I’ve been thinking lately about searching for a simple CRM solution. I’ve recently started up my own company, Kingdom Solutions, and I’ve been wondering how I’m going to keep track of customers (once I start getting some). To be frank, most of the CRM solutions are just overcomplicated. Most of the solutions that are available are focused on sales and conversion tracking. As I don’t have a sales team yet, I don’t need that kind of functionality.

I thought that I’d do a search for “simple CRM” and came across this post: CRM Solutions: Backpack as a Simple CRM Tool. With a nice screenshot, it demonstrates the ability to use Backpack as a simple CRM system.

It looks like it could be a simple solution to simple CRM. I’ll have to try it out for myself. If anyone knows of any other similar solutions, please post a comment.

I just finished reading through a particularly boring news story on a Customer Relationship Management system that Adelaide Festival have recently deployed. Now, I’m not sure why I read through the whole article, I guess CRM news is slim today. It did remind me however of all the jargon that exists in this industry.

Why this is the case I’m not sure. I understand the need for companies to find descriptive terms to give meaning to the work that they do or service that they provide. Unfortunately however, this can be abused. This particular article I think is an example of that.

If you read through it you’ll find no real substance on how the solution was deployed. For other businesses who are wondering about how exactly a CRM solution would fit into their business, there is no real information to help them.

Maybe it makes sense to some, but to me, it just sounds like there’s nothing there worth reporting on and nothing new or exciting happening. Maybe I’m just tired… -yawn-

There looks to be a lot of news buzzing around within the last 24 hours in regards to Microsoft’s new CRM 3.0. Microsoft is an interesting company to watch, especially in the way that it markets its products and itself. Interestingly, most of the news is generated from third parties that cooperate with Microsoft in distributing, supporting and installing their software.

My advice would be to be cautious. I’ve noticed that Microsoft is very agressive in marketing. I can’t remember a product that they have put their name to that they have let speak for itself. I would say that this is the case because a lot of the software they generate cannot speak for itself. It requires plenty of marketing dollars to be spent telling us all how useful and popular it is.

In regards to Microsoft CRM 3.0, look closely, does it stack up to everything the marketing says it is? Assess the software for the REAL benefits, not just because it’s a Microsoft product, not because the nice consulting company recommended it, and not because it has its claws in a bunch of other Microsoft products. Will the software be easy to use for my staff who are not so crash hot on the computers? Would I be able to use the software? Do I need this consulting company to babysit my installation, and how much is that going to cost me? How long will my company be tied to this and am I willing to commit that much to it?

Don’t just look at it as a money decision, there could be other packages available which are a better fit for your business. They may cost more upfront, but they may be more beneficial and reap better returns in the long run.

Not totally CRM related, but my company has just released an online store for electronic gadgets including digital cameras, PDAs and MP3 players. For the technically literate people out there, it was developed in Ruby on Rails a fantastic web application framework which could host a fantastic CRM system one day.

Take a look: Go Go Gadget – digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players

Getting the right data into CRM systems. I’m sure that businesses spend a lot of money trying to improve their quality of data, and I’m sure some spend almost nothing (yikes!). What about particular businesses in the people industry? By people, I mean that these businesses are focused 100% on helping people, with almost no thought to monetary gain. It seems that one of the big problems with these industries is their aversion to computers (let alone CRM solutions!) and they’re reluctance to take the time to use such a system.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with someone in regards to writing down information about people they interact with in their job. I’ll call this person George (not his real name). George works in an industry where using computers are almost unheard of. The majority of the workforce are older and wiser than most, because these professionals use their experience and years of training to talk to people, helping them with their problems in life.

George mentioned to me that he would be interested in only talking to and helping people without all the administration tasks that go with it. I began to think to myself, there must be a mine of information that George would collect about someone after talking with them, how do you get a people person to spend the time entering information into a CRM system?

An interesting question, can anyone comment on helping George to use CRM in his industry?