Internal Business Tracking Software

[KdCam5]

Hello All! Nice to meet you – I am new to Small Business Forum.
Does anyone know of a software for purchase or a company to write a unique program for internal tracking? I am a Director of a company selling real estate/bankruptcy estates/notes/bonds/etc. The purpose of the software I am looking to purchase or have written is to enable sales employees nationwide to input their personal prospects and view other district prospects. I must be able to give levels of rights (edit/input, just view info.). From this information I plan on generating reports for our annual and strategic plans. More specifically, the software would host locational, financial, probability and other information for three major types of products.
Thank you in advance for any recommendations and advice in this matter. If you need more information please let me know.

[Harold Mansfield]

Are you talking about something like a CRM? Customer Relationship Manager. From what you've said you need something that tracks clients information and leads company wide.
Try looking at something like Salesforce (http://www.salesforce.com/homepage/index-b.jsp?r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt %26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3 D1%26ved%3D0CD0QFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fww w.salesforce.com%252F%26ei%3DHGBOVKPtG8nriQLNhICgB g%26usg%3DAFQjCNEieWBf1UPatv-5Qagfh_2ktZGNbg%26bvm%3Dbv.77880786%2Cd.cGE&r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct %3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26v ed%3D0CD0QFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.sale sforce.com%252F%26ei%3DHGBOVKPtG8nriQLNhICgBg%26us g%3DAFQjCNEieWBf1UPatv-5Qagfh_2ktZGNbg%26bvm%3Dbv.77880786%2Cd.cGE&s_tnt=73583:1:0)

[Brian Altenhofel]

Sounds like you're looking for an ERP system. What I see done most of the time is assembling an ERP system from other applications that do their task well and then glue them together as needed. For example, an organization might use Salesforce for a CRM, Quickbooks for accounting, Zendesk for customer support, Tableau for business intelligence, etc. Some of these applications integrate directly with one another, others need a "glue" system built around them or can use an app like Zapier to facilitate communication between them.

[KdCam5]

Harold, Brian – thank you very much for your help with this. I looked into Saleforce, spoke with an agent, etc. This system seems pretty costly over time. I am working with just about ten employees, but the monthly cost is up to $250 per annually. At one of my positions there was a company hired to write unique software program, which even with higher costs upfront, saved money in the long term. Any recommendations of a company capable of writing something similar to Salesforce? Regarding the suggestion of assembling an ERP system, are there any programs out there that you would stay away from based upon poor usability/functionality? Also, do you have experience with Sharepoint? Again, thank you very much.

[Harold Mansfield]

Creating something like that is out of my area of expertise, but I have to believe trying to replicate Salesforce is going to be pretty costly. Salesforce is just one suggestion. There are many CRM's and similar software's out there. I'm willing to be that there's something out of the box that you can use, but they are all likely to have subscription based pricing.

[Brian Altenhofel]

At one of my positions there was a company hired to write unique software program, which even with higher costs upfront, saved money in the long term.

There are tradeoffs between SaaS, traditional software, and custom work. SaaS generally looks on the surface to cost more because it is subscription-based, but it also tends to evolve more rapidly with features and bug fixes included in the subscription. Traditional software seems to cost less because it's one outlay up front, but usually you're stuck with what came in the box until the next release 2-3 years later. Custom work is very expensive but also tends to cost less long term when all factors are considered. A custom system can be tailored to exactly what your business needs instead of you having to adapt to the software. But custom work is expensive because you're reinventing a lot of wheels. Used to, it was the norm for businesses with more than $10M in annual revenues to have a 100% custom ERP system. Nowadays, they tend to use SaaS or traditional software where it's "close enough" and only do custom work where it's absolutely necessary or to glue the various pieces together.

For example, they might have an intranet portal that is pretty much the gateway to all of their different tools. Some will do data entry via the portal, others will have it manage synchronization across different applications. Some will set up a sort of facade API so that their e-commerce store can relay orders to their accounting software, CRM, upstream suppliers, etc. all in a single request. Another advantage of a gateway in front of all of the applications is that since it has to read and write to them anyway, migrations are a lot easier if you decide to change applications later.


Any recommendations of a company capable of writing something similar to Salesforce?

Competent application developers. If you came to me and said "I want a system just like Salesforce", I'd say "six figure budget". That's not saying what it actually would end up costing for something that was "similar to Salesforce" because you may not need everything that an application like that offers, but that's what someone who wants a custom system like that needs to be prepared for. Depending on how thorough the spec is, it could be $50K and it could be $500K.

That's why it's probably best to use SaaS or traditional software where it's "close enough" and then glue things together.


Also, do you have experience with Sharepoint? Again, thank you very much.

The only experience I have with SharePoint was migrating an intranet website off of it to Drupal a couple of years ago.

[MyITGuy]

If Salesforce is to expensive, check out Zoho CRM. I was looking at their product line earlier this year and it seemed to cover most of the functionality you are looking for.