What other CRM systems are available besides Salesforce.com for small companies?

Well established CRM companies are listed in this white paper, http://www.focus.com/briefs/crm/how-pick-right-crm-helpdesk-bpm-vendor:

NetSuite: http://www.netsuite.com

SalesForce: http://www.SalesForce.com

EnterpriseWizard: http://www.enterprisewizard.com

SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com

Microsoft: http://crm.dynamics.com

Siebel: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/siebel/index.htm

SAP: http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/crm/index.epx

Since writing the paper, Zoho (http://www.zoho.com) has improved and should be included in your evaluation. SAP, Netsuite and Siebel tend to be expensive because they are more focussed on the needs of large businesses.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but if you follow the advice in the paper, you cannot go far wrong. First write up a description of the processes and reports that you need, then ask the potential vendors to demonstrate -your- exact process, rather than snowing you with a generic demo.

Sage offers ACT!, Sage CRM and Saleslogix. Depending upon specific business needs, budget, and existing infrastructure, each one of these offers various benefits.

Further, each offers implementation either on-premise or "in the cloud".

Hi Jonathan,

Maximizer is an excellent tool for your size company and should definitely be considered with the other CRM products mentioned above.

What matters most, however, is what you want and need to do with the CRM. Matching company needs with the right CRM tool is key to CRM success. A good CRM consultant should work with you to help you in the needs assessment/CRM selection process.

That same consultant should be able to prepare a CRM plan. Most CRM systems have lots of configurability and other options. You'll want to select those options in order of priority for a possible multi-stage implementation.

In order to realize full value from your CRM system, be prepared to spend significant money on your consultant. A consultant will help you deliver benefits to your users that will ensure high-level adoption. After all, whatever benefits the users will ultimatley benefit the company's bottom line.

WORKetc is a small business CRM specifically designed for 1-100 people. It actually combines CRM with other tools to help manage all aspects of a business, and CRM benefits a ton from this because contacts are basically the center of the program. You also have the ability to manage the entire customer lifecycle in one software.

Zoho CRM is a reasonable alternative for a smaller organization/startup. This SaaS offering is free for 1-3 users and scales in price and functionality as shown in the link here: http://www.zoho.com/crm/zohocrm-pricing.html

Understand that Salesforce.com is still the reigning champ in this space, but not every organization is ready to commit to a more comprehensive solution. I have had many positive experiences with Salesforce.com since 1999 and have been gratified by its broad market acceptance.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - It scales from 5 users upwards and is perfect for an SME as it is so closely linked to Microsoft Outlook and Office.

Is available on the Cloud worldwide and is very cost effective at something like $40 per user per month which means it can be deployed for a small amount of users.

A free 30 day trial is also available for small companies to try and it covers all aspects for Sales, Marketing and Customer Service.

Deltek Vision CRM is a great solution for professional services firms. Especially if a company would like to have a fully integrated ERP in a single database which reduces the need to have multiple user licenses, user interfaces and multiple vendors that have to make sure that products continue to integrate.

Hi All

We have been using Bantam Live for over 12 months http://www.bantamlive.com/

The company has recently been purchased by Constant Contact http://www.constantcontact.com which should strengthen this very good CRM

Best Regards

Gary

I agree fully with Steve. Implementing a CRM can be an ongoing process as you develop your sales and marketing capabilities and strive to measure the effectiveness of your people and marketing campaigns. A good CRM will be flexible and allow you to continue to add fields and develop reports long after it is implemented.

Taking a proper needs analysis as a given, I'd add SalesNexus to the list, a SaaS, ACT!-Like application containing sales and marketing functions.

Full disclosure, my company sells Microsoft Dynamics CRM http://www.intellitecsolutions.com/productsservices/microsoft_crm/microsoft_c....

That said, I will add my voice to those who said Microsoft CRM, and add in one other critical factor - price. In a true apples to apples comparison of functionality, SalesForce will cost $125 per month per user, while Microsoft CRM is $44 per month per user - even less then that for the first 12 months. Plus the integration to Outlook is much tighter.

