CRM

Sales and Marketing is a key function for any business. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools developed out of Contact Managers in hardcopy form and software into Customer Management solutions for the entire enterprise, tying together all aspects of customer interface, sales, marketing, customer support, inventory and accounts.

With CRM software management can can track marketing efforts, sales activity and results, as well and your ongoing customer contact to manage your businesses most valuable asset, its customers, all in one complete package. 

CRM was developed primarily for large enterprises using software by Seibel, Salesforce and Oracle but these tools have now scaled down to become useful products for small business, allowing the business owner to have the information on hand to make informed decisions on where to allocate the company's valuable resources, identify problem early for resolution and perhaps highlight burgeoning new areas of business that had previously gone unnoticed.

We have used several different CRM in our time, including custom in-house developed software as well as fully featured OpenSource products like SugarCRM. You can download and install SugarCRM on your computer network for free or buy per-user licenses to have it hosted by SugarCRM themselves with some additional services and ongoing support. Visit the site for free demostration and trials.

As well as being a fan of OpenSource software we are also a fan of hosted solutions. Zoho, who we've mentioned before, is a leader in Cloud Computing Services and competitor/partner with Google has its own ZohoCRM. As a Cloud solution out of the box all users have access from their internet connection, whether they are working from the office or a home office.

Zoho offers a free online CRM solution that you'll be able to start using in minutes - free for the first 3 users. Its basic functionality is pretty powerful out of the box and suitable for a lot of small business though they charge for some add-ons which have some much needed extra functionality, such as integrating email - so you can see the emails sent/received by a customer within the CRM. The good news is that the costs are low, The most expensive option is $25/user/month (from the 4th user) with add-ons from $3-$5/user/month.

As we've a penchant for discovery we are branching out from our trusted SugarCRM and trialing ZohoCRM for Fix Information Technology alongside a separate technical helpdesk and project management product. If we have any useful insights about the product, including on how well the products integrate and how it compares to other solutions, we'll post them on the site later.

There are a wide range of software in this sector with a wide variety of pricing and features so we recommend you have a look at the suggestions above and branch out to the wider market to see what is best for your business.