Lead Tracking / CRM /

[Terry Royce]

I've been looking for a good CRM / lead tracker system.

Ive been looking at salesforce.com and saw someone recommended karmacrm

What experience do folks on here have with any CRm Tracking systems.

I would prefer something Cloud based if possible.

[Brad B.]

If you are evaluating CRMs, there are a few things you want to keep in mind. The biggest thing is to have an idea of your long(er) term goals. There are many CRMs out there and not all do the same things in the same ways. You want to make sure you "rightsize" it to meet your situation, not where you are right now, but where you want to be in 12 - 36 months. Moving from one CRM that you've been using and have a lot of time invested in to a new system with more bells and whistles can be a major undertaking. It's generally easier to start a bit bigger than what you need and then grow into it.

Next you need to figure out exactly what you want to do with the CRM. The purpose of this technology, as with any business technology, is to solve a problem. What problem are you trying to solve? What does your ideal solution look like? These seem like basic questions but you would be surprised how many people get a CRM solution without a clear analysis of what it is designed to solve.

At the most basic level, do you need a contact manager and little more? If so, are there better products to manage your lists? Do you have a lot of contacts numbering in the hundreds or even thousands? Do you have a well defined process set up that you need to track normal sales-cycle milestones? Are you looking to generate reports and analytics that will provide actionable business intelligence? Are you looking to tie your sales data into operational data and then ultimately into your accounting systems?

The above are questions you need to ponder and gauge where your needs lay. This will help you fit into a proper product.

At the simplest, you may need nothing more than the address book in Outlook. As you move up, you may need to track custom information in either an excel spreadsheet or access database. If you need to make the jump, there are many solution available in lower level CRMs. If you have the resources to host it yourself or know someone who can, I am partial to openCRX. On the same vein, if you have a business model that is more services oriented or based on per-job egroupware has some very good features. If you are looking for some basic web-based pure contact managers that allow rudimentary sales process tracking and reporting, I recommend a product named pipeline deals. You can also make the jump into something along the lines of SugarCRM or Salesforce.com. If your needs extend further than that, there are products available that allow much tighter integrations such as Oracle and the like.

All of these are good products and range from free to I-could-buy-a-few-properties-with-that-money expensive. It really depends on where you are, what your business needs, and what you are looking to get out of the solution.

Hope that helped a little.