Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Posted: 03 Jun 2010 01:00 AM PDT

Best Free and Open Source CRM Software: Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy for managing and understanding clients and sales prospects to help enhance customer satisfaction and thus increase profit and reduce operational costs. CRM software is needed to collect the correct information about a company's customers and arrange that information for proper analysis and action. It is a tool for organizing, automating, and synchronize business processes for sales activities, marketing, customer service, and technical support. The information gathered by a CMS software needs to be kept up-to-date, accessible to employees, and provide the knowledge for employees to convert that data into products better matched to customers' needs.

If you happen to own a business and are looking for CRM applications, I have here a list of some of the most well-known free and open-source customer relationship management (CRM) software available today:

CiviCRM

CiviCRM is an open source CRM software that calls itself a "constituent relationship management solution". From its project website, it is described as a powerful contact, fundraising and eCRM system that allow you to record and manage information about your various constituents including volunteers, activists, donors, employees, clients, vendors, etc. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalized, and especially designed to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organizations. It may be utilized either standalone, alongside Drupal and Joomla! content management systems (CMS), or SAAS (Software-As-A-Service). The standalone version is designed to work alongside other CMSs.

Opentaps

Opentaps is an open source CRM + ERP that is based on Apache OFBiz. It is web based, and it is aimed towards small to medium sized businesses. Here are some of basic CRM features of Opentaps:
* Automate sales process from lead gathering to conversion
* Manage sales opportunities
* Create sales visibility with forecasts
* Share calendar and tasks with the entire team
* Quotes, order entry, and order prioritization
* Manage marketing campaigns, including outbound emails and call management
* Address lookup and correction via USPS
* Voice Over IP (VOIP) Integration

openCRX

openCRX is an enterprise class open source CRM software that is loaded with powerful features such as role-based security, system-wide/pervasive audit-trail, true platform independence, virtually unlimited scalability, and more. It is web based and works with any latest versions of IE, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc. openCRX runs on any platform with Apache Tomcat and one of the major database management systems (e.g. HSQLDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, Oracle, or IBM DB2). Because of its component-based architecture and open standards, you can write your own workflows or develop your own extensions.

vtiger CRM

vtiger CRM is an open source CRM software that was forked from SugarCRM with the goal of being a fully open source CRM application and having the same functionality of SugarCRM and Salesforce.com. It is built on the LAMP/WAMP (Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack with code from other open source projects. Some of the main features of vtiger CRM:
* Sales automation
* Customer support & service functions, including a customer self-service portal
* Marketing automation
* Analysis and reporting
* Integration with corporate E-mail systems (plugin for Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird extension)
* Support of the Asterisk PBX phone system
* Tag cloud functionality
* RSS feed subscription
* PDF document generation via the TCPDF library

hipergate

hipergate is an open source web based software suite that is written entirely in Java. It runs on multiple databases and operating systems and supports multiple languages. hipergate is described as the only Open Source application with such a wide functional coverage. By default, it includes 7 different modules that can be activated in a user/group/domain basis. Here are some of those functional modules:
* Collaborative tools and Groupware Module - includes discussion forums, shared calendar, agenda, TO-DO lists, etc.
* Contact Management Module - covers the most common CRM tasks
* Project Management and Support Issues Tracking Module - handle projects, tasks, bugs, support requests and incidences
* eShop Module - complete shop catalogue, with multiple warehouse control, stock flow, pricing policies, invoices
* Content Management Module - web-based page builder

There are other popular open source CRM software that I've already mentioned before. These are OpenERP, Adempiere, and Compiere, which I've classified as Free and Open Source Finance/Accounting Software.