I know it’s been a while since I originally talked about selecting a CRM system, and we haven’t “quite” finished the job, but after 4 – 5 nights, I have it narrowed down to 2 option. I’m just gonna have my partner give them both a try (I already have my favorite). So when you’re making this decision, the first thing you need to do is figure out what you’re looking for out of CRM. So to give you some ideas… here’s what i personally was looking for:
1. Contact Management – this is the big one for me. I wanted to be able to dump all of our contacts into the same place. Currently, I’ve been using an Access database, which works fine, but trying to make it “useable” enough for my partner to setup/maintain as well just isn’t gonna happen. He’s technical, but not as technical as I am. So having it be nice and easy for him to enter his contacts just makes life easier.
2. Tasks – this gives us a common place to find our to-do list for the business. While we stay in communication, it’s tougher when we both travel. If we can assign each other things to accomplish, like “email the MFG list”, or write a blog post or even enough just so he knows what I’m working on and vice versa.
3. Online – pretty straightforward. I don’t want the hassle of hosting something else myself, so we want something online.
4. Mass Email Functionality – This is an area I had to compromise on. What I’ve found is that only the more expensive solutions have this functionality integrated. If it isn’t expensive, it just uses your email account(s) to do the sending. Not the end of the world, but if you go with a “real” solution your delivery rate will be much better. I’m already using Mail Chimp, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is still a hassle to have to use 2 systems to handle this all.
5. Mobile Capability – like to be able to maintain tasks and contacts from our smartphones.
6. Price – didn’t want to pay more than $25/months (less if possible).
Now, I did a lot of online hunting, and found quite a few different packages with potential:
Capsule
Zoho
Podio (too much around Social Media)
FreeCRM (very ugly interface)KarmaCRM
Funnela (I liked this one, but too much wasn’t translated into English made it difficult to pay for)
MS Dynamics (too expensive)
salesforce.com (too expensive)
Relenta – had potential, but was more expensive than Capsule or Zoho without any additional functionality.
Right now, I’ve narrowed it down to Capsule (integrates with Mailchimp) and Zoho that does include mass mailing functionality. Personally, I like Capsule’s look and feel a little better. I like that it automatically creates an company if I assign a company to a lead. It also has an easy way to mass update users. Zoho does have a added bonus of doing the mass emails/reporting in the same system. Both of them are the same price. So let’s see what Mike likes.
I hope my digging might make your life a little easier if you find yourself in the same dilemma.
Thanks for reading.
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike