

Which CRM solution do you use? - Simulacra

I work for a small firm and I&#x27;ve been given the task to choose a CRM solution. I&#x27;ve googled until my head hurts but I can&#x27;t seem to find an honest comparison of what&#x27;s the best out there. So I&#x27;m asking the community.<p>A key feature that I&#x27;m having trouble finding is the ability to automatically cross-reference entries. For example, if we input a new contact, the system will cross-reference that contact against all other data, showing connections and similarities.<p>Appreciate any thoughts on which solution you&#x27;re using, for what type of company, and maybe why it works for you.<p>Thanks very much
======
sg_gabriel
Hi there.. it's really interesting because that's a core feature that we are
focusing on at Saleswhale ([http://saleswhale.io/product-
tour](http://saleswhale.io/product-tour)). When you click into a contact's
dossier (sadly, I'm not able to upload screenshots here), it will show you all
related contacts, interactions and other smart insights that we managed to
surface.

We are currently still in beta though, but we would love to work closely with
you and get your ideas and feedback how to make Saleswhale more useful for
you.

I'm the technical co-founder at Saleswhale and you can drop me a line at
gabriel@saleswhale.io if you want to chat more.

------
canterburry
Hey,

We are also building something in this area and I'd be very interested to hear
more about what you are looking for when you say "if we input a new contact,
the system will cross-reference that contact against all other data, showing
connections and similarities."?

What "other" data do you have in mind and what are the important questions you
are trying to answer using this system?

~~~
Simulacra
I use to work at a large firm where everyone had large lists of contacts, old
clients, leads, etc. It was always a dream to have a system where all of this
data could be entered, and then the system tells us where commonalities are.
For example:

You're at a conference and you meet someone, getting their business card. Come
back to the office and enter that information into the CRM. If you've added
that person on LinkedIn, the software will scrape this data, and compare it
against all other data sets in the system. In this example let's say this
particular contact once worked at a company that is also a former client. The
system should alert and say hey, so-and-so has x connections with other
records.

This is probably more data that you wanted, but the larger problem was silos.
We were constantly pushing employees to "compare notes" because we never knew
when two or more employees might uncover information/contacts/etc. that if
linked, could help us leverage that data.

~~~
canterburry
Thank you so much! So it's primarily contact and profile information you are
looking for and being able to correlate based on things such as company name,
contact name, email, phone for their current or past employment etc?

------
michaelbuddy
I use Zurmo community edition for myself. It's php based, pretty easy to
install. Zurmo people were snatched up by a company but the community edition
is open source and it seems will have a future there.

------
mindcrime
Right now, SugarCRM because it's Open Source and works reasonably well. I want
more out of a CRM though, and I'm constantly tempted to start writing my own,
and add a CRM product to our portfolio. There just isn't enough time to do it
right now though. :-(

~~~
tuyguntn
How do you use SugarCRM and which functionality is missing from it? If you are
going to build your own CRM based on your experience using it in real world
use case (not just with eyes of developer who tests different features) which
features are you going to remove from SugarCRM and add your own?

~~~
mindcrime
That would take a while to write up. I'd have to really sit down and spend
some time thinking about it to remember all the things I've thought about
doing. Unfortunately I haven't really kept notes on this.

That said, probably the biggest things I remember wanting were:

1\. support for representing entities using RDF/OWL, for integration with
other systems. We're big on Semantic Web tech here (it's a core part of what
we do) and my vision for enterprise IT involves having, for lack of a better
term, an "internal semantic web".

2\. Workflow integration / rules / triggers. I want to be able to easily
define actions that happen in response to specific events, or on a schedule,
or whatever, and create workflows based off of that. For example: a new
customer record being created - I should be able to define a batch of actions
that happen in response to this. To be fair, this kind of stuff can be done
through some combination of using the API, and/or twiddling the db records
directly, and bolting on an external BPM system or something. But I'd like it
to be more "native".

I'm sure there's some other stuff as well, but like I said, I haven't really
kept notes per-se. If you're interested in continuing this conversation
though, feel free to shoot me an email and we can talk. I probably have at
least some doodles and sketches in one of my notepads somewhere, where I've
played around with some ideas I wanted to incorporate. I might be able to dig
some stuff up.