Robert, all upgrades get expensive one way or another regardless of how they're delivered. On the other hand, you don't have to upgrade ACT! every year unless there is a must-have function in the newer version. Usually people wait until they get a new version of Office and their version of ACT! isn't compatible with it, or as is the current situation, upgrading from XP 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit requires ACT! 2009 or later.

The least expensive is FreeCRM (duh). But check out Chaos Software's two programs (Time and Chaos, and !ntellect) for desktop solutions, and Oprius and BatchBook for Cloud solutions.

Robert, usually new users are resistant for several reasons. First, this a change to their routine, as in last weekend my wife decided to make my home office more efficient and now every comment I make is taken as a complaint. (Eventually I'll get it back to the way it was.)

Second, they're reluctant to use it because it's missing something they need, or what they need is not in a comfortable location.

Third, it's being imposed on them, they don't like it even if it makes their life easier and they make more money.

ACT! is very customizable and I would suggest having an ACT! guy (like me ) review what you are doing now and what you want to do, what is the current flow of information and what information is needed by whom, what your best sales and customer service reps are doing so you can establish best practices, build a prototype and take it on a virtual road show to all of the users so we can incorporate their ideas. (Notice how I worked in the pronoun "we.")

User adoption is the major obstacle to CRM success and why 63% of CRM implementations fail.

Thank you Tom for this information. My company has gone ahead and purchased ACT by Sage web version. I'm not sure what the cost is per month per user. But my past experience of ACT is that you pay for every update which could get prety expensive.

Thank you all for your feedback. I have to live with what we have. ACT is a good product. It’s not so user friendly for 1st time users therefore it is hard to keep the new users excited about it, especially this web version. We have a sales force in all major Canadian cities from Vancouver to Halifax. We don’t interact too much between provinces in regards to having the same customers; however many of our clients within the provinces do have offices in several different sales territories. Therefore the need for a good CRM and one that everyone uses properly and efficiently is paramount.

I'd agree that Zoho is a reasonable option to Salesforce. It is free for up to 3 users (if I remember correctly), and it integrates with MailChimp, which is also free for small users.

Thank you Josh, you have a great (clear) way of making your point. I agree with you about adopting a new CRM. I can’t speak for the rest of the country because I’m the Regional Director for my Province. My gang is completely on board some more reluctant than others however I know what their reasons are and it doesn’t have to do with what’s missing, it’s more along the lines of how much more the reports are reveling. We actually have an ACT consultant company right here in Montreal. I will be getting together with them soon to go over different straggles.
My worst problem though is actually convincing the H O to adopt ACT 100%. This is where I’m running into most of my snags. The administrator doesn’t even use it as her main CRM and this creates the biggest problems. Anyway, this does not belong to you, so I won’t waist anymore of your time on it. Thank you so much for your insight. Hey! I just made a new buddy out of all this.
Rob
Max, thank you as well, I will check out those links.

Great to connect, Robert. You're right about transparency as another obstacle, but with sales reps one can usually turn their natural competitiveness into motivation. As for the administrator, she's a prospect who isn't aware she wants to buy what you have. You need to get her to open up in a conversation and listen for her real concerns, not the apparent ones, you'll have the compelling reasons you can then answer with your solution. You can tell when someone is telling you about his compelling reasons because he becomes emotional, talks in fragmented, not full, sentences, swears, and a few other kinesic clues. Your general discovery step in a sales process.

I have used on-premise CRM (like ACT, Saleslogix, Goldmine), and in the cloud Salesforce look-alikes, and hands down the best CRM I've ever worked with is Salesforce. It's great for marketers since it's easy to customize and to build reports, without any IT involvement (try that with Saleslogix - it's impossible). It also has a huge ecosystem of partners that offer complementary elements, like emailing services, survey services, HR add-ons, etc. - basically anything you could ever need. Even though Salesforce is the far-and-away leader, they haven't gotten lazy - they are constantly improving the solution by rolling out new features. And the beautiful part is that the features simply show up when you log in - you don't need to install anything, and your IT guys are completely uninvolved.