How large is your business?

Or more importantly, how large do you want it to be??

Entire national companies have risen and fallen on how well they keep track of and manage their customer relationships. If you are always chasing new customers, but not taking care of your existing customers, you fall. If you only take care of your current comfortable list and never reach out to new prospects, you can expect to go down too, as times change, needs change, people move, retire, or even die.

If your business is very large, or you want it to be, you need to serve a large and growing base of customers and potential customers. You need effective customer relationship management. And lets face it, the days of paper schedules and Roll-o-dexes is gone. (You can’t even buy Roll-o-dexes any more.) Computers rule the day, and web based applications rule computers, as your businesses often outlive their computers!

I have been just wow-ed by the recent discovery that customer relationship software has been going open source (meaning free to download, install, customize, & run). The leader of the pack is SugarCRM, and it is scaleable as your business grows. You can keep track of not only customers and prospects, but your employees, sales force, sales campaigns, meetings schedule, and phone calls. I can think of at least one major national chain that went under within the past 5 years by spending millions trying to develop this type of software, and here it is handed to us small business owners on a silver platter!

Just install it on the non-public side of your web site, carry a laptop or netbook with you, and the world becomes your office.

According to InsideCRM.com, SugarCRM is the 800 pound gorilla in the open source CRM category, and it installs much the same as other mysql/php scripted programs.  Which means I can offer it to my own customers.

SugarCRM Front Page

The above is the front page of SugarCRM, containing the menuitems:

The front page sidebars offer quick views for updating the new contact database, events calendar, and income pipeline, while sidebars in the various functional pages are context senstitive, with straightforward buttons.

SugarCRM contains standard business functions, and I promise you is of incalculable value.  As your experience grows with its use, it will make itself more and more indispensible.

This addition to Sun Web Studio’s offerings warrants updating this site’s subtitle!