I need a CRM software for my company and I think of two right now: 1) WORKetc 2) Salesforce with API integration to project management software. As you see I need a project management and a CRM integration. I think that WORKetc might be a better solution because it's all in one and could be cheaper than connecting SF by API. What do you think?
I used to work on large CRM systems and one thing I discovered pretty quickly was there was no "one size fits all". You'd walk in to a customers and they'd say "I don't know why you are here for a full day, we don't need anything special" and you'd leave at the end of the day having used it all learning about the customers business and all their little industry quirks. A key thing is how extendable you need the system to be, what internal resources you have to do IT changes and how much you want to spend. Sit down and do a full requirements document and draw up a grid of key features and then demo salesforce, sugar etc and see how they stack up.
Sarah got it spot on - CRM solutions might seem similar but they are actually pretty different from each other. And each specific project has requirements that can be fulfilled by one but not with the other. Some are more easy to use than others, some are more intuitive and some just have a ton of features from which you'll probably use no more than 20%. So just test around some demos and see which one you like best before you decide to get stuck with one. Some choices to consider that I've personally checked are SalesForce, SugarCRM or vTiger. Hope that helps.
SalesForce is pretty reliable when it comes down to the Sales side of CRM, however I discovered it to be a bit too expensive for a small-to-medium firm to handle, so I have tested OpenERP. It works like a charm, the CRM module is surprisingly light on its feet, but you can also have it for Accounting and HR. The developer version, I believe, has a one-time charge, but overall it's worth it. It's flexible and doesn't eat up too many resources. Claudia A.