Save Marketing/IT money with an Open Source CRM solution.
Times are tough, and companies are having to find ways to cut expenses. The question is where to cut, and do so in such a way that you not only don’t stunt potential growth, but enable it. For small to medium sized companies needing to streamline marketing and sales, and improve the quality of customer engagement and retention, a CRM system can be very effective tool. The problem is that they tend to require a substantial investment, which is the opposite of what many companies are wanting to do with their financial resources right now. But, instead of postponing the idea until business improves, consider implementing an open source solution.
If you are not familiar with what that is, here’s a definition from Wikipedia:
“Open source software (OSS) is defined as computer software for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified forms. It is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner.”
Right, I know, I’ve heard the objections, too – OSS has a reputation of being unreliable, it can require IT time to tweak it to suit your specific needs, and to provide feedback and contribute code. But the Open Source industry and network has really matured, and these notions are not as true today. Plus, there are a lot of good open source solutions out there. Click here a list of open source CRM programs, provided by Wikipedia.
I have first-hand experience with implementing an open source CRM solution, and found it to be an excellent choice. A company I have worked for as Marketing Director needed a CRM solution, but didn’t have the money to buy into an conventional solution. So IT and I started digging into open source options.
We settled on Sugar CRM. When we started trying it out in late 2004, it was a brand new, and somewhat immature solution, lacking a number of features we really wanted. But, it had enough capability for us to justify the work to install it and train everyone on it. It proved it’s effectiveness right away, allowing us to streamline and automate several marketing and sales processes, and increase the quality of leads that ended up in the hands of the sales people. It also enabled far better management of relationships with new and existing customers – across the company.
Somewhat surprisingly, it turned out to be an even better solution than we thought. The open source model must have worked well, because they rapidly churned out updates – and not an annoying string of minor tweaks and bug fixes. We found most of the updates to include at least reasonable feature enhancements, and in several instances, significant improvements. Equally surprising, the releases were remarkably stable.
They now offer more robust solutions for sale, but there is still the free, basic open source application, called Community Edition that can be downloaded and installed on your server right now. By the way, I say “basic” loosely here, because today’s Sugar CRM Community Edition is actually a feature-rich app. All the features that we had wished for when we first started using the program – and many more besides – are now in the free Community Edition. I highly recommend it for small and medium-sized companies that want to save money on software for marketing.
I still wonder what the motivation is to improve an open source product. I trust greed and capitalism to give me the best product at the best price.
While the economy is down and programmers with nothing else to do may work on and improve an open source program, will they continue that when things are busy? Will they care as much when they have had a full day of real work, and then have to sit down to support something for free?
Where is the profit? What is the gain?
Thanks for your comment. Good question – I’ve often thought about that myself. I understand that the IT users of open source programs generally understand that they are taking a risk by using code that is essentially constantly in development, and that “payment” comes in the form of reporting and contributing to bug fixes and enhancements. In this case, Sugar seems to be using the open source approach to enter an already crowded market (CRM), which they have done successfully, so far. They also launched in between these two latest recessions in 2004, which was a more prosperous time than today, so the model appears to work in good economic conditions. Regarding profitability, it appears that they rely on providing an enhanced version for a license fee. It seems that would prove even more difficult in a significantly weakened economy, where fewer might buy the upgraded version. But BtoB magazine indicates these companies benefit the most in a recession: ‘Open Source’ vendors push advantage’, pointing out that open source companies prospered in the last recession. It seems that the free open source program is the hook. When people like the open source version, the attractions of the upgrades are worth the extra expense – and even then, it’s still cheaper than most conventionally produced programs.