simPRO CRM ROUND UP (Part1)

There comes a time in every business when you can’t just sit around patiently waiting for business to knock on our door and you have to go out and get more business in through the door. Be it for growth or that you are hungry for more, when you want to go out and get more business, nothing can help you more than a well functioning CRM system.

In this blog post we do a round up of the biggest and best CRM systems available , what are some of their significant features and how they will be suitable for simPRO users based on the stage and type of business you are in.   If you have any specific questions about your requirements feel free to leave them in comments.

In this blog post we do a round up of the biggest and best CRM systems available , what are some of their significant features and how they will be suitable for simPRO users based on the stage and type of business you are in.   If you have any specific questions about your requirements feel free to leave them in comments.

Firstly, If you think you don’t need a CRM system think again and answer the following.

• Are you capitalising on all the opportunities coming your way ?
• Do you know who your top 100  / top 10 Customers are ?
• Keeping track of this list on a Monthly / Quarterly  / Yearly basis ?
• Are you keeping track of when new customers come on / drop off this list  ?
• Is every quote you create thoroughly followed up till you get a proper closure ?

If you are not sure of the answer to any of these questions , you might need a CRM System after all.

Below is a list of CRM Systems, ranging from the biggest and most powerful for the top end of town to the smaller systems for Smaller and Medium sized businesses.

Salesforce.com

This is the 800 Pound Gorilla of the CRM space. Salesforce.com is the CRM of choice of the top end of town. They are focused in a big way in increasing their Australian business.

There is almost nothing that you can’t do with salesforce.com the only restriction being price and the customisation required to get the system working to your specific needs. There are literally thousands of scenarios of having customised Salesforce for efficient quoting, business management or other lead and sales tracking purposes.  There is nothing that the system can’t do, if you have a big enough budget.  Right from Instore facial recognition of customers to all kinds of sms, email, ecommerce and order automation.

It is a very complex system and will usually need a third party integrator or consultant to implement Salesforce to the needs of the organisation.

The system is very powerful and accordingly very very expensive.  The charges are based on the number of contacts and the number of automation functionalities used it also integrates well with eCommerce and some of the biggest businesses around town new salesforce.com. Every new functionality like Sales Automation, Automatic Email responder campaigns, etc adds on a new package and the costs quickly add up.

It is not suitable unless you have a database of at least thousands of customers and are doing advanced marketing and have a full fledged sales and marketing team and are prepared invest tons of money in implementation and customization.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is a mid-range CRM focused around email marketing and automated marketing campaigns. It has very good automated marketing and has excellent functionality when it comes to email tracking Analytics and automated responsive dynamic emails.

The pricing is more manageable at a couple of hundred dollars a month. The biggest strength of infusionsoft of CRM is around its campaign builder which can also be used effectively for managing internal processes and follow ups. If 100% Automation is what you are looking for the Campaign Builder is your biggest friend.

It’s like building a Set and Forget Customer Experience flowchart

This works extremely well for a B To C business model based around lots of transactions, and slightly less so for a B2B business model would higher value projects fewer transactions and many contacts / touch points on the same project.

Infusionsoft lacks or is very limited in a good sales pipeline visibility and a projects based dashboard functionality.  It has good integration into any eCommerce applications like woo-commerce, Magento and shopping cart systems and can be integrated deeply with simPRO through SyncEzy.

OnePageCRM

This is probably the cheapest CRM on the list coming out only a few dollars per user per month it comes with a very simplified interface focused around moving people to a fixed stages pipeline.

It has a large task based focus that move people from one stage to the next has very little automation or email marketing possibilities.  One of the best features is its Pipeline View that gives you an overall picture of the deals in your sales pipeline. See screen shot below.  Is very good if you are looking for a simple CRM to manage new leads and moved into stages until they become customers.  This is especially good if all your leads move through more or less similar pipeline stages.

One PageCRM has been integrated with simPRO by SyncEzy for Contacts, so the entire contacts database between the two can be kept in sync. 

Zoho CRM

This is an up and coming CRM that is the favourite of many die hard small and medium businesses because it combines the best of many worlds. Zoho have now grown into a big company with more than 10 different products in the CRM/ ERP space.

It has some limited automation possibilities, good API and has a very good project focused pipeline visibility. Integrates very well with Gmail, PBX and other cloud based systems.

Zoho can be integrated with simPRO through SyncEzy to Sync Contacts and manage Quotes and sales Pipeline. It is ideally suited for a B2B  model to track bigger deals and projects. It is also very affordable and is the only one that comes with a fully functional and usable free version.  The Free version has some restrictions with not being able to add custom fields but it does allow you to give the system a very good test drive.

Microsoft Dynamics 

If you are heavily in the Microsoft Office 365 world for your email, office apps and outlook, then one of the most heavily integrated CRM  choices for you would be Microsoft Office Dynamics CRM.  Coming from Big old Microsoft it has very deep integration with MS exchange server so all the communication stays together by customer, is simple to use and has the BIG Company feel to it.
The CRM provides good visibility of deals, leads and wins across the enterprise but has limitations in terms of costing very high and limited API possibilities to integrate with simPRO.  For old school types, They also have an offline version of the CRM available as an installable app.  Like many other applications from Microsoft, this comes with a heavy pricetag, list price from

Dynamics 365 for 146.50 AUD per user/month  Plan 1  (which is more than 10 times the cost of Zoho @ 12 $ per user / per month)

If you are still wondering whether you need to use a CRM system, Let us know here in the comments ?
Some notable CRMs that missed an entry here but are reserved for a future post :

ACT CRM  https://www.act.com/
Pipe Drive https://www.pipedrive.com/en-gb
Fresh Desk https://www.freshsales.io  (From the makers of the very Loved Customer Support Software FreshDesk)

Capsule CRM  https://capsulecrm.com/

Do you agree or disagree with these assessments let us know in the comments ? How has your experience been with CRM’s ? Let us know here in the comments.