As with all areas of enterprise software development, customer relationship management (CRM) has both proprietary and open source offerings on the market. Notice that we chose to say “proprietary and open source” rather than “proprietary and commercial.” There is a misconception that open source is non-commercial, non-profit software. However the “free” nature of it refers to distribution of source code (think of it more like “free speech” than “free of charge”). Getting real value out of open source software often requires licensing and service expenses. However, it is true that open source solutions still tend to offer lower costs. It is then worthwhile to make a general feature and service comparison and see which type of CRM solution is the best fit for a business model.

Let us take a look at Sage CRM and vTiger as an example, as both are comparable in terms of price po int. Furthermore, both are offered as on-premise and cloud-based applications. Sage CRM is available as a cloud service for $39/month, while vTiger on Demand is offered at $12/month. That difference is so close that we must take into account the potential productivity gains of the two.

The inventory management of vTiger is considered to be very strong, as is the default ability to weave orders into the process flow. Sage CRM, however, also has very intuitive default user features and the very useful ability to use “wave activities” to give users an easier and finer-grained tracking when managing campaigns.

What is often a deciding factor in the choice between open source and proprietary software is service. Of course, vTiger’s front end is considered rich, intuitive, and simple, making it strong from a usability perspective. What is typically a large endeavor, however, is an on-premis e vTiger install. Built upon the LAMP stack, it requires more than just a passing familiarity with web development to execute. In situations such as this, support and stability tend to be an issue and ongoing maintenance can typically require in-house expertise, somewhat defeating the purpose of choosing a third party solution. Sage CRM combines ease of use with world-class customer support available from Monday through Friday that gives 48 hour turnaround, and also offers extra tiers of support for a fee.

Making the correct choice in CRM solution for your organization may take the guidance of an experienced IT consulting partner such as Unisoft Systems, located in Vancouver, BC.

In today’s IT market, there are many competing customer relationship management (CRM) software platforms. All of them offer the functionality to streamline and integrate sales more effectively within the business process. Sage CRM is one of the leading offerings in this field for small to medium-sized businesses. Let us take a look at what sets it apart from other CRM systems.

Price
Sage CRM can be delivered as a cloud service or as an on-premise system. The “on-demand” cloud edition is priced at $39 per month, and this happens to be one of the best price points for a comparable cloud-based CRM system. For instance, Salesforce.com Professional is $65 per month (billed annually), though Salesforce.com Enterprise edition is $125 per month and generally considered to be the fully-featured version of Salesforce.com.

Wave Activities
Sage CRM offers an effective approach to campaign management with “wave activities.” These allow the user to track the source of a lead throughout an entire sales cycle. It is pretty common for web visitors to enter variations of different sources of “how they heard” about a campaign, which can make tracking difficult. Hard-coding a certain range of options can prevent this, but that reduces flexibility. Wave activities solve this problem and allow the user to track these sources automatically.

Support
Sage is a globally recognized company with an excellent reputation and as such it offers very solid support for its on-demand CRM services. This includes a basic package with Monday through Friday business-hour phone service. Response time is 48 hours and other forms of communication available are web, email, live chat, and remote diagnostics. Support i s limited to five cases per month but Sage offers the option to upgrade to unlimited support for a fee.

Sage CRM is a solid and affordable CRM solution for small to medium sized business. Contact a trusted Sage consulting partner to learn how to effectively integrate it into your enterprise.