Best CRM Software Reviews

“Businesses are not paid to reform customers, they are paid to satisfy customers” is how Peter Ducker defined the purpose of management. Professionals working in the field of Customer Relationship Management today face a tough challenge of managing a huge customer base. The CRM software have revolutionized the way businesses used to think a decade ago. The CRM software have streamlined customer relationship resulting in increased productivity and reduces costs at the same time. The CRM software solution offer tools and solutions for improving and strengthening customer relationship. Researches by companies like Frost & Sullivan suggests that in future companies will be investing more in CRM segments such as marketing automation, customer analytics and closed loop marketing. Our reviews on CRM software were an effort to provide an insight into some of the top Customer Relationship Management products. Coming right behind the line, we would like to present a overview of the top 5 CRM software reviewed in our blog until now.

1. Sugar CRM
2. Infor CRM Epiphany
3. Salesforce.com
4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM
5. CiviCRM

1. Sugar CRM

Clearly, this CRM software topped our list of top 10 Customer Relationship Management Software for its high performance under budget constraints. The latest version of this open source software can run on Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system and SQL Server database.

Key features of Sugar CRM

• Automates the sales force, allows tracking of sales opportunities
• Assists in managing customer information
• Enables sharing of customer information with co-workers
• Generates  informative reports for prioritizing the sales tasks.

The set up offers an easy to handle interface. It’s allows integration  with Microsoft Outlook and Word. The customizable dashboard offers real time information about business performance. Moreover, bulk of customer data can be imported from other CRM tools such as Sales Force and ACT.

Pros

The most appealing feature of Sugar CRM is the affordability, its a perfect CRM solution for the budget conscious businesses. With an open source build-up, Sugar CRM allows the users to customize , integrate and extend the CRM application.  The added functionality are always a plus.

Cons

The Sugar CRM is restricted to the small businesses. The CRM solution needs to improve on its pipelines, forecasts and reporting. Above all, the CRM software is yet to be the favorite with business application specialist.

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2.  Infor CRM Epiphany Review

Infor CRM Epiphany integrates marketing, sales, and service. It is based on the service oriented architecture platform built on the J2EE technology. This CRM software offers an ecosystem to feasible interaction with customers at every point.

Infor CRM streamlines the marketing by creating real-time customer  profiles that assist in identifying the leads. It offers sales force automation and implements the best possible opportunity management practices. Instant access to recently created, modified, or viewed opportunity records makes opportunity management easier.

The CRm solution features open service-oriented architecture (SOA) that assists the companies in evolving their business system according to their needs, and selecting criteria that could take advantage of new and additional Infor solutions. Infor provides top class customer service and support.

Pros

The CRM solution offers real-time customer information and decision management.

Cons

The user interface is not user-friendly and it lacks content management capability

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3. Salesforce.com online CRM Review

Salesforce.com offers a web based CRM package. Salesforce CRM solution provides strong supports for tracking contacts, leads, and customer inquiries. It scores high on the reliability quotient and offers a full time, in-house support for businesses. The key modules of the system includes campaigns, leads, accounts and opportunities. The CRM software keeps the pipeline organized and full of qualified leads.

The prime features of salesforce CRM includes automation of marketing, customer service and support, sales force automation, documentation management, content management, contract management, Product catalog management, analytics and competitors.

Pros

What makes salesforce.com an ace CRM solution is its online access. It also provides excellent uptime.

Cons

The downside to salesforce is that for outsourcing it uses the ASPs (application service providers). If there are more customers to handle the ASP has to be used for longer time. This results in the increase of expenditure.

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4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM software Review

This is a relatively new CRM solution for the CRM market. The software offers fully integration with Microsoft Office and Outlook email tool. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is designed for dynamical business environment. Microsoft Dynamics CRM software provides a perfect CRM solution for those working with a Microsoft infrastructure.

The key to Microsoft’s CRM software is sales automation. The Dynamic CRM solution offers individualized sales reports with different set of data that managers and sales reps can access. The managers can view the progress of entire sales force and the sales reps can view the data important to them.
This CRM software simplifies the execution of campaigns and adds mobility to it. It optimizes, manages and tracks the marketing efforts. It offers the marketing analytics highlighting the key performances.

Moreover, the software is backed by efficient customer service that helps to create a distributed knowledge base that allows sharing of staff expertise.
Pros

Microsoft’s CRM solution offers an simple and easy to use interface. It offers extensive flexibility of use. The user can work on it from Microsoft Office Outlook, a Web browser, a Microsoft Office SharePoint portal, a custom portal, or even a mobile device.

Cons

Some of the standard features are missing like power dialing, voice messaging facilities and options for calling back customers.

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5. CiviCRM Review Open Source Nonprofit CRM

This is an open source CRM solution that is basically designed to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups. It offers easy customization, allowing the users to create custom data fields. The CRm solution can be deployed on Drupal and Joomla! content management systems. It enables integration with other CRM systems. One of the key features of the software is task management that allows planning and assigning tasks to each staff members. With geocoding facilities CiviCRM offers native integration for Google and Yahoo!

Pros

It is a perfect CRM designed for non-profit organizations. The users can easily create groups and smart groups.

Cons

Reporting has been a big issue with Civi CRM. Further, the software doesn’t integrate membership and payment information with Quickbooks. For more it lacks use an external report-writing package that would create custom reports.

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