By green monkey on

With the creation of a new site,

I found myself with a new need.

This is such a very basic need, I can’t be the only person that finds this gap of integration with software. So, I write this post tonight to discover what others have done to bridge this gap.

Customer and Lead Management

We build sites, customize profile fields, add email and newsletter tools. But there is not a single CMS package on the market that allows you to truly manage your customers and leads. Basically, a good Contact Management System. The tools a Sales force would need.

Sure there are several good Contact and Lead Management Systems on the market. Some even port from the main customer management base to Handhelds, but there is nothing that integrates into a content management system.

We have a very large group of seasoned professionals here and I am just wondering – if and how anyone has bridged this gap.

My first thoughts are to hook into something like OpenOffice, eGroupware, phpGroupware or More.Groupware – but the latter two have been showing slow growth. Especially More.Groupware, last version in 2004.

Then from a different angle I was thinking about hooking in to a Windows based Contact Management System, something like ACT. But who wants to spend their life Importing and Exporting Customers and their data.

So my post tonight, to the group, is to see if anyone has done any integration into a Contact Management system. I guess it would even be a new breed… a CCMS.

Please post any projects or clever integration thoughts.

Best regards,
Jwells

Comments

Cool_Goose’s picture

Cool_Goose commented

Did you looked over civicrm ?
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sime’s picture

sime
any/any
Location Melbourne
commented

Heya cool_goose

I am quite interested in that possibility. However, from looking at the demo I can't see that civicrm is oriented enough towards projects & tasks represented on a time-line.

Unless you are saying "why not extend civicrm"...

green monkey’s picture

green monkey commented

hook http://drupal.org/node/55902

No I didn't --- going there now. Sorry, Old School here, still calling the topic -- Contact Management.

I didn't know until tonight the world has evolved to CRM :-)

t4him’s picture

t4him commented

sugarcrm is used for conact management, sales calls, followup, etc. might be what you are looking for and they are also open source.

sime’s picture

sime
any/any
Location Melbourne
commented

Jwells

Just letting you know that I've decided to use XRMS. I've posted about it on the other thread.

t4him’s picture

t4him commented

XRMS looks pretty solid, I'll have to give it a try also. ;-B.

This has been a very informative post, Thanks.

oziumjinx’s picture

oziumjinx commented

We use SalesForce.com as our corporate CRM system. It's pretty easy to integrate lead management and distribution for our sales team based on geolocation of incoming leads.

On the other hand, if your looking for a lead capturing platform, I would suggest Logiforms. Very easy to create web based forms, very extendable, multi-page forms, action oriented, as well as lead distribution.. Integrating these forms is as easy as placing an iFrame on your page, or using their included HTML/Javascript.

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green monkey’s picture

green monkey commented

Thanks gang,

These are all new to me, and galdly so. I wasn't happy with what I was seeing in Contact Management. The CRM stuff looks very interesting and a few solid choices too (on 1st past review)

Looks like I'll be loading and testing today.

Also, looks like I'll have to rake and spring clean the yard next week -- instead of today - Oh rats ;-)