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CRM

ViperMAN

Hi everyone,

Simple question; I am thinking about creating a CRM product for small businesses - am I crazy?

I know there are 100s upon 1000s of CRMs out there but over the last few months I have this itch about creating my own version.

Here are the reasons why I am thinking its a good idea:

- I work in a small company (~10 people) and we have tried multiple CRMs and we don't like any of them them.
- People say the best CRM is the one that people use - but the ones we have been using have so many settings and features that some staff just don't use them as they end up trying to find out how to do things and get lost. This leads to the 'I can't work that thing' when asked if they have updated information.
- Our business relies on some older guys out in the field - they are rarely in the office but talk to customers a lot. We need to find a solution thats easy for them to add information (any ideas would be great!).
- Some of them are just too costly. Most CRMs follow the SaaS model of cost per user but this gets expensive very quickly. There would be about 4 people that use the CRM constantly, the others should have logins but they wouldn't use it enough to justify it.

So a really really simple CRM with the very basic amount of features at a low cost.

Madness?

Thanks for any input.

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jimmii

Tough gig to get into I think. There seem to be a few in each area marketing, membership, sales etc that dominate and would be hard to convince people to switch imo. I'm helping out a crm switch at the moment and it's been a massive pain in the ass!

If you're focusing on smaller companies then you'd be up against zoho a lot of the time and that would be a tough one to be butting heads with especially micros with just a couple of guys on the road who can get away with the free plan.

ViperMAN

I completely agree.

Zoho was one of the systems we used. To be fair its a descent platform. We used the CRM, Projects and Books modules.

Projects is far too complicated for our needs. Not very intuitive and and far too many features for us.

I guess I need to figure out if building a feature light, super easy to use system makes sense. I don't think it will be possible to topple the big players - but if there was enough of a slice of the pie it might be worth it.

jimmii wrote: »

Tough gig to get into I think. There seem to be a few in each area marketing, membership, sales etc that dominate and would be hard to convince people to switch imo. I'm helping out a crm switch at the moment and it's been a massive pain in the ass!

If you're focusing on smaller companies then you'd be up against zoho a lot of the time and that would be a tough one to be butting heads with especially micros with just a couple of guys on the road who can get away with the free plan.

jimmii

ViperMAN wrote: »

I completely agree.

Zoho was one of the systems we used. To be fair its a descent platform. We used the CRM, Projects and Books modules.

Projects is far too complicated for our needs. Not very intuitive and and far too many features for us.

I guess I need to figure out if building a feature light, super easy to use system makes sense. I don't think it will be possible to topple the big players - but if there was enough of a slice of the pie it might be worth it.

Then I'd think going more niche might be the best option. For example I know some people in marketing who have really struggled to find a good option at the right price. They're using marketeer now but it doesn't do everything they want.

ViperMAN

Thanks Jimmii.

I think you are spot on about going more niche. I just checked out marketeer - it does have a specific set of features that makes it niche.

I guess solving our problems and productising might be a good approach.

jimmii wrote: »

Then I'd think going more niche might be the best option. For example I know some people in marketing who have really struggled to find a good option at the right price. They're using marketeer now but it doesn't do everything they want.

jimmii

ViperMAN wrote: »

Thanks Jimmii.

I think you are spot on about going more niche. I just checked out marketeer - it does have a specific set of features that makes it niche.

I guess solving our problems and productising might be a good approach.

If you have a problem you can be sure others do too.

ViperMAN

Anybody else have any input on this?

I'd like to get some feedback to somewhat validate what I am doing before I go any further.

gargargar

You would have a lot of competition, however that shouldn't necessarily stop you as it is a huge market. I would really research what you would going up against and why you would be different. If you think you see a differentiator then research again and see if it is enough.

The odds will be against you but look at teamwork the Irish guys who built a project mgt tool. Went into a busy market with some serious competition and have build a product worth 100s of millions.

jamesbondings

I currently work in this industry, consider integrations open APIS. Partners - who will ensure successful implementation of your product? - cost of implementation (in my experience) can sometime outweigh the actual cost of the product. Competition - currently rife.......smaller guys like zoho are just the tip of the iceberg, salesforce, oracle, microsoft all have solutions that can easily be made affordable if speaking to a sales rep.

Then you have to consider support - have you funds for a full time team to be on call to help clients with any issues they may face?

There are organisations that have a crm app specifically tailored to reps on the road/engineers on the road etc......

What is your USP? Is it cost? quality will be a hard one to sell as a new business with no reference-ability. Is it the fact it has open API's and can seemlessly integrate with other vendors solutions for ERP, Marketing etc?

Hope this is food for thought PM me if i can be of any additional support!

onedmc

I'd agree, any of the CRM system that I looked at are either too complicated or dont do what I want. I run a training business and ended up building my own access database and interacting it into a standard CRM system for marketing.

So I believe that there is plenty of opportunity for new CRM's but they must be niche to particular sectors and be able to do more than standard CRM by replicating the niches particular processes easily. For me its feedback, attendance records, certification, skills etc.

Maybe the niche is CRM+officeERM

ViperMAN

Thanks for the input.

Yep, there is a huge amount of competition.

I think you are spot on about doing research and finding the differentiator. Right now, my differentiator is that this would be super simple and cost effective. I guess I need to identify what the features are, and see if people will buy what reduced features I have. And if it makes sense to build it financially.

gargargar wrote: »

You would have a lot of competition, however that shouldn't necessarily stop you as it is a huge market. I would really research what you would going up against and why you would be different. If you think you see a differentiator then research again and see if it is enough.

The odds will be against you but look at teamwork the Irish guys who built a project mgt tool. Went into a busy market with some serious competition and have build a product worth 100s of millions.

ViperMAN

Hey, thanks for your response! Much appreciated!

Actually, you touched on an open question I have. You mention APIs/integrations and the like - for a small business, do you think that this is vital? When our company has signed up to a new CRM, we didn't use integrations into other various apps, we don't use APIs and we didn't have the need to copy data into the new CRM. We just started using it. I guess we are small so we didn't really need these features.

I suppose I want to emphasis that the idea is to cut out features. This will make it easier to use, but also easier for me to create and therefore cheaper to sell. My current thinking is that this makes sense. But maybe I am simplifying it too much.

As for support, its a cost effective app so support will be email only. I am not thinking of the scale of salesforce, etc. But again, maybe I am simplifying things too much and the reality will be different.

USP will be cost and ease of use. The feature set will be greatly reduced. I understand that won't suit a lot of companies - but that is okay for me as long as there is some slice of the market.

All feedback welcome!

jamesbondings wrote: »

I currently work in this industry, consider integrations open APIS. Partners - who will ensure successful implementation of your product? - cost of implementation (in my experience) can sometime outweigh the actual cost of the product. Competition - currently rife.......smaller guys like zoho are just the tip of the iceberg, salesforce, oracle, microsoft all have solutions that can easily be made affordable if speaking to a sales rep.

Then you have to consider support - have you funds for a full time team to be on call to help clients with any issues they may face?

There are organisations that have a crm app specifically tailored to reps on the road/engineers on the road etc......

What is your USP? Is it cost? quality will be a hard one to sell as a new business with no reference-ability. Is it the fact it has open API's and can seemlessly integrate with other vendors solutions for ERP, Marketing etc?

Hope this is food for thought PM me if i can be of any additional support!

ViperMAN

This is exactly it. CRM don't get used because of they are complicated.

I agree that niche is the way to go. I will do some narrowing down!

Thanks!

onedmc wrote: »

I'd agree, any of the CRM system that I looked at are either too complicated or dont do what I want. I run a training business and ended up building my own access database and interacting it into a standard CRM system for marketing.

So I believe that there is plenty of opportunity for new CRM's but they must be niche to particular sectors and be able to do more than standard CRM by replicating the niches particular processes easily. For me its feedback, attendance records, certification, skills etc.

Maybe the niche is CRM+officeERM

beauf

I did a lot of research into CRM, a scoping exercise into this last year. Set a few up demos to see if they fit our needs and I found all the smaller products, had gone from the market to be replaced by much more complex or cloud based systems. There was a nice one called "Business Contact Manager for Outlook" and then a share point app but MS pulled it all off the market. A lot of Small companies, were left high and dry. I think MS were trying to up sell their "Microsoft Dynamics CRM" but it was trying to crack a nut with a sledge Hammer. I tried a bunch of cloud based ones, but they were all Office365 centered, which didn't suit us, or heavily sales focused which didn't suit either.

A lot of them had very limited demos which were a pain to set up. Timed out too fast. They were all a nightmare to deal with, spammed me constantly with the hard selling and marketing. Short on technical answers. Very hard to customise them to what we wanted. You'd need basically an expert to configure them. In the end I gave up. If we were to do it, we'd build something in outlook or Sharepoint, perhaps with Power BI.

jamesbondings

ViperMAN wrote: »

Hey, thanks for your response! Much appreciated!

Actually, you touched on an open question I have. You mention APIs/integrations and the like - for a small business, do you think that this is vital? When our company has signed up to a new CRM, we didn't use integrations into other various apps, we don't use APIs and we didn't have the need to copy data into the new CRM. We just started using it. I guess we are small so we didn't really need these features.

I suppose I want to emphasis that the idea is to cut out features. This will make it easier to use, but also easier for me to create and therefore cheaper to sell. My current thinking is that this makes sense. But maybe I am simplifying it too much.

As for support, its a cost effective app so support will be email only. I am not thinking of the scale of salesforce, etc. But again, maybe I am simplifying things too much and the reality will be different.

