CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Ive just received this email. Our intranet uses Drupal 6 and I know I should be doing my own research but im so incredibly busy this week so I was hoping you guys could tell me if civiCRM can do all the things that she is asking, I would wait and do my own research but I feel like its important to get back to her before they go off spending 1k+ when the same thing can be done open source.

Thanks!

"Recently we had a sales and marketing meeting and it was decided that we are in need of software to track sales leads, customers, and most importantly share information. I realize that M2M has this capability; however in the past 3 years of my using it I have been unsuccessful in utilizing it to this extent. I think this is mainly due to the fact that there are so many customers in the system, several of which are obsolete. Or for example one customer may have several shippers and it is hard to track where the decision making is being done.

I have done some research, and found that ACT! software is quite popular and appears to be the most user friendly for our needs. I originally thought that the most basic level would be the best fit, however I made a call and found out that because some of us need to link up through a VPN to get to the server it would be required to get the ACT! Premium. This would cost $319 per user, and we can have up to 50 users.

My main questions to you are:

1.   What are your thoughts on the software and do you foresee it compromising anything within our current IT Operations?
2.   Does M2M have these capabilities that we just are not aware of?
3.   Would all of the people copied on this email be able to use it (for ex. I do not know if Howard Colthurst or Mark Byford have access to our server / vpn?)

To those copied on this email, please let me know if you have any suggestions (maybe you have used something in the past that worked well) or comments. One thing I would like to note is that the cost can only be justified if we utilize the software. This would mean after sales visits we would need to be sure to take the time to update the files, addresses, contacts we met, topics discussed, etc."

Ok, thanks alot! I know there is something open source I can use. Im just not sure what the best ERP or CRM software out there is, any more suggestions would help a ton.

Thanks again

Open source software is free as in free kittens, not free beer, or a free lunch: http://zenofnptech.org/2008/07/the-open-source-software-is-free-myth.html

But note the comments where people note that proprietary software with licence costs can also require tech support, training, etc.