January 13th, 2010
I always try to take the time to review then evaluate CRM products. I like to see what vendors are doing, what they think is needed out in real world. One such product I’ve recently tried is OpenCRX http://www.opencrx.org/ . I t look like a nice product for small to smaller mid-sized businesses. I have a lot to learn my here are my first reactions.
More difficult to install then a straight Java based application. Especially when compared to a bunch of other open source java applications that install easily.
It requires a [...]
Continue reading Open Source CRM Product – OpenCRX
September 27th, 2009
One of the more frequent questions from marketers I hear is “what (or how) attributes (data fields) can we do segmentation on for our campaigns”. The answer is usually more or less this; almost all data in your CRM system can be available for use in the key process in many CRM software systems. Let’s take a look at the data for segmentation. Some of the data is straight forward and relatively easy to understand and acquire, but other data may take some deep thought and effort to produce.
Major Attribute Categories
In most CRM systems, they will [...]
Continue reading Segmentation Thoughts
September 9th, 2009
Subscription marketing is a bit different then marketing a non re-occurring product or service and you CRM system needs to be capable of handling these extra needs. While most CRM system can handle subscription products or service it will take some additional work to make things really hum. Let’s take a look at what can make a CRM system handle subscription marketing.
Subscription products and services and their needs
If you sell a subscription product you have several things going on that a non-subscription product does not have. [ We will use products in this article, but the [...]
Continue reading CRM Systems and Subscription Product Marketing
September 1st, 2009
While I get to listen and talk to a number of business people about their CRM implementations, I decided to conduct some informal polls. I like to keep them very short, just a few questions so that folks will answer them without taking up their entire afternoon. This poll had two questions and was offered to LinkedIn users during the month of August 2009. We had just under 25 responses to date. I’ll place the link on more places to get a wider response and report back.
Question # 1 How successful would you rate [...]
Continue reading CRM User Poll # 1
August 19th, 2009
When one looks at lists of CRM software they can be totally different depending on who and why the list was created. Not all CRM software covers the same or similar areas within the business community. Plus they are sub-divided in different ways. How is one to use these lists effectively without miscues?
Most people are using software lists to find possible products that can be reviewed and then finally purchased to accommodate their particular business need. The mistakes of using the wrong list or category might mean that you are not getting the chance to evaluate [...]
Continue reading CRM Software – How many categories?
August 14th, 2009
Successful CRM implementations naturally are the goal for everyone that starts out with a great idea of CRM for their business. However many times it fails short of truly successful or worse it becomes an utter failure. Given that there is some attention to the project and of course, a reasonable about of time and budget it should not be less then successful. Why do implementations become less than successful and what do you do about it? Fortunately, a lot, but it is hard and detailed work.
This is a first of a series of articles [...]
Continue reading The Roadmap to Successful CRM
August 11th, 2009
I was reading some on-line journals the other day and noticed a question from a user “Who get more value from my CRM system, me or my consultant“. My first reaction was that this guy is a real jerk… what a stupid question to ask. Then I thought more about it and realized that like many CRM system implementers they haven’t taken the time to measure success or even set the criteria for success. So they can’t make a value judgment at all.
We all make value judgments all the time
In general people like to be [...]
Continue reading Who gets more value with a CRM Implementation?
