Ask YC: What CRM do you use?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124989

by jyu • 18 years ago

12 21 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm looking for a non-sucky, cheap CRM software/web app to manage several hundred contacts. Any suggestions?

jgrahamc• 18 years ago

At Electric Cloud we use SalesForce.com. It works.

fuct• 18 years ago

SugarCRM

igexome• 18 years ago

Genius.com -> SalesGenius product. Can use as a straight web app or even integrate with Outlook. Also - cheap!

gibsonf1• 18 years ago

streamfocus.com

huherto• 18 years ago

We use salesforce.com for one person. That way we don't have to pay anything and it is all that we need.

joshwa• 18 years ago

Highrise?

gscott• 18 years ago

OfficeZilla.com. It rocks... but I am biased!

dejb• 18 years ago

SugarCRM. The bastards removed half of the Project Management functionality in 5.0 but now they are promising to bring it back.

carpal2• 18 years ago

Salesforce.com at the moment. It is pretty awful and kind of expensive, so we're developing our own.

dshah2• 18 years ago

Is it really worth it to develop your own CRM (no matter how awful Salesforce.com might be)?

carpal2• 18 years ago

For us, yes. We spend about as much per month on Salesforce as a developer's salary. Might as well devote 2 or 3 months of developer time and come up with something that actually fits our needs.

(sorry for the late response)

nextmoveone• 18 years ago

SugarCRM is cheap, but I am not too fond of it...

dshah2• 18 years ago

We use Salesforce.com at my startup HubSpot.

Flemlord• 18 years ago

Outlook

sumrandommember• 18 years ago

Salesforce.com

christefano• 18 years ago

CiviCRM.

izak30• 18 years ago

I just tried Heap, it's pretty good, also I installed sugar on my testing machine, not as good as heap, IMO.

nickhac2• 18 years ago

We evaluated SugarCRM and i have heard at least 20+ reccomendtations to use it.

In the end we went with salesforce.com and our guys love it... The outlook integration has made it easy to bake into everyday processes (along with xobni for search etc).

That said ideally we would like to see something more holistic from CRM.

It seems most "CRM" products are really just great at sales pipeline management, and dont really cover the end to end business efficiency features we really need...

Eg Cross Channel Marketing Conversion linked into the sales pipeline management as well Project management, Timesheets, Invoicing, Profitability Reporting, Customer satisfaction surveys etc

Solving the problem of how to best acquire customers is a great problem fix, but it creates a whole new bunch of problems around making sure you actually have really happy customers that are profitable to you (which is just as important to success and may be even harder to get right)

Anyone have any reccomendations for this?

nickhac2• 18 years ago

You got me thinking so i wrote a blog post about our CRM experience.

Thanks for the inspiration YC :)

http://www.shiftedpixels.com.au/blog/2008/02/choosing-crm-fo...

jyu• 18 years ago

What you're asking for doesn't seem like a something a CRM should do. It seems more like a managerial accounting question.

First off, for every new customer, you should have built in metrics to figure out where they came from. For instance, use a different number on your direct mail pieces, use trackable order links in your e-mails and PPC campaigns.

Secondly, place a system to automatically follow up with existing customers. E-mail power user tips after 15 days, Phone call after 45 days of use to gauge satisfaction, etc. For gauging customer satisfaction, you get more useful feedback from someone on the phone than filling out a survey.

vdm• 18 years ago

Please, link these things up people.

Ask YC: What CRM do you use?

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