USP will be cost and ease of use. The feature set will be greatly reduced. I understand that won't suit a lot of companies - but that is okay for me as long as there is some slice of the market.

All feedback welcome!

You say your solutions (for support) will mainly use email. Who is your email supplier? I would imagine, but might be wrong, it is outlook? Need an API for that?
Another thing to bear in mind as well is how will you get all the data that is currently siloed into a centralized hub? not an API but something to consider.

In terms of your USP cost isnt a factor (i dont feel) anymore that can help you differentiate. The multinationals have the propensity to accommodate the sme market with cheap solutions. The old adage "you get what you pay for" rings through with tech.
A bare bones solution is a great idea - but what happens 6 months to a year down the line when the client requires a connection to their marketing automation solution? Have those available and charge more for them of course. Problem is the cost to you to enable these integrations..... Otherwise you leave yourself open to losing those customers as they grow.

All business will have SOMETHING they would like to integrate with. The most common is office. Then i find marketing automation and depending on the business telephony systems.....

If you are doing a bare bones solution you will need to be very very competitively priced. Otherwise the old excel spreadsheet will do the job and wont cost an arm and a leg!

ViperMAN

Thanks for all the feedback guys - plenty food for thought!

BnB

ViperMan - I was looking for the exact same thing as you. A CRM that cuts out all the BS.

We were using Zoho - And while you can't argue that it is a bad system, it is just so big and complex that it has become almost unusable as just a simple CRM. By just needing a CRM, we were probably only using 5% of the total system. It was bad enough that we were paying for everything else, but the bigger problem was the key things we needed were often buried under 2 or 3 sub menus.

After using it for 2 years I went looking around again at the end of last year and I ended up going back to an Irish Company that I had looked at in the first place OnePageCRM.

This is an old fashioned CRM system - Who are my leads - What potential deals do I have in place - What are the next actions I need to take. We are using it for 6 months now and we're very happy with it.

Before you go writing something yourself, I think it might be worth having a look at them

irelandnb

Hi guys, Not sure if you got sorted but we recently started using Freshsales and seems to do the job. They have an Irish reseller called Freshsolutions who helped us through all the migration process. We were using Zoho previously

Rossie11

BnB wrote: »

ViperMan - I was looking for the exact same thing as you. A CRM that cuts out all the BS.

We were using Zoho - And while you can't argue that it is a bad system, it is just so big and complex that it has become almost unusable as just a simple CRM. By just needing a CRM, we were probably only using 5% of the total system. It was bad enough that we were paying for everything else, but the bigger problem was the key things we needed were often buried under 2 or 3 sub menus.

After using it for 2 years I went looking around again at the end of last year and I ended up going back to an Irish Company that I had looked at in the first place OnePageCRM.

This is an old fashioned CRM system - Who are my leads - What potential deals do I have in place - What are the next actions I need to take. We are using it for 6 months now and we're very happy with it.

Before you go writing something yourself, I think it might be worth having a look at them

Hi located this post whilst looking for info on Zoho.
With OnePageCRM can you track current enquiries?
I have a few internal sales personnel working on their own enquiries that I dont have visuals on until its actually quoted on another system.
I know you can do that with Zoho.
Thanks

BnB

Hi Rossie. Yes - Onepage does that . To be fair, all CRM's will do that though.

Rossie11

Thanks Bnb
Are you still using it? Any issues or limitations with it?
Currently looking at options, waiting on demo data from Zoho to review their system.
OnePageCRM like a good alternative based on you saying Zoho was too complex

BnB

Hi Rossie. No unfortunately, I don't still use it. Our company was bought out over 2 years ago and we were forced to move to the corporate system (Dynamics) . If I had my way, I would move back to OnePage in the morning. It was a pleasure to roll out and use compared with Dynamics (and Zoho that I tried before it.)

The likes of Zoho, Dynamics etc - They're not bad systems - But they are very complex and are designed for roll out (very often with a lot of customization) in bigger organisations where you need to consider a lot more than a simple sales process when implementing a CRM

I also currently use Hubspot also as part of my job which isn't too bad - It is geared very much towards digital marketing and you have to buy a lot of add-ons to use all features.

But, if I was putting a CRM into a small company in the morning, my first port of call would be OnePage. I had a great experience for the 2 years or so that I used it so if I was looking again, it is where I would start.

Rossie11

Thanks Bnb.. Great info much appreciated

BnB

No worries Rossie. Best of luck. Any queries just give me a shout. I'm far from an expert but I have faffed around with a good few different CRMs over the years

ladiesman217

Hey. There has been some good feedback to your idea here in the thread. For me it's about the user experience. How does it function on mobile. What is the look and feel of it? There is always going to be competition out there. If a large proportion of CRM solutions have similar features and offering , it come down good design and brand experience! Best of luck with it