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General Software Discussion / Simple CRM and biz management tool for a small business?
« on: March 30, 2010, 06:26 PM »
Hello mighty DonationCoder community! I beseech you to turn your powerful and all knowing gaze toward this simple problem which presently confounds me.
I find myself the sole, voluntary IT support for a friend's small business, a simple 2 person floral design studio and flower shop. They mostly do weddings and corporate clients, with infrequent in-person sales, and so far no online sales. They use Quickbooks Pro 2010 and have 1 desktop and 1 laptop system they use for all their work, both running Windows 7.
When a previous laptop recently crashed, I found myself waste-deep in a tangle of horribly organized documents and inconsistent business practices while recovering their data. I felt I had to do something about this. So, what they need is a simple, easy to use system for managing customer relationships, sales, simple marketing efforts, appointments and tasks, etc.. Preferably the system should have all those parts integrated, and also integrate with their existing Quickbooks data. Ideally it would also be relatively inexpensive as they are a small business without much money to spend at the moment; in fact they're in a bit of a financial pickle, though they're managing to stay afloat. They desperately need more customers though and providing tools to let them more easily run marketing campaigns is a part of this whole project.
So far I have spent a lot of time looking at dedicated CRM applications and systems like SalesForce, SugarCRM, etc. I've also looked at separate components like Google Apps for contacts, docs, and calendaring, mailing list tools for marketing, etc. The problem with the full-blown CRM systems is they seem way too complicated. They need something that replaces a bunch of separate Word and Excel docs in a unified system (e.g. imagine trying to search for past customer transaction info if your receipts are all separate Word docs, many of which have different formatting). So the Google Docs approach is also non-ideal. It solves some of the problems, but doesn't really focus on customer relationship management at all. They'll be using Gmail and Google Calendar regardless, but as far as building a customer database with good info, and then leveraging that database for ongoing marketing, they're lost with current tools. Ideally it *would* be an online tool like this so they could access it anywhere, even from a mobile device (the manager has a Blackberry), but a desktop Windows app would suffice if price and features were a better fit. They have web hosting and I can install any web apps for them.
In searching for something that could work for them it really struck me how difficult the world of the small business owner is, especially if they're not super technically minded. They are in a strange limbo world where they're big enough to want dedicated tools to keep them organized and, especially, to help them *grow* their business. At the same time they're not big enough or technically savvy enough to really make use of something like SalesForce or other complex CRM packages, nor can they necessarily afford the versions they might need. Just as an example, they want to start email marketing, which seems like a virtually essential thing these days. The version of SalesForce that has this integrated is $65/mo per user (potentially $130/mo if they both need access), which seems like relatively small potatoes I admit, but is still a lot considering what they're doing now is free.
I'm willing to try to sell them on the financial benefits of better organization and marketing tools (if they get just 1 additional customer from it, it could arguably pay for itself). Still they are somewhat in a panicky state as far as finances go right now, as I mentioned.
Any help and info greatly appreciated!
- Oshyan
I find myself the sole, voluntary IT support for a friend's small business, a simple 2 person floral design studio and flower shop. They mostly do weddings and corporate clients, with infrequent in-person sales, and so far no online sales. They use Quickbooks Pro 2010 and have 1 desktop and 1 laptop system they use for all their work, both running Windows 7.
When a previous laptop recently crashed, I found myself waste-deep in a tangle of horribly organized documents and inconsistent business practices while recovering their data. I felt I had to do something about this. So, what they need is a simple, easy to use system for managing customer relationships, sales, simple marketing efforts, appointments and tasks, etc.. Preferably the system should have all those parts integrated, and also integrate with their existing Quickbooks data. Ideally it would also be relatively inexpensive as they are a small business without much money to spend at the moment; in fact they're in a bit of a financial pickle, though they're managing to stay afloat. They desperately need more customers though and providing tools to let them more easily run marketing campaigns is a part of this whole project.
So far I have spent a lot of time looking at dedicated CRM applications and systems like SalesForce, SugarCRM, etc. I've also looked at separate components like Google Apps for contacts, docs, and calendaring, mailing list tools for marketing, etc. The problem with the full-blown CRM systems is they seem way too complicated. They need something that replaces a bunch of separate Word and Excel docs in a unified system (e.g. imagine trying to search for past customer transaction info if your receipts are all separate Word docs, many of which have different formatting). So the Google Docs approach is also non-ideal. It solves some of the problems, but doesn't really focus on customer relationship management at all. They'll be using Gmail and Google Calendar regardless, but as far as building a customer database with good info, and then leveraging that database for ongoing marketing, they're lost with current tools. Ideally it *would* be an online tool like this so they could access it anywhere, even from a mobile device (the manager has a Blackberry), but a desktop Windows app would suffice if price and features were a better fit. They have web hosting and I can install any web apps for them.
In searching for something that could work for them it really struck me how difficult the world of the small business owner is, especially if they're not super technically minded. They are in a strange limbo world where they're big enough to want dedicated tools to keep them organized and, especially, to help them *grow* their business. At the same time they're not big enough or technically savvy enough to really make use of something like SalesForce or other complex CRM packages, nor can they necessarily afford the versions they might need. Just as an example, they want to start email marketing, which seems like a virtually essential thing these days. The version of SalesForce that has this integrated is $65/mo per user (potentially $130/mo if they both need access), which seems like relatively small potatoes I admit, but is still a lot considering what they're doing now is free.
I'm willing to try to sell them on the financial benefits of better organization and marketing tools (if they get just 1 additional customer from it, it could arguably pay for itself). Still they are somewhat in a panicky state as far as finances go right now, as I mentioned.
Any help and info greatly appreciated!
- Oshyan
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