Decisions Decisions for IT Company

[alicepohl]

Our owner isn't convinced about SugarCRM and wants me to do due diligence into other programmes out there
We are in IT - we provide support (Call Outs) and sales
Budget is a concern
We can either go the route of customising SugarOpenSource - we currently have a developer skilled in PHP
I reckon this would take at least 3 x months to do (so we need to consider this cost implication - using developer purely for this project)
Or we can go route of finding cost-effective CRM (once off fee) that does 95% of what we need it to do ... and not worry about the 5% it cannot do
Any IT companies out there that have done the maths ... please reply

[salesagility]

Anything you do will be an investment. The difference with open source is the "freedom".

If you buy proprietary software and your business model changes ... you're in a hole if the vendor doesn't have something that meets your new needs.

Or, if you buy proprietary software and the vendor withdraws support/bug fixes because they want you to upgrade to a new release ... you're in a hole again

If you use open source, well, you mould it to suit. Yes, you may have to develop. But nobody can dictate what you do. You're "free" to develop in whatever direction your business needs. And you're free to upgrade or not upgrade according to your needs and desires. Not the vendors.

IMHO

[roblaus]

Greg is right, But this is the philosophical / long term side.

In my opinion it gets down to how much do you have to spend. You won't get any decent CRM product for under 500 € per seat, And to have it working out of the box is just wishful thinking.

So if you have 10 seats you can spend app. 5000 on the developer and you have a bespoke system with all the bells and whistles you need. Plus in house support plus no maintenance cost (as in paying 20% of the licensefee per year) plus all the things that were mentioned above.

You should check whether Sugar can cover 60-70% of your needs (write them down and have the owner signing it). Then check the forums and other sources (Sugar forge) for existing solutions for your remaining points. And THEN start writing the specs for the developer.