Looking for some pointers from anyone in the know.

I need to find some software to help with organising the business – basically recording clients, scheduling work and invoicing. Ideally with some reporting functions to allow us to trace workload by month and week as well as turnover on a monthly and annual basis.

Mobile access would be pretty much essential too since we are site engineers!

Just no idea where to start looking, or what is good out there – the last time I had anything to do with such systems was well over a decade ago!

Cheers!

Google apps may be a place to start. We have zoho and insightly

http://www.salesforce.com/uk/

Not the 2 stroke Honda? 🙁

lol – no Pigface, quite happy with my 4 stroke Moto Guzzi thanks 😉

I like the idea of the simplicity of Google Apps, but could probably use something with more reporting/tracking features. I am not sure that Salesforce offers quite what I am looking for though as the package is broken down into different roles too much, and since there are only 2 of us we kinda have to do everything!

it depends on the size of your business, SME’s are covered by Business Contact Manager which works seamlessly with Outlook, or Zoho or Base CRM.

I’ve all the ones I’ve used Salesforce is the best.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM does what you want. Depends on your budget though as costs will vary from cheap web app based systems up to stuff like Microsoft. If your budget isn’t massive try looking at a few on the Google App store.

Salesforce is an interesting one. Because it’s a US based company, apparently at any point the US Government can seize all the data held within the CRM (I’m sure its more complicated than this). My company has a lot of confidential clients who don’t want their business made public so we’ve had to look at building a bespoke CRM and are currently in the process of migrating from SF.

Might be worth looking at a bespoke tool, at the end of the day its a database engine with front end screens for capturing/reporting data. I’ve used Siebel, Salesforce, SalesLogix and they’ve all been a pretty expensive propositions for the companies involved. For just the two of you, could you survive on something with less features – ie do you really need cloud?

+1 for Salesforce

It’s the industry standard, sensibly priced, stable, easy to integrate into other things and allows remote access/document management.

Not the 2 stroke Honda?

That was my first thought. I’m dissappointed now.

Use Salesforce here.

Other one thats quite nice for SMEs is http://highrisehq.com from the Basecamp/37 Signals people.

Sales Initiative magazine has a CRM feature in the January issue, looking at several CRM systems at different price points. It includes both SalesForce.com and Dynamics along with other systems. It will be out at the end of Jan if you want me to send you a copy?

Chris

Salesforce.com as above seems to be the industry std. We as a company were taken over a year ago and are gradually being migrated to sf.com from our existing crm system which is ‘pivotal’ (sorry, not sure if that’s the company or the software name) and the sales team that used pivotal and now are learning sf.com are not over positive with the experience.

I think Cloud is pretty much essential – we operate from different bases though so need to be able to collaborate over the web. Some interesting looking prospects out there, just working out which one is going to be the best fit before downloading a trial!

make sure you know exactly what you expect from the CRM, currently using MS Dynamics on our servers, i am the report writer/analyst, reporting options are huge. But and this is a big BUT, expectations are an issue. If you want anything meaningful out you have to make sure the data goes in. I would also suggest reading up on what the report tool is, Crystal/BO, SSRS, etc. Who is going to write the reports, spec them etc.

ie, think carefully about what you want to know before you start then tailor the product to answer those questions. It will never be perfect your needs will change, but try and get as much sorted before you start as you can.

quick edit “Cloud” isn’t essential, really depends on what your servers and internet connection are like, it might be the best way forward but it isn’t the only one.

As a very small company our “severs” are MS Home Servers – basically NAS drives 😉

Yep SalesForce.com here too. Works very well.

We are also small hence the Google thing. But as usual crap in gives crap out so it’s all about entering the stuff right and capturing the right data.

Have a look at SugarCRM, there’s a free “community Edition” http://www.sugarforge.com

or there’s vtiger crm. http://www.vtiger.com again there’s an open source edition.

I used to run them on a basic hosting package from Zen Internet, or you can install them on your own server.

SugarCRM

Without wanting to sound contrary, I’m currently (as in RIGHT NOW) taking data feeds into our data warehouse from both SF and Sugar and the quality of the Sugar feeds is much lower than that from SalesForce. The tables are much harder to query and the data it holds is much less useful than that from SF. Obviously this could come down to the configuration of the local system but from my point of view, SF is leagues ahead

As an ERP implementer I would recommend looking at the sort of reports that you require, spec these correctly and then look at the packages to see if they can do the job.

Too often I see systems implemented then changed because thy cant produce the necessary reports.

Jeff

SF has a VBA interface and it’s own development language for customisation. We’ve moved to it at work, not that I use it much, but might play with the VBA API.

Hmm will take another look at sales force then.

Anyone tried Sage’s offering?