Open tools for entrepreneurs. Customer relationship management

Open tools for entrepreneurs

In this series of articles we are reviewing some useful tools for those who want to start a business relying on open source tools.

Now it's the turn of those applications that allow us to manage customer relationships.

Any marketer knows that getting customers is not difficult, the tricky thing is getting them to remain customers. That's why there's something called Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

With that pompous name we are referring to set of tools, strategies or processes that help companies better organize and access customer data.

Open tools for entrepreneurs. Managing the relationship with customers

Customer relationship management programs are platforms that connect the different departments of the organization that work with consumers (marketing, sales and customer service among others) organizing their notes, activities and metrics in a homogeneous way. Authorized users have easy, direct and real-time access to the customer data they need.

Although in principle, for an enterprise the capacities of this type of programs may be excessive, in the first article we defined that the objective of a startup was to become a large company.  Using them from the beginning will save us later the effort of entering the files saved in a spreadsheet into the system.

That is an added advantage of open source solutions. As usually happens when open source applications for corporate use are discussed, we find two models; Paid open source applications, but with a free version supported by the community or free open source applications but with the offer of support, hosting or some other service at a cost. In other words, if we need more payment benefits, we will not have to migrate the data to another program.

Some CRM software options

CRM Suite

Those who know the subject propose it as an alternative to market leading proprietary solutions such as Salesforce. as integra Marketing, sales and customer service functions on a dashboard where data is updated in real time.

It adapts to organizations of different sizes and includes applications to test in virtual machines such as Virtualbox, VMWare and KVM. The server version needs PHP support.

The application is free as long as you host it on your own server.

GoldCRM

In the reviews it is described as one of the most flexible customer relationship managers. Sand integrates with other commercial applications such as Mailchimp and Zendesk, and many hosting providers offer its installation from the control panel. It has the classic modules to integrate marketing and sales showing the information in a centralized dashboard, in addition to one focused on capturing data from potential customers.

Version Open source is free (although you need to fill out a form to download, but you can buy add-ons to expand its functionalities.

X2 CRM

I want to start by thanking the designers of the site  From this project. It's the first one where I don't need a map to find the relevant information.

This CRM software encourages everyone to download its code and customize it. II include a visual designer of the workflow, conducting marketing campaigns, managing the sales force, tracking customer complaints and supporting customer service via web and email.

It claims to provide a level of business security and has applications for mobile devices.

It can be installed directly on a server with PHP support or on a virtual machine-

Vtiger

Again we have the model of a free base application with additional paid modules.

vtiger It includes what is necessary for the management of current and potential customers, the implementation of marketing campaigns, as well as the monitoring of the sales process and the daily workflow.

Various types of reports and analyzes can also be generated.


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    1.    Diego German Gonzalez said

      Thanks for the input.
      Many are missing, but I'm trying to limit the duration of the posts so they don't get endless