Overlinked

In this day and age, when information flows freely and data capture requires the advanced skills of copy and paste, there’s no excuse not to use a CRM for your business. Price isn’t an issue – there are free and low cost systems out there that offer 80%-90% of the functionality of the top end systems. Here are a few options and some of the tradeoffs:

Salesforce.com. Salesforce is the 800 pound gorilla in the world of CRM, and for good reason. It offers an incredible amount of power, but that power comes at a price. Salesforce isn’t cheap (as much as $150/user/month), and it’s a bear to set up well. Out of the box, it’s okay, but it requires extensive configuration and expertise to make it sing. If you do set it up well, however, you will find that Salesforce can make a huge improvement in your business profitability.

I have to totally agree with Chris Penn on his recommendation that businesses of all sizes use a CRM - but not just for one aspect of the business. When you are considering a tool like Salesforce or Zoho CRM or Sugar CRM, think about the breadth of the tool. If you just adopt a software tool for a limited number of users in one department the usefulness of the tool is mitigated. As important as having a CRM is giving access to everyone in your corporate sphere. This may even mean considering ways to share a limited access version of your CRM for your partners and customers. Some information is meant to be shared - and it will hurt your brand if you implement yet another data silo.