New Crm OS or Microsoft Dynamic 4.0

[print2group]

Hi, We are a small but growing business. Initially we only need 6 users but we will be fast growing to a sales force of 20 within 12 Months. I am looking at Sugar and Microsoft Dynamic 4.0. Does anyone have any experience on both? If not but you have experience on sugar please inform of any reasons you may think Sugar will work for us.
All the new sales force will be working remote so we will have to look at a hosted version.

Can Sugar integrate with outlook? Can Sugar integrate with websites (I.E take the contact info and put it straight into the CRM?
Can Sugar be hosted on a linux Surver?
Any questions welcome, as I am very new to the implementation of a CRM within the business.

[roblaus]

Simply put: If you believe that MS is worth the money you can always switch later.

A basic Sugar instance can be set up within the hour not requiring more than an internet connection and a 300 USD standard desktop with any OS and any browser.
On the contrary read the requirements for MS CRM - Outlook, Exchange, SBS, IIS, MSSQL, IE.

And yes, Sugar integrates nicely with Outlook (and Thunderbird and GMail), a web to lead form exists as well and works well as I see every day.

In one sentence: If you know exactly what you want, if you are MS centric, if you have all HW and SW needed already, if you are ready to make an investment upfront and if you accept that you are locked in for an unknown number of years dealing with certified partners only then MS is something to be considered.
Otherwise go for Sugar and see whether it suits you and whether it can fulfill your requirements. This learning phase you will have in any case. Make your final decision after that. Not now.

rgds

[print2group]

Hi Robert, Thank you so much for taking the time out to write this information for me.

I’m not sure that MS is worth the money, that is one reason I have really started looking at Sugar.

It’s nice to know that sugar integrates well with web based leads, this will work well for us. I’m going to give it a go, after all what have I got to lose.

Kind Regads
Kristian

www.print2group.com

[eggsurplus]

We use Sugar for our CRM and Dynamic GP for our finance. We didn't like Dynamics at all for the CRM portion.

[print2group]

Thanks for the update, as we speek i'm working on the Sugar CRM, I like what i see. Looks like it has all we need and i like the way it works. Early day's though.

Thanks

Kristian

www.print2group.com

[MattNC]

On the contrary read the requirements for MS CRM - Outlook, Exchange, SBS, IIS, MSSQL, IE.

... if you are MS centric, if you have all HW and SW needed already, if you are ready to make an investment upfront and if you accept that you are locked in for an unknown number of years dealing with certified partners only then MS is something to be considered...
rgds

I'm admittedly biased towards MS CRM, but to set the record straight on roblaus' comment above for future visitors to this forum: Microsoft CRM doesn't require Exchange or SBS, or even that you work with a certified partner (though, as with any CRM system, your business will get more out of it if someone helps you understand how to leverage it for your specific business processes).

MS CRM is available as a hosted service, allowing you to forego all investment in hardware, for as little as $39/user/month from http://crm.dynamics.com. For an on-premise installation for 6-20 users, you can get away with a pretty run-of-the-mill server with Windows Server 2003 Standard which includes IIS. You will need to purchase SQL Server 2005 and install some other elements like the .NET framework (which is a free download).

Either MS CRM Online or On-Premise can use POP email accounts to integrate with Outlook (no out-of-the-box integration with Thunderbird unfortunately). There are also plenty of free add-ons and examples to do things like web-to-lead, etc.

All that being said, the main thing is to evaluate which system is going to be most flexible to map to your business requirements now and as your company grows. Just my 2 cents.