Find the best customer management software online

For sales and marketing departments, online customer management can be crucial across the board to achieve greater productivity, an extra gear in managing the sales process, better customer relationship management and increased roi. With the premise that the average cost is EUR 1500* per year per user for an installed and running crm can be prohibitive for a small company, considering free or open source crm solutions can be a good option from an economic perspective. In which case is it a good choice? Which open source crm solutions are really interesting? We evaluate customer relationship management software in this article.

*Average price observed on the 5 market leaders

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What is online customer management software?

Online customer management software refers to software that helps automate the sales force and the relationship with potential and current customers. The premise behind 'Open Source' is that the software must fulfil certain characteristics such as :

• The programme cannot be sold;
• The source code is accessible and can be modified;
• Applications derived from Open Source crm sources must be possible.

The pros and cons of Open Source crm software

The arguments in favour

• The software itself is free. You can download crm online directly from the community website;
• Evolutions are fast thanks to the large community of developers and if you have the technical skills it has high customisation margins;
• The user communities are very engaged on the forums and answer your questions when they have not already been dealt with, functioning a bit like classic customer support.

Arguments against

• Crm implementation, updates, maintenance and hosting at your expense. The time spent on these operations is long and the journey is full of technical pitfalls from start to finish. This time spent often costs more than a licence for a proprietary crm.
• The functionalities of open crm are high and sometimes too much for the needs of a small enterprise.
• The ergonomics of free crm often lag behind proprietary software. However, this is less and less true.

Open source crm applications

1. vtiger crm: the most popular since 2004

Vtiger crm is a BtoB oriented software created in 2004 from a Sugarcrm database. Vtiger does not bring any particular innovations compared to the competition, but it does very well what every marketing crm must: account and inbound contact management, customer support, reference product catalogue, analytical sales performance monitoring, customer loyalty and personal agenda. The functional coverage of vtiger crm is on a par with that of its competitor Salesforce crm. vtiger is primarily aimed at the business needs of small business crm.

2. Civicrm: crm for associations and non-profit organisations

Civicrm is a crm designed for the tasks of non-profit organisations. It has unique features not usually found in a traditional crm: membership management, donations, family reunification. Civicrm, therefore, does not manage customers and sales teams, but members or benefactors. It is possible to adapt Civicrm to a commercial context, but this application is not recommended because it can create bugs. Finally, Civicrm can only be used in addition to a CMS (Drupal , Joomla! or Wordpress) and not independently like any other crm. Civicrm is used by NGOs such as Amnesty International and Creative Commons.

3. Suitecrm: the new free crm is already a success

Suitecrm is described as a marketing automation software suite for customer relationship management (crm). It too was born from a Sugarcrm base and maintained by SalesAgility. It is a free and open alternative application to Salesforce. Suitecrm has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since the first version. It has been adopted by very demanding organisations such as the NHS (National Health Service) in England, which seeks to promote Open Source internally. The Suitecrm project has been awarded several times for the quality of its software. The Suitecrm community now consists of 25,000 members.

4. Zurmo: crm & gamification

Zurmo is written entirely in PHP. It succeeded on the market because it combined functions typical of simple crm software (targeting, customer data, sales automation) with more playful tools such as employee rewards. This innovation plus an ease of use from various platforms (mobile crm application) make it a tool that encourages employees to use it. Other interesting features include multi-language support and integration with Google Maps.

5. Espocrm: the easy-to-use crm

Espocrm is a crm that suits SMEs perfectly. Its highly intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate through all the functions a medium-sized company needs: marketing campaign management, account management, diary, sales process monitoring and automation, messaging, activity tracking. This tool is an option for companies that want to start with a simple tool that does not require special training but provides a consistent sales benefit. This crm is relatively young, but benefits from very favourable word-of-mouth, also thanks to the Saas mode that allows for streamlined contact management through a cloud-based crm service.

Sugarcrm is no longer Open Source

You will not find Sugarcrm in this ranking because it has not been an Open Source crm tool for several years. The company is now positioned as a direct competitor to Salesforce. That said, vtiger crm and Suitecrm have taken its place with great success.

Paid alternatives

Of course, if the free tools do not offer the desired features, one can always opt for a paid salesforce automation solution. In this case, the variety is certainly greater and it is also possible to find a cloud-based crm system. If what scares you is the financial investment, companies often offer a 30-day free trial to get familiar with the tool before investing in it.

Let's look at some popular software:

• Zoho crm
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics

From CRM to ERP, there is only one step

Many CRM tools are evolving into ERPs, and in most ERPs you can integrate a customer relationship management module. In fact, if you did not find the software you needed with the above solution, then the CRM you are looking for could be a module within an integrated ERP software. The list of ERPs offering crm - such as Panthera, Sage100cloud, Netsuite- is extensive enough to offer more choices and opportunities for your company.

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Conclusions

Open source CRMs are a good option from an economic point of view if their implementation and maintenance is easy. This depends mainly on the product and your team. The advantage of open source crm is however and above all functional because the development rate is faster than that of a proprietary crm. You can also use a specialised hosting provider that will make the crm available on its own cloud to solve any technical problems. The list of trusted open source crm is relatively small, which is why open source ERPs with a crm module should be considered in the list of available options.