not a bad solution. May also want to look at Zoho.

Hi All! You are right Bhala. But there is a thing: people are now more prone to think about its price and in the same time its quality. For now, I`d like advice you to try WorkforceTrack Software. We also started with it and still using this product. And we are satisfied with it.

I have tried many CRM tools and think that it is becoming a-must tools for every business. Since our budget was caught, I decided to start using WorkforceTrack that is designed specially for small and medium companies. While testing it, I found out that it suits all of our business needs. The thing I like in this solution is its being all-in-one solution (Project Management, CRM, Accounting, etc)
http://www.workforcetrack.com

SaaS can be a good solution, but just as with on-premise software, can fail in a spectacular way.

A few prior posts have mentioned first establishing a clear, documented business requirements baseline. This is necessary for greatest results from a system no matter where it "lives".

Do not allow your decision to be swayed by 6 free months or a low initial per user cost. Remember that most businesses will stay with a chosen system for at least 3 years, and if the upfront homework is done, ideally for much longer (switching systems is expensive no matter the technology, and I am not speaking of the actual $$ outlays, the "hidden" costs of implementing and then having to move from a poorly chosen system cannot be underestimated). So what if the first 6 months are free or if the first year is just $34 per person if you get into a system which is significantly more expensive in years 2 and out? Where is the savings in that?

Also, keep in mind, one of the "assumptions" that is always made with building a case for a SaaS soluition is that the hardware for your new system is going to be hugely expensive. The fact that gets ignored: Most small businesses already own an underutilized server for other mission critical storage and application needs. If you are rolling out a CRM solution for a small business that has 2 dozen or less users, there is a high probability that the investment you have already made can be more fully leveraged by considering an on premise solution that will run on your existing infrastructure. If that describes your business, sound business practice dictates this as an important consideration. After all, why would you essentially want to pay someone else "rental" and upkeep of their equipment as part of a SaaS contract if you don't need to?

Food for thought. At the end of the day, there are many, many variables, hence the reason you are doing your due diligence up front.

@Albert Van Grondelle - the answer was short but hope people take the time to look into your advice as it makes sense for a small but growing business. (Especially if they outsource their IT to a good MSP.)

@Doug Steinschneider - great points for a small business to consider.

I am not a CRM guy so this is totally neutral and I just happen to see that Microsoft Dynamics has a comparision page (price calculator tool) up versus Oracle and salesforce com - check it out.

The reason I like MS for a small business is familiarity and standardization which makes the hiring process easier because everyone knows MS.

On the other hand, if you have 2 people in your IT department and they are very sharp, you can save a bundle of money and have more power and customization with Open Source products.

Try to use amoCRM - http://www.amoCRM.com
amoCRM is a simple, easy-to-use Sales Management System designed to save you time and money. It helps you manage leads and monitor your sales pipeline in only a few clicks.

You should check out CasePRO, it’s a CRM software specifically for the SME market place designed to offer you flexibility and peace of mind. Its simple to use but still has the ability to be easily customised to suit your ever-changing needs. Not only that but you have the choice as to whether you wish to have CasePRO installed on premises, hosted or you could opt for CasePro Web. Check out their website for more details.

http://www.advancedsoftware.co.uk

You can use ACT! CRM software. ACT! is a contact and customer relationship management software. ACT! CRM software comes in different versions in order to satisfy a variety of customers’ needs. ACT! CRM makes it easy for you to manage anything and everything related to your contacts and calendar. It serves up relevant relationship details. If you choose ACT! CRM, then it is best to use hosted ACT! CRM software. There are many benefits of ACT! hosting. With ACT! hosting service, multiple authorized users can simultaneously access ACT! CRM software and share information with each other from anyplace via the Internet. With hosting, all employees can remain fully updated about the latest event and can collaborate effectively. ACT! hosting offers fast and remote accessibility via the Internet; security, reliability, and scalability; rolling data backup; economical pricing; and full round the clock support services.
For more information, click here –
http://www.myrealdata.com/act-hosting.html

I've been using amoCRM since March. Really quick and convenient CRM system that centers around lead management. The price points are excellent... unlimited users for $99 bucks a month had me sold. And also they have an iPhone app for our on-the-road salespeople.