[consulting] Customer Relationship Management software

[Laura Scott]

On Apr 12, 2006, at 11:14 AM, Jason Flatt wrote:

> On Wednesday 12 April 2006 10:05 am, Harry Slaughter wrote:
>>> I'm wondering what other folks are using, if anything. If you  
>>> don't use
>>> CRM, what do you use?
>>
>> I appreciate the various efforts to create ERP/CRM/IMS type  
>> modules for
>> Drupal. However, I have a need for a solution now. And I'm  
>> assuming that
>> I'm not the only consultant who has trouble juggling clients, tasks,
>> billing, etc...
>>
>> So far, nobody has mentioned how they're dealing with this problem  
>> *today*.
>
> I'm mostly using bits of paper in heaps, misplaced documents on my  
> hard drive
> and dropping the ball all over the place.
>
>> Isn't anyone using CRM software? How do you organize people/tasks?
>
> No, and in fact, I'm waiting for other people to respond so that I  
> can gleam
> wisdom myself.

A few months ago, I installed and configured CiviCRM for a client.  
That was only version 1.2 ... now I think CiviCRM is going on 1.5.  
Very fast development.

It integrates with Drupal, and has fairly robust database  
functionality. It's designed primarily for campaigns -- they call it  
a Constituent Relationship Manager -- but can be adapted.

We're still doing manual files and such, and we're really pushing it  
here, so we're looking at options, too. CiviCRM might be the  
solution. One downside is that, while it's being rapidly developed,  
it's a bit tricky to install manually. (CivicSpace includes it in its  
installer, though.) And upgrading looks to be tricky as well. The  
upside is that the developers are very active, and very responsive on  
their mailing list.

The downside is that it's still  very new, and could use some UI work  
to help streamline workflow and lower the learning curve. If I  
weren't so slammed right now, that's one area I'd be working on in  
the project, because this promises to be a very useful tool for all  
kinds of web applications.

Laura


Laura Scott
President
laura at pingv.com

pingVision, LLC
4450 Arapahoe Ave, Suite 100
Boulder, CO 80303
www.pingv.com
303.415.2559