Open Source CRM Software

by Ray Lam

Today, as a result of high competition among companies engaged in marketing and service providing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices became mandatory for all business organizations. CRM software systems are specially customized programs for better customer relationship management; they automate all company procedures like customer tacking, contacting and serving customers. At their introduction, CRM software programs are standard packages, with all wanted and unwanted CRM applications.

One of the most important benefits that has been instrumental in the growth of ‘on-demand CRM solutions’, is the cost. While more traditional forms of software will cost you on a yearly basis with costs running up to millions of dollars up front, the on demand CRM software comes with a monthly subscription charge per user.

Both open source and on-demand CRM software systems are capable of integrating multiple tasks such as multi-channel collaborative selling, customer lifecycle marketing, integrated customer service, integrated fulfillment management, sales force automation, data tracking, data migration, data integration, etc. All customer relationship management systems serve as large databases for storing and integrating all customer information such as customer name, contact method, customer taste, frequency of visit and buying capacity. Both CRM solutions help to find reliable customers and plan better services for them.

Benefits of CRM on demand software systems include low capital investment - there is no need for installing, configuring and maintaining CRM systems, affordable monthly charges and flexible plans, great mobility - you can access your data from any where at any time, trouble free data integration - the systems are maintained by experienced and skilled technicians, modularity, and most important tension free service.

In the right circumstances, on-demand CRM can certainly be the right solution for some businesses. For example, SageCRM.com can be an ideal CRM starting point for some small and mid-sized companies, enabling them to share and manage customer information across all departments. It’s often a quick and easy fit, and can go a long way in installing a “CRM culture” within a growing business. What’s more, as these businesses expand, it’s straightforward to transfer the SageCRM.com database to an in-house CRM system (and migration to on-site Sage CRM is seamless). Similarly Microsoft CRM is an on-demand (hosted) CRM solution built with the same code base as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional Edition. It has a variety of options to fit business needs, with the ability to easily migrate data as businesses evolve.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 4:25 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Posted on July 5th, 2008 by Ray Lam with

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