coppercliff1

Here's some specifics which may help in getting a handle on what our company is looking for. We market a number of franchises. There are two wings to the business — qualifying prospects and leading them through to signing a franchise contract; followed by managing existing franchise contracts, keeping them viable and paying fees. Therefore the CRM must have a variety of specialty fields relating to the contract terms, including a scan of the signed contract. In other words, a comprehensive management package, task scheduling, recurring transaction reminders, mass client communications, invoicing, inventory management, sales cycle management, interface with the accounting software (Money Works). We've been shown FileMaker and are impressed, but are not yet certain this is the way to go. 20 seats, 300 clients and suppliers, 75 products, 3000 sales and purchase transactions per annum. Many clients hold multiple franchises and multiple locations. Likewise there are multiple projects associated with any client. The existing software is Maximizer. We are plagued with confused input with numerous duplications of clients, suppliers and contacts. Management has clearly underestimated what's required to manage client and supplier data records. When making a change we definitely want to learn from our mistakes and move efficiently to more solid ground. These are our expectations. The questions are how best to get there, and what should we expect to budget, both short term and long term.

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For a company grossing $3 to $5 million in annual sales, what would be a reasonable budgeting expectation for a CRM solution? And what are their options? The company sells contracted services and needs to keep track of various client parameters, and to perform searches based on those fields. They wish to monitor the progress of individual sales development and the performance of their representatives. They need to be able to send and receive email with attachments, and generate orders which can then be transmitted to their accounting software. Access to data online is not a current necessity but would be a nice bonus. Their current solution is only semi-relational, has become a mess, is clearly inadequate for their needs. They are leaning slightly towards a custom solution but are also open to an off-the-shelf solution. What are the financial and operational trade-offs of these two routes? What time frame should they contemplate? What should they budget for cleaning up and regularizing existing data? What to budget to put new software into place? And what for ongoing costs? Have I asked all the right questions for a company currently preparing to get serious about making a change?