Open source CRM: The basics
For the business persons active in the industry of maintaining customer relationships, the term open source CRM or customer relationship management is a familiar term. What is referred to as the open source CRM is still what insider call as the customer relationship management software. What this software solution does is to thrust the software engineering out in the open. This will give the managers and the developers a peek on the source codes and also give these developers and business managers the role in the product development process. And there are a number of benefits if this kind of set-up is followed.
According to Paul Greenberg who is the President of one consultancy firm, the open source CRM is considered as much cheaper. And since the code is available, then this will give the business managers and the companies the chance to customize the business experience. The good things about the open source CRM does not end there though. It can be expected that the issues that will relate to the CRM will not be solved by the internal technical staff by the company rather issues will be solved by the community. Now this one is a big reason why this kind of CRM works and loved by many companies.
For those who are not familiar with this kind of software, the first question that will be asked is “who creates the open source software”. And the follow-up question for this one is “who would want to work on an open source?” there are IT organizations that need to use the software that will be available and supported for a long period of time and this means that the software infrastructure will be “future-proof”. And relying on the software that is created by those uncommitted for the long term will be risky. And no organization will want to get a technology that will be suddenly orphaned just because the developer of the program lost interest in the job.
There was this study that was conducted to further understand the open source development study. This study was conducted in 2002 by the Boston Consulting Group and this was done in cooperation with the Source Forge, which is an open source portal. And up to know understanding the roots of the open source continues. And what remain clear are the many benefits that can be delivered by this kind of CRM. And since there are a number of benefits to companies, there are a number of providers willing to share their CRMs.
Leading providers of open source CRM solutions
One leading provider of this kind of CRM is Sugar CRM Inc. The Sugar CRM will include the sales management, the marketing automation, the customer support and the reporting tools. There will be deployment options that will include the on-demand, appliance or the on-site. There will be product modules too and this will range from the tracking and contact management in order to account the relationship and the marketing campaigns. Another known provider in the market is the Centric with its Centric CRM Inc and this offers the full downloadable source code without having to shell money. This CRM solution will include the most common CRM modules that can be seen other CRMs in the market. Plus this CRM solution will offer other capabilities like the project and the document management, the customer surveys and the help-desk functionality. This will come complete with the Centric Public License and this license is straight forward and will be easy to understand. The License will permit the modification to the source code and the derivative works and the modifications will be owned by the developers.
Here are the other known and familiar providers of this kind of CRM solutions in the market:
• Hipergate. This CRM solutions provider markets itself as the most complete open-source Java CRM and groupware. Some of the modules included in their software include contact management, project management and the support issues tracking.
• Compiere Inc. This CRM software offers the Enterprise Resource Planning and has a support for the marketing and sales and the human resources aspect of the company. This will also include the full-business accounting package.
• Vtiger CRM. This software solution is based on the LAMP/WAMP architecture.
There are other smaller companies that provide this kind of software solution, but it should be noted that the open-source CRM is not for the company that want out of the box complete solutions but good for the company that ask for a more tailored CRM solution.