Pivotal seems to be a relatively unknown name in Australia, but they offer powerful mid-level CRM solutions for medium sized enterprises. Unfortunately, my experience of the system has been in a large, complex environment with around 200-300 users and 10 million database records. I say unfortunately because the Pivotal CRM solution does not scale well to this level.

One of the main features of Pivotal’s systems is the level of customisation that it offers. Simple customisation can be made with standard GUI Pivotal tools. This means that someone with a reasonable amount of technical knowledge and a little training can customise the system, including reports, searches, and form design.

It’s fair to say that almost anything can be customised, right down to the work flow of the system, although some of the more advanced customisation features requires quite a lot of technical skills and knowledge of the system. This level of customisation certainly has advantages, but there is a downside. As the system is designed to be generic, it results in inefficient database connectivity and relatively slow and clunky architecture. This is not necessarily a problem, but it does place limitations on scalability.

The Pivotal CRM environment gives you plenty of possibilities including comprehensive enterprise tools, two clients, and many connectivity options. The toolsets could be better named and organised however. Not only is there similarly named tools that perform totally different tasks, Pivotal have a habit of renaming these tools often.

Their support team is fairly knowledgeable, and they also offer online training, but they do have a heavy reliance on overseas resources, using India in particular. This can introduce some communication difficulties, which can be rather frustrating considering that you’re accessing these resources when you’re either trying to learn, or when you’re wanting help.

I think that their pricing and scalability limitations place them squarely in the mid-sized market. I wouldn’t recommend the product for small or large enterprises. If you’re in this category and looking for a CRM solution, Pivotal may have everything you need, just be aware of the limitations it also brings.

Musing over the CRM for churches situation a moment ago, I began to read over my original post on the topic. The description of the solution sounds like some kind of networking software. Not the type of networking that involves cabling, electricians and tech-geeks, but the type networking that involves people.

The real world needs of a church are more complex than just managing people relationships, but it would be an important aspect of the software. In this regard, I think you could use a networking focus and still have a software package that could be easily “translated” across different industries. Networking exists in any business, church or other non-profit organisation, so that would be a standard “module” or feature of the software. From there, you could design a few more standard modules, asset management, POS and accounting that all businesses would find useful.

Some business modules that would unnecessary for a church would be sales and similar functions. Churches would definitely use other common modules such as rostering, staff management and marketing.

Come to think of it, there are many shared functions between a business and a church. I think the main reason why most current CRM systems fall down for churches and other non-standard businesses is that most software focuses on sales (not to mention the company-contact relationships mentioned in the comments of my original article), where churches are focused on people (God being the first focus of course).

Can anyone suggest any people focused CRM packages that are currently available? Do you think that this focus could work for an interested software developer, while still leaving open opportunities to target the current market?

Well, my post regarding CRM for churches got such a response that I’ve decided to give it a dedicated category all to itself. I guess it’s not just me who has been asking for this type of product, which is great news.

I may even be able to be convinced to dust off one of my attempts at designing such a system. You’d probably have to be fairly convincing!

I’ve now decided to commit a little more time to this CRM site. I’ve been lamenting the fact that the site has been neglected for a while. The ugliness finally got to me!

This design is only a temporary one while I work on something more unique, but it looks so much nicer, don’t you think? The software behind the scenes has also been upgraded, so if you notice any strange behaviour, please let me know.

Very recently, myself and a few friends of mine were contemplating the start of a business venture. After a week or so, we realised the need for some software to help us out in the planning stages. Here were our requirements for the software system:

• It needed to be cheap.

We didn’t have any money as we hadn’t yet made any sales! So, we needed a solution that wouldn’t cost us a lot of money.

• It needed to be easy to use.

This requirement was important. Although we have very good technical skills, we wanted a system that didn’t get in the way. If probably needed to be complex to meet all of our needs, but even so, it couldn’t be cluttered.

• It needed to give a minimum of 3 users easy access from multiple sites.

We were three individuals without an office. We met in all sorts of places for our planning meetings, restaurants, cafes, etc. So we needed a central place for our system, but that was accessible from multiple sites. Online CRM over the Internet does a fairly good job of this. Wireless is also available from a lot of places around the Melbourne CBD, which helps us if we need access during a meeting. One of us has an ISP account at home with a static IP (which means it never changes) and since we were technical, we decided to build our own server from an old computer and install our online CRM system on there.

• It needed to be scalable.

We were planning to build our company by instantly hiring a sales team. This meant that the system needed to support additional users at minimal cost in licensing and hardware.

• It needed to be Open.

“Open” means a lot of things to a lot of people. Basically for us, it meant a system that we could easily integrate with other systems as we grew (billing, communications, etc). It also meant that we had open, supported and documented access to our data in any form. We also needed something that would allow us to customise if we wanted to. An easy way to meet all these requirements is to select a system that is Open Source and possibly GPL licensed.

One system that met all these requirements, was the Open Source version of SugarCRM. We gave version 3.0 a test run and it seemed to meet all the requirements.

• It was cheap.

You can’t get much cheaper than free, so the price was right.

• It was easy to use.

It had its shortcomings, but overall, it’s a fairly easy to use system. it even comes with many themes and options for users to customise their interface to ther liking.

• It was available from multiple sites.

As it could be installed on a web server open to the Internet, it was perfect for accessing no matter where we were.

• It was scalable.

We ran the first version on a Pentium 233MMX with Debian Linux 3.1. And it ran fine with no problems for 3 of us. I’m sure that it would have handled more with no problems.

• It was Open.

It was Open Source, not only itself, but also the database and other technologies used to develop the system. We had access to everything we wanted.

It was a great system overall, and really met the needs of our little baby company.