A few thoughts on Luxor CRM

The Luxor CRM team reached out to give me a briefing on their company and their product set and it was great to learn more about them.  The company, founded in 2000, is located in Toronto, Canada.     They have a relatively small set of customers, around 50 – 60, ranging in size from  5 users to 3000+.

I like that they consider themselves a boutique firm, focused  more on customer success than bringing on new customers.    Their thinking is that 90% of the time CRM deployments fail due to lack of adoption (I agree) and their focus is to create a deployment plan (free deployment) and customized experience that maximizes value while minimizing adoption issues.

What about pricing?

Luxor CRM is confident in their overall solution, their ability to deliver a solid product backed up with services and support to make their customers successful.  They offer a month to month option (no contract required) and see most of these customers convert to a standard contract.  The month to month option speaks volumes and I am hoping to see many more vendors embrace the flexibility this offers customers.

Deployments

As with most CRM systems, fields can be added, fields can be hidden, languages, currencies,and date/time formats modified, and so on. During the deployment process the Luxor CRM team works closely with a customer-designated CRM admin.  This process, which I like, works well as it trains the customer on how to support their own system and it educates them on the types of customizations that are possible, leaving the customer better educated when they “go live” with the system.

Logging in

While Luxor CRM is a web-based application it is modelled upon the Windows desktop.  As records are opened they can be minimized to a task area at the bottom of the page, allowing easier multi-tasking within the CRM system. This was one of those special features that I really liked.

The out of the box home page is built to show you what you need to know.  Tasks that are due now are right in front of you and, for sales people, a nice quota meter (using the standard gas gauge control) helps you, and your managers, know how you are doing.

While the primary focus for the solution is sales they are seeing good traction in the restoration market (think insurance companies, car repair, etc..) and have a support module for those that are looking to leverage the solution for their customer service needs.

Adding Leads

There are three ways to add leads to the system:

• You can add them manually through the CRM’s web interface.
• Web to lead.  This model, which you find with other systems like Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and others, enables you to add code to  your website’s forms to capture user information and automatically push that form data into the CRM system.
• Bulk import.  Data can be bulk loaded into the system through CSV files.

Luxor CRM is flexible enough to model your sales process and leads.  As leads are added and converted into opportunities they will follow the process you have defined.

Reporting and Alerts

All fields can be reported on and customers can create reports and dashboards easily.  Alerts can also be created, based upon customer-generated views, to keep users up to date when they are not logged into the system.

Architecture

Luxor CRM is a web-based SAAS solution, built on the Microsoft technology stack.  What is different, from many systems, is that customers can choose to accept, or skip, new features.  Features are always released to all customers as disabled and, after the  customer has a chance to review the new features, they can decide if they need them and want to enable them.  This ability is one of the most exciting pieces of the application as it focuses on giving the customer and flexibility to avoid burdening their users with features they don’t need (which always leads to confusion and frustration).

Overall I feel that Luxor CRM is a solid CRM choice for your business.  While very similar to the dozens of other CRM products on the market today their focus on adoption and customer success means you should consider them when talking to vendors.

John

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