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CRM has evolved over the past 5 years to a point where its use in business is almost as common as a computer itself. The acceptance grew from the understanding that no business can organize and manage the amount of information that is required to conduct business, without some sort of a computer system to help. Many businesses create "ad hoc" solutions like using Microsoft Excel and a shared network drive to store their important customer information. Some businesses still run 90% of their operations using paper and pen and often transfer their information to digital format for accounting purposes only.

No matter what their current level of technology, businesses can save significant amounts of money by automating operations and reducing the amount of manual work that must be done. Customers are beginning to understand the depth of benefits that are available to them once they install and implement a CRM/ ERP system correctly. An incorrectly installed system can have the complete opposite effect. It can reduce employee morale, decrease productivity and increase costs across the board. Due to the flexibility of the CRM systems that are available on the market, each end user system is essentially a custom system.

Setup is more important than vendor selection

How you plan, setup and implement your new system is actually more important than which vendor you select in many cases. This is due to the many problems that arise when implementation teams and independent developers do not clearly understand the specific needs of your business and your new system. In all reality, you the business owner, manager or leader are the most knowledgeable person for your organization. That is what has made your business succeed. Your developer should certainly be good at writing code but also be good at listening to your vision and asking questions until it is clear what your needs are. Only then can a clear implementation plan be designed with accuracy.

Choosing the best system for your needs

The 3 primary vendors on the market fall into 3 categories, Enterprise ERP/ CRM, Enterprise CRM, and Open Source CRM. These three categories provide different solutions for different needs. Making the best choice requires a lot of thought, planning and analysis of your business and your specific needs. Your decision should be based on a combination of three factors; the amount of custom work you will need, the amount of training assistance you will need and the total budget available to your project.

1) Evaluate your needs: CRM, ERP or BOTH The first question to ask yourself is, "What am I looking to have my system do?" If you will need sales force automation tools like marketing management, campaign management, contact management, schedule management, account management, opportunity management and quote management, you need CRM. All of these tools are included in the three solutions reviewed here. If your needs extend into managing your production cycle, such as a factory floor or inventory control, you will want the extended features of ERP.

ERP can span many forms, and is often customized from a core set of project management controls that include timers and triggers that automate production cycles. Systems can be built to provide complete organization of production lines and management can view easy to understand "single glance" screens that tell them where bottlenecks are in their factories. This information is also critical to sales teams and customer service representatives when communicating with clients about orders in production. Clear and accurate information is essential to keeping the customer informed of product deliveries, scheduled maintenance, and product upgrades.

2) Determining your customization needs

One of the best things about CRM/ERP systems is the customization and flexibility that they provide. With these systems, you can create very specific screens that walk your users through each and every process for running your company. You can require that they enter in specific information at each step, and you can set rules on how the information is handled and transferred. In the end, you can look at reports that tell you important information such as success rates for campaigns and more.

Depending on your company's needs, your personal preference and your employees' technological ability, you will almost certainly require some type of customizing on your new system in order to get it to work the way that you want it to. The more that you invest into the initial customization of the system, the less you will spend in training over time. This is overlooked many times during implementation and companies spend large amounts of money on training just to gain acceptance from their employees. An intuitive system should need almost no training, after all, who gets training for using online banking or bill pay? Why should your system be any different?

A good way to determine your customization needs is to contact each vendor specifically and get their costs to customize your system to your individual company and industry.

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