Customer Relationship Management

This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to CRM Vendors and Customer relationship management software and products. Providing timely customer contact information is vital to maintaining successful business environment. Accurate information provided in an organized and thoughtful manner is the key to any business success. TELEMATION, our CRM and contact center software, was built on this foundation. The ability to modify your Customer Relationship Management software is just as important in this ever changing business environment. Our customer contact management and CRM call center software was developed initially with this concept. Our Telemation Customer Relationship Management solution and contact center software is ideally suited for call centers throughout the world.

Linux-based open source business applications are growing in number, popularity and usability. As their popularity grows, so does the threat to existing enterprise software business models.

By: Jeff Minich, IRADEON GROUP

What if Seibel, Microsoft, and SalesForce.com’s next big CRM software competitor was a freely licensed Open Source application that any business could download and use from the web? How would SAP fair if the sales battle is no longer against rival Oracle but a highly adaptive, fast growing—and free-- software application whose development is powered by hundreds of communitarian-minded software geeks. If Linux’s introduction in 1994 was a shot across the bow of Microsoft and other enterprise software companies, today’s new breed of Open Source applications built on top of Linux may be the shot that ultimately sinks their ships.

Linux-based applications have arrived. While it’s not well known outside of the hardcore developer community, the website Sourceforge.net should be a big eye-opener for anyone who thinks the status quo is to remain much longer in the software industry. Visitors to SourceForge.net can freely download over 90,000 Open Source software applications in everything from Accounting, CRM, and Enterprise Resource Planning to Desktop Anti-Virus Protection and Firewall Security. It’s a remarkable array of software which demonstrates the growing power of the Open Source community.

Open Source software is particularly increasing in popularity with Small Business users. Applications like SugarCRM(TM), which offers Customer Relationship Management features comparable to its commercial counterparts, are favorites with Small Business who want simplicity and cost savings. Since its introduction a year ago, SugarCRM has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Tech savvy users can have SugarCRM up and running on their own server in a matter of minutes. Businesses without Linux experience or their own servers can turn to Managed Application Service providers like bNitro.com, which deploys and manages Open Source applications via the web, and get SugarCRM for a flat monthly fee. bNitro’s Standard Plan provides up to 24 users with web access to SugarCRM for just $39.95 per month and a modest setup fee. At less than $2 per month per user, managed Open Source CRM offers a substantial savings over commercial on-demand CRM which often starts at $65 per month per user for basic service.

Managed Application Service Providers like bNitro.com are an essential force in driving the new wave of Open Source adoption. Managed Providers generate economies of scale, via server sharing, that drive the cost to deliver Open Source applications down to a small fraction of their commercial counterparts. “We’re not burdened with the Microsoft or Oracle taxes that companies like SalesForce.com and Seibel are. We can run our web servers and applications entirely on Open Source software and thus our hard costs are really limited to hardware and network connectivity, which is abundant and inexpensive these days” says Jeff Minich, VP of Business Development for bNitro.com. “At these price points, widespread adoption of these Open Source applications becomes inevitable in my view” says Minich. “There are millions of small businesses who, once they figure out what they can do with Open Source software and how cheaply they can do it, will want to integrate these technologies into their day-to-day operations.”