Is Open Source Viable for CRM?

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CRMGuru.com
Member

Posted 26-Oct-2004 11:46 AM

SugarCRM Inc., developer of the world's fastest growing open-source CRM application built on a pure LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform, is now shipping Sugar Sales and Sugar Sales Professional 2.0. The additional functionality gives users an enterprise-class CRM software platform at a fraction of the price of comparable proprietary, closed source CRM products. Since its release in July, Sugar Sales has gained a leadership position in the commercial open-source CRM software category with more than 50,000 downloads, while Sugar Sales Professional has gained traction in a large number of companies that require a more advanced feature set.

Sugar Sales evidently sees a market in open source. I just received a press release from Centric CRM touting its open source CRM.

Do you think open source is a viable CRM option?

Posted 28-Oct-2004 07:58 AM

I'm responding to this, admittedly, as someone with a "dog in the hunt" (i.e. we're a vendor of an Open Source CRM called Centric CRM—www.centriccrm.com). My reason for responding though is neither to simply have more people visit our site—though if you want to that's great—nor to say "us good—them bad".

My reason for responding is that if those just beginning to look for Open Source CRMs believe going in to the process that Sugar is the best we (as an Open Source Community) have to offer, then those people might get disheartened and look no further. The truth is even apart from ourselves there are far better products out there in terms of technical architecture, stability, features, users, etc. Sugar is an immature product. While understandable (they've only been around a short while) and they'll get better (they raised capital) in the short term you'd be advised to look around at not only us, but others like Compiere.

Much to our chagrin, Sugar CRM is following the classic VC / internet marketing model of the late 90's—raise capital on a story, announce to great fanfare, try to "grab mindshare", claim superiority, and then hope you can ride that to success. The problem is true enterprise-class software takes years to develop. It can't be thrown together over night with a handful of developers.

And here's why approach affects us and others. A grizzled old professor of mine back in business school once told the class, "the best way to kill a company is to effectively market a weak product" I've never forgotten that. I actually believe it's true. And while one can argue that this issue is Sugar's concern not mine, I see it differently. If users test Sugar CRM and walk away unsatisfied (perhaps never to return to Sugar) that's problem. If those same people have a poor experience and believe Sugar is the best out there, then we suffer as well as do those that provide applications (Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL) lower in the stack. Their approach IMHO slows down the growth of the Open Source "pie". My suggestion: If you're looking for an Open Source CRM, look around. It's a rapidly evolving space. While not a lot of strong candidates yet, they're coming.

Posted 28-Oct-2004 08:38 AM

Indeed, only a few show up as "Production" or "Mature" quality...

OSS CRM search on freshmeat.net

Actually getting to see these apps in action varies much too—for some it's "click to try the demo" others are more hand-holding "let us contact you to show you a demo" and some are "just download, install and run for a demo"—the latter being sometimes a non-trivial task best executed by your local neightborhood techie.

G

Posted 28-Oct-2004 10:44 AM

We agree with G's sentiment about "getting to see these apps". In many cases it's not easy. In the Open Source communities collective defense, at this point OSI code is almost always available to all by download, license, etc. As often, though it's not easily brought up in a form where users can use it. At least for the average guy. We're probably as far along as anybody with OS CRMs but we have a ways to go. Our source is available, but we also make it available in binary with installers for Linux and Windows, and working on others. Source is great for hackers. But great code, if only available in source, is of no value to many when it isn't easily installed, trialed, etc.

Posted 28-Oct-2004 11:28 AM

We started looking at the Big commercial guys out there and realized we did not know what we really wanted or needed. We hunted for Shareware and Open Source programs to test the waters. We had trouble finding one and came upon XRMS which had a demo. (One of the few that found that did) Since we could not view the others we found and it appeared to be what we needed for the most part, we started using it. It is far more mature than SugarCRM. It is only behind SugarCRM in the availablity of pretty graphs. We have modified the "xxxx" out of the XRMS application to the point that or code changes are no longer compatible with code. Too bad, I think we really made some neat enchancements. However, it has served us well as a prototype and test bed for CRM. We are now in the process of determining if we need to move to our corporate standard of dot net and asp. Becouse of the other back office apps, we probably will rewrite the app, which we call Sales Pipeline Tracker. This will allow use to interface all of the apps.

Is it a viable option? After seeing what one is capable of accomplishing, I think so.

Posted 05-May-2005 07:48 PM

I came across an Open Source CRM/SFA solution which I have learned has been under development for over a year called Centraview ( Centraview Sourceforge). They are also providing Centraview as a hosted solution ( Centraview). It is a scalable J2EE solution built on Java, Struts, JBoss and MySQL. This is definately worth checking out.

abhishekkatiyar
Member

Posted 23-Jan-2006 07:22 PM

That's true Open Source SugarCRM is a giving more options to those entrepreneurs, who can not invest too heavily but still want a CRM which meets all requirements.

Abhishek Katiyar
Business Development Executive
Apptility Software Pvt. Ltd.
http://www.apptility.com

CRM Coach
Member

Posted 24-Jan-2006 01:03 PM

I think it's critical that you first know what you want and need. At the end of the day, you need a CRM system that makes the doing of your business easier, better and faster. If your business processes are not yet understood or mature, that's that place to start. It's a myth that you can plug in CRM to straighten out your business processes.

To start off, start by answering the question: "What do I need to be able to do?" Ask this question of every function and position in your company...this is the beginnings of your business requirements which becomes the ruler by which you measure any CRM software.

Scott Gingrich
The CRM Coach
(519) 538-4619
Author of the "Insider's CRM Success Toolkit" that holds nothing back and gives you the hands-on detail you need to succeed with CRM. Free reports with Insider CRM Street Smarts.
http://www.thecrmcoach.com