Crm Webinar

Open Source CRM
Michelle Murrain, Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
March 27, 2008

What I’ll cover today
What is a CRM?
Kinds of CRM
Why Open Source CRM?
Examples of Open Source CRMs
How to choose a CRM

So what is a CRM, anyway?
CRM stands for Constituent Relationship Management
aka Community Relationship Management
aka Contact Relationship Management
aka Customer Relationship Management (its for-profit progenitor)
There are many kinds, and they have different feature sets

What’s in a CRM?
Basic Data
Basic contact info
Track activities (calls, events)
Track donations
Tracking Volunteers
Actions
Email blasts
Automated donations
Event management and registration

Kinds of CRM
Desktop & Client/Server CRM
Download and install on network and/or desktops
Web Server-based CRM
Download and install on your intranet web server, or on your public-facing web server
Software as a Service
No download or installation – all hosted on companies site

Categories of CRM by license
Proprietary
Open Source In Spirit (built on proprietary platforms)
Open Source CRM built on proprietary OS/Database
Open Source CRMs built to run entirely on Open Source platforms
Software as a Service (not obtaining software, obtaining services)

Examples of CRM: Proprietary
Blackbaud Raiser’s edge
Donor Perfect
Fundware
Sage
...
...

Examples: SaaS
Democracy In Action
Convio
Kintera
Salesforce
eTapestry
Both Salesforce and eTapestry are free (as in “beer”) for some users:
Salesforce – 10 free licenses
ETapestry – free for 500 or fewer contacts

Examples: Open Source In Spirit
METRIX (built with MS Access)
EBase (built with FileMaker Pro)

Examples: Open Source
Depends on proprietary OS and/or Database
mpower open (built on .NET and depends on MS SQL server)
Organizer’s database (Windows and Visual Basic)
Compiere (requires proprietary databases)

Examples: Open Source
Can be run completely using open source OS/tools
Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP stack):
CiviCRM
SugarCRM
BaseBuilder
Any OS, Apache Tomcat, Java:
OpenCRX
vTiger

Free as in “beer” - organizations can get good CRM without spending a lot of money
Free as in “speech” - you can see, and modify the code behind the CRM
Open APIs – open source CRMs have open APIs (APIs that are without cost, and documented)
Community support
Help to enhance open source CRM by contributing to CRM projects/products

People seem to be satisfied with their choice of open source CRM:
In the NTEN CRM satisfaction CiviCRM was first in satisfaction, SugarCRM and Organizer’s Database were 3 rd and 4 th (out of 22 tools.)
These tools were all ahead of Blackbaud, Convio, Kintera, and other proprietary CRMs.

Why not open source CRM?
You need features not present in any current open source CRM
Your staff are familiar with a particular CRM
You want Software as a Service (SaaS)

Open Source CRM
All current open source offerings are:
Stable and secure
Support (both paid and community) readily available
Some are “Enterprise Class”

Web Based CRMs: CiviCRM
LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
Web-based
Integrates with Drupal or Joomla (Drupal is best)
Has a new stand alone version
Version 2.0 is newly released
http://www.civicrm.org
Webinar 4/29

Web Based CRMs: SugarCRM
Written primarily for Sales in for-profit organizations
LAMP stack, fully open source
GPL v3
http://www.sugarcrm.com

SugarCRM
Strengths:
Lots of features
Popular
Active Community
Can be used by large organizations
Easy to install
Has a company behind it – so paid support is easily available
Weaknesses
Designed for sales/business

Client/Server CRM: mpower open
Very mature product, very newly open source
Comparible to Raiser’s Edge
Windows client
Depends on MS SQL Server
Written in C#/.NET
No community yet
http://www.mpoweropen.com

mpower open
Strengths
Designed for nonprofits
Used by medium and large organizations
Comparible to Raiser’s edge
Mature product
Completely open APIs
Company behind it – paid support is readily availabe
Lots of future potential

mpower open
Weaknesses
Newly open sourced – no community around it
Not easy to install
Currently depends on proprietary platform and database

Desktop CRM: eBase Pro
Has been around for a long while
Is not truly open source – written with FileMaker Pro
Can be customized if you own FileMaker Pro
Good for small-medium sized orgs
Future is uncertain
http://www.ebase.org

Dekstop CRM: Organizer’s Database
Windows only
Written in Visual Basic
GPL
Customizable
Active Community
Still under active development
http://www.organizersdb.org

How to choose a CMS
What’s your budget?
Cost is not just the cost of software, it includes implementation, support, and data migration
Remember to include staff time in your calculations
Can you identify sources of support?
Paid support from vendor/company
Consultant support
Community support (takes staff time)

How to choose a CMS, continuted
Features – what do you need?
Basic contact management
Donation tracking
Tracking of activities and events
Integrated online donations
Email advocacy or newsletters
Other features
Compare feature sets of different CRMs

How to choose a CMS, continued
Open APIs, and ease of data import and export
How important is open source?
Platform issues (web, desktop)
Database issues (some open source CRMs require proprietary databases)

Resources
Software choice worksheet: http://nosi.net/projects/primer
NTEN CRM satisfaction survey: http://www.nten.org/research/crm
Great Idealware article on CRM: http://www.idealware.org/articles/crm_software.php

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Crm Webinar

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Crm Webinar — Presentation Transcript