Open Source & Free CRM

I’m connected to Jodie Benveniste of Parent Wellbeing via LinkedIn . I’m not exactly sure how we met (She’s in Adelaide, I’m in Melbourne) , but I think it was because she read some of my articles and liked them. And because I have kids, I read some of hers. Anyway, she sent me an email, the other day about CRM systems. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.  Basically contact systems on steroids. Although I’m not an expert, I have deployed 6 or 7 different systems, so decided to share my (slightly fleshed out) answer on free systems to a slightly wider audience.

Brendan
You’ve been blogging about freeware, webbased software on smartcompany – which is great! Just wondering whether you’ve found any decent CRM solutions?   Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Cheers, Jodie.

Hi Jodie,

I have been using Maximiser on the desktop for the last couple of years in the past, to keep a record of contacts, event attendance and newsletter mailouts. But as part of my new cloud computing push, I am evaluating new CRM solutions. And being me, I wanted to look at the free versions first.

In the Open Source space I am currently having a look at vTiger CRM . Previously I had a look at Sugar CRM (the other main player), which didn’t necessarily impress me (as it was a bit pseudo Open Source, with the yummy bits unavailable).

The Web 2.0 interface of vTiger appears to be nice as it speeds things up. It runs on my standard software configuration (LAMP Stack ) and seems to have all the bells and whistles
- Sales force automation
- Customer support & service
- Marketing automation
- Inventory management
- Activity management
- Security management
- Calendaring
- E-mail integration

It also plugs into Outlook, Microsoft Office and Thunderbird (my email client).

I have also tried FreeCRM , which is a hosted solution with the lite (bannered) version being free. Banners irritate me though.

Its hard to make recommendations on CRM though, as my experience is that every business runs in a unique manner (other than franchises), and that CRM systems tend to be configured uniquely to each business. Therefore everyone will have a different opinion on what is best and a different solution will be best for them.

For instance, I am separating the Churchill Club CRM solution out from my general Brendan Lewis solution.  I have completely different needs from the Churchill Club.

The Churchill Club’s new ( Joomla based) website will use a CRM solution integrated into it, combining a couple of free modules. On the Joomla platform I have added the Community Builder module to store information, the JEvents Module for running events, and the AcaJoom module for sending out newsletters. I have also integrated some eCommerce into the mix so the whole thing will be one, stand alone system.

Personally, I have different needs. I have a couple of thousand contacts that need to be:
- Categorised

- Available to me in all three offices
- Integrate with other bits of technology I use
- Can export all records easily if I get bored with it.

Hope this helps.

Brendan

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