The best open source CRM software – IT PRO

If you're a small business looking to take the next step in your evolution, you may be looking at implementing a customer relationship management (or CRM) solution. But with enterprise-grade vendors like Oracle and Salesforce charging such a high premium for their services, how can smaller companies afford to get started with CRM software?

The answer lies in open source. As with many kinds of software, there are multiple vendors who provide open source CRM solutions that are completely free to use. They may have restrictions on them, such as limited features and support, but for small businesses looking to try out CRM, they can be an excellent starting point.

Open source software alternatives have their pros and cons, and CRM software is no exception. The principal benefit, of course, is that it's free - this makes it an excellent choice for businesses who may not be able to afford a fully-fledged enterprise CRM package like Salesforce.

It eliminates some of the commitment risks of traditional software, too. Unlike major vendor offerings, open source providers typically don't require customers to sign lengthy licensing agreements. This means that you're free to try it out, without the fear of being saddled with a system that you don't get on with for months or years.

Open source CRM software is also highly customisable. If your organisation has very specific needs, open source software allows you to tweak and refine your CRM platform until it meets all of your criteria. This also lets you tweak it to keep up with changing market demands.

There are pitfalls too, however, with lack of support being the main offender. A common trade-off in the open source world, the price companies pay for freely available software is that support is either limited or expensive.

Compatibility can be an issue as well; since open source software development often features multiple concurrent strands and forks, it can be hard to ensure that your software is up to date, and that it works with that of your partners and customers.

Open source CMS software can suffer visually as well, especially compared to larger rivals. This may seen like a minor issue, but the layout and user interface of a CRM system can prove pivotal; if your sales staff can't intuitively navigate a CRM package, they won't get the most use out of it, making your business less efficient as a result.

The question of which open source CRM is best is a difficult one to answer, largely because the answer will vary from company to company. A CRM package that fits one company perfectly might be entirely wrong for your organisation.

Instead, you should focus on finding the best CRM software for you. Examine your business needs, and work out what exactly it is that you need a CRM to do. Here's some of the top capabilities you should be looking at when choosing a CRM package.

The first thing businesses should be looking for when choosing an open source CRM is how well it scales. You might only have a handful of people on your sales force right now, but you're going to want a CRM package that can grow with your business, which means looking at a package without hefty upgrade fees.

You should also take migration into account. It's well worth putting in a bit of extra legwork early on to make sure that if you do decide to move to one of the larger, business-class CRM solutions, you'll be able to do so with a minimum of hassle.

Most CRMs will perform equally well when it comes to basic functions, but where the real value lies for many businesses is in their integrations with other business tools. Modern CRMs will work seamlessly with software like MailChimp, Xero and Google's G Suite apps.

Linking all your tools together can have an immeasurable impact on speeding up your organisation's workflows. Do a full audit of what software is in use within your business, and then look for a CRM package that will directly integrate with as many of them as possible.

One of the benefits of using a CRM solution is that it allows businesses to make informed decisions based on concrete data. However, this only works if the CRM package in question allows the business to surface relevant insights.

Organisations should be on the lookout for software that contains strong reporting capabilities, good archiving and any other features that will make use of the large amount of data it harvests.

Support is the biggest real stumbling block for many open source CRMs. Support will frequently only be available to customers on a paid subscription plan, or will be provided by the community rather than an enterprise grade support team.

This can turn out to be an unexpected problem for unwary businesses. If there's no professional support structure to help when its CRM goes down, the unfortunate enterprise could be faced with days of downtime, if not longer.

While it's impossible to definitively state which CRM package is best (for the reasons stated above), we can narrow down some great options for specific tasks and applications, with the caveat that many others are available, so consider these simply as a starting point.

Odoo CRM offers great reporting options for businesses that are looking to derive the maximum amount of insight from their sales and workflow data. Forecasting is excellent, and reports are simple to generate.

Thanks to a simple, easy-to-use interface, Anteil CRM is an excellent choice for businesses that want to get started with their first CRM package. Navigation through the browser-based frontend is intuitive, and its lightweight nature means it shouldn't be too hard to set up.

Based on the popular SugarCRM platform, SuiteCRM is widely hailed as one of the most fully-featured and polished open source CRM packages around. It boasts a wide range of capabilities, modules and integrations, and is an excellent choice for experienced users.

vTiger is an incredibly flexible CRM offering, thanks to the ability to create modules from scratch with matching workflows. While it requires a fair degree of technical knowledge to perform some of the more advanced customisations, power users will find that they can shape it to suit all of their needs.

What sets Zurmo apart from rivals is that it's 'gamified', allowing users to earn scores, achievements and badges for completing certain tasks. The idea is to not only make the software fun, but also to help users become more proficient in its use by incentivising them to increase their skillset.

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The best open source CRM software - IT PRO