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Big CRM on a Small Budget On this blog we’ve talked about a number of great tips to get truth about enzyte the most out of customer management, from the importance of managing customer relationships in a recession to adding personalized value with CRM. But what many of our posts assume, is that you’re already working with some sort of CRM suite (hopefully, Concursive). Today’s post is targeted more towards those who haven’t yet One of the biggest misconceptions about CRM suites is that you need either a big company, or big budget to make best use of customer relationship software. This is entirely not the case. InsideCRM had a post a few weeks back on Marketing on a Startup Budget, containing 101 websites to help cost effectively promote a small company. Seeing as how this article is hosted on the InsideCRM blog, I think it goes without saying that one of the obviously essential tips for marketing on a small budget is good CRM software. With a small company you might not have as many contacts or sales leads to manage but this only means it is more important than ever to properly manage each one. Keeping track of sales and marketing promotions on any budget is a consuming process, smaller budgets are just as critical to manage as large ones. Further, with the rise in popularity of open source software, there is now a plethora of affordable CRM solutions that never existed before. Through a large development community constantly contributing to the code, software can be built much more efficiently and cost-effectively. This savings is passed on to the customer, who also doesn’t have to pay a premium expensive proprietary software licenses. Open source CRM delivers the functionality of much more expensive solutions at a much lower total cost of ownership that smaller businesses can afford. Ideally, I see good CRM software as a tool to help you get and grow customers. Growing your user base is a significant task for all companies, but for a startup, or small-growing company, it’s more important than ever. Michael Harvey The Open Solutions Alliance recently celebrated its first anniversary. It's been a busy year and as a group we've seen ongoing market traction and expansion. With every year that passes, the market for open source evolves and matures. There are many market drivers (too many for me to list in a single blog post), but one of the most basic is the benefits that users of all kinds gain from open solutions. Open technology and an open philosophy combined with the cost-effectiveness and simplicity required by SMEs and the collaboration functionality to meet the needs of the enterprise user, mean that open source solutions are rapidly gaining ground at both ends of the market. Here at Concursive, our customer base has not only grown in size year over year, it's also changed radically in terms of the types of customers we deal with. One of our latest customers, which we are preparing to announce next week, is a financial services company that conducted a year-long evaluation of several key vendors in the CRM and sales lead management markets before deciding that Concursive’s ConcourseSuite 5.0 was the best solution. This reflects the market opportunity for open source, not only for the vendors, but also for business users everywhere. It's an anniversary for everyone to celebrate - here's to the next year for the OSA and for open source advocates everywhere! Michael Harvey John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, one of the sites we listed on the blog roll last week, wrote an interesting piece on customer focus during a recession. Similar to the post I wrote recently, John points out the importance of strengthening customer relationships to push through a recession. One of the key points John addresses is how to “build community around your current customers,” and this is an aspect we’ve focused on through the evolution of ConcourseSuite. Being able to not only target prospects and existing customers but also bring them closer to the company helps build stronger relationships. These relationships, in turn, lead to improved sales and opportunities to learn from your best contacts. Concursive enables businesses to reach out to customers with capabilities such as targeted messaging and surveys, but also incorporates tools to help foster tighter relationships with customers and other key groups businesses interact with every day. Lastly, I think it's worthwhile to point out that we both came to similar conclusions: the silver lining of a recession is that it makes you reevaluate your marketing and sales processes and forces you to improve your overall business practices and better connect with your customers. From Concursive’s perspective, these are core principles that should drive the use of CRM in any economic climate. Jeff In the office this week we were discussing some of our favorite websites and we decided to update our blog roll to include some of them to share them with you. I do my best to keep up with them as much as possible, but the ones we're adding now are especially relevant and very informative to the readers of this site. We think you'll find the focus of these blogs very relevant to your top priority - your customers as well as the technology aspects you utilize for business. If you enjoy and benefit from our posts and you have a little extra time, try reading a few of these other blogs too. Chances are your time is limited, but trust me: if you have a few moments to spare reading through some of these blogs regularly will definitely give you ideas on how to improve relationships with your company’s greatest assets - its customers. Michael |