What is the best CRM package for a small business that can also be used with a mobile phone?

As the market for CRM solutions grows, so does the industry and the systems themselves. In talking to small businesses all day, every day, they used to say, "That is too much for our company! We are way to small." Now the tune goes more like this, "We definitely want a CRM, just looking at which one to get!" The tools are more accessible than ever and the benefits of such software/hosted solutions have been proven. Organizing the sales funnel, transparent pipelines, lead nurturing and overall contact mgmt are in the reach of every company now. To the benefit of the small businesses, most providers are making a strong push in their system development and marketing to tailor packages specifically for small biz needs.

As the popularity and functionality of mobile devices (blackberry, iphone, palm, etc.) grows, so does the ability to have mobile versions of most popular CRM tools. The full laptop computer is becoming a thing of the past as most agile salesmen are found clicking away on their mobile devices. With this shift, full access to your pipeline, funnel or customer database is a must. I find that most of the companies I recommend for the small businesses with a CRM project, come stock with a mobile application as well.

This includes, Sugar 6, Microsoft CRM 2011, Salesforce Sales Cloud 2, Netsuite CRM + and Sage with both SageCRM and Saleslogix. For the really small businesses, companies such as Goldmine, Sage with Act, Zoho and even FreeCRM offer mobile apps as well. And these are not "Diet CRM" systems but full access applications, almost as if you were at your desk on your computer.

In terms of security, this is a common concern for most small businesses. What I typically reference is that more often than not, a company with a Saas offering with also have SAS 70 type 2 compliance, ISO 9000 certification and even HIPAA compliance if you are in the proper industry. If there were a strong chance of your database getting hacked or falling into someones hands, other than yourself, then these companies would not be in business. I am sure the data migration specialists at most CRM companies can help to get a hard copy or maybe excel spreadsheet of your database, but that is usually different with each provider.

The great thing about most systems I listed, is that they offer free trials of their product. Not just some salesmen guided demo, but up to a month of interactive, hands on use of the actual CRM. While this process is going on, it would be to your benefit to ask your contacts that the companies those very questions about security and on site database back up. What happens if YOUR servers go down? Can I have backup done on my machines? What type of compliance do you offer? If I want to switch CRM providers and go somewhere else, how hard will it be to get my database out of your hands?

The current companies are doing their best to get your business. Use this to your advantage! Ask the questions, gauge the answers, even play them against each other. Hey Microsoft, both Sugar and Salesforce offered me free data migration and mobile integration, what do you think about that?!