Open source tips. CRM, ERP, CMS and open source tutorials.

Rimini Street is the leading independent provider of enterprise software support services. The company is redefining the market with an innovative, next-generation support program that enables Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards licensees to remain on their current software release without any required upgrades or migrations for ten years or more. In addition to a higher service-level commitment, Rimini Street provides customers with an average savings of more than 50% in annual support fees when compared to Oracle.

Rimini Street, Inc., the leading independent maintenance and support provider for Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards (NASDAQ:ORCL) software, announced its clients are saving millions of dollars in annual support and upgrade costs by extending the lifespan of their current enterprise software releases for three, five, or even ten years or more. Rimini Street Support enables software licensees to avoid costly upgrades by leveraging their existing software releases ranging from brand new to more than a decade old and receiving full support, including tax and regulatory updates, 24×7 with 30 minute guaranteed response. In contrast, software support policies from vendors like Oracle and SAP require their support customers to continually upgrade to new releases or face increasing annual penalty fees and eventual termination of new update service for their older, stable releases.

The City of Flint, Michigan is using Rimini Street Support to leverage its stable, decade-old PeopleSoft 7.5 release to smoothly support city human resource and payroll operations. Originally debuting in September of 1997, PeopleSoft Release 7.5 turned ten years old this year and is a clear example of how enterprise software coupled with Rimini Street Support can deliver significant annual IT cost savings, a better value, and a strong return on existing software investments.

“We look forward to driving even more value and a longer lifespan out of our stable PeopleSoft 7.5 release,” said Tom O’Brien, Database Administrator, The City of Flint Michigan. “Rimini Street’s knowledgeable staff, responsive service, and high quality tax and regulatory updates continue to provide us the support we need to keep our PeopleSoft 7.5 release operating smoothly. Additionally, we have saved over 50% on our annual support costs and have been able to avoid several costly upgrades that were required under the vendor’s support program in order for us to remain eligible for support. Rimini Street is a strategic IT partner for the City of Flint, and we couldn’t be happier with the service and results.”

Siebel CRM 6, initially introduced as Siebel eBusiness 2000, is nearly eight years old and continues to provide value for many licensees, including Rimini Street client Wenger Manufacturing.

“Wenger Manufacturing has been running Siebel 6 for almost 8 years now and we have not found any business need to upgrade,” said Jesse Mitchell of Wenger Manufacturing’s IT Group. “Siebel 6 continues to meet all of our business objectives, and after years of paying high annual maintenance fees we switched to Rimini Street Support. Rimini Street provides the annual support services we need to keep our mission-critical Siebel 6 system operating properly, and we are saving more than 50% over what we were paying Siebel and Oracle in annual support costs and we are not required to upgrade. Rimini Street has allowed us to redirect annual cost savings and resources to other important IT projects.”

Many other Rimini Street clients are running newer software releases such as PeopleSoft 8.9 and Siebel 7.8 that were just made available in recent years, and Rimini Street Support is designed to help keep these releases running smoothly and delivering strong returns to clients well into the next decade.

“Enterprise software today is more stable than ever and current releases can run business operations through 2020 and beyond with the right support program,” said Seth Ravin, president and CEO of Rimini Street. “As more and more organizations come to understand that the enterprise software releases developed over the last decade are going to be the stable and mature releases that carry them into the next decade and beyond, the focus is clearly shifting to cost savings and driving stronger returns out of existing enterprise software investments.”

Tags: Rimini Street, clients, saving, software, news, CRM, case studies

Best-in-class companies are implementing Intelligent Contact Center solutions to differentiate through service excellence. This is the overarching message in the new AberdeenGroup benchmark report entitled: “The Intelligent Contact Center: Increasing Multi-Channel Visibility“.

The study addresses the reality that the contact center has evolved into a critical interaction point for customers. Companies are striving to gain a competitive edge through customer service. Yet, Aberdeen found that 61 percent of organizations surveyed are challenged to leverage the increasing amounts of data available to the contact center accumulated through customer management systems (CRM, SFA and order fulfillment) and customer interactions (customer data, issues and transactions). This can diminish the customer experience by negatively impacting service speed and reliability.

Best-in-class companies that strive to differentiate themselves through customer service are rolling out Intelligent Contact Centers to address the quality of responses provided to customers. According to the study, an Intelligent Contact Center provides consistent, accurate and timely information in response to customer inquiries via the customer’s chosen medium. It is capable of collecting, analyzing, managing and disseminating data across multiple channels such as phone, email and Web self-service.

Aberdeen cited competitive pressures, the need to improve first contact closure rates and escalating operational costs as the three main drivers among best-in-class companies implementing an Intelligent Contact Center strategy. 97% of these organizations experienced improvement in customer satisfaction within two years of implementing an Intelligent Contact Center. In addition, most have experienced an improvement in cost per contact and first contact closure rate. Conversely, none of the laggard companies experienced an increase in customer satisfaction, and some report that their cost per contact has increased over the same two-year period. This is due largely to the challenge of managing data to effectively meet customer needs with their existing solutions.

“In order to achieve best-in-class status, companies must implement knowledge management solutions. Providing dependable, accurate and well-timed data across channels is critical to enhancing the customer experience,” said Alan Hubbard, SVP, Customer Management Technologies Group at Aberdeen.

The study revealed that best-in-class companies are more than twice as likely to implement knowledge management solutions. Enabling technologies like natural language queries and guided search drive success because customers and agents can retrieve data quickly and reliably across any channel. Companies can deal with customer issues at their point of origin, while increasing agent efficiency and improving customer satisfaction levels.

Through its offerings, which include ePowerCenter and RealDialog, Astute Solutions is meeting the urgent need for driving cost reductions through multi-channel agent success. It is focused on ensuring consistent responses across phone, email, chat, Web and self- service channels.

Tags: Astute Solutions, knowledge, management, capabilities, CRM case studies, CRM news

GroupForce is a set of various business management tools designed to be easily tailored to the way you do business, so as to streamline your processes, increase your productivity, and your profitability.

GroupForce is designed on the premise that each business is different from the next, and the tools you use should be adaptable to how you need to use them, and not you having to adapt how the tool works. GroupForce is a comprehensive set of easily configurable business tools that adapt to your way of running your business.

GroupForce CRM

The GroupForce User Portal gives users the unique facility to enter a portal where all relevant tools in GroupForce are accessible to them. Based on the user’s role within your organization, you can define the tools available for that role, providing your users with one central place from which to access the tools and information they need to do their job.

For users that have more than one role in the organization, with a single click they can change the portal to display the information and tools required for their alternate role.

GroupForce Contact Management provides you and your users with an easy to use, highly secure, multi-level tracking of information about the companies and contacts you deal with.

It includes functionality to track all types of activities (calls, e-mails, meetings, tasks, letter, and others, including customizable activity types) with those contacts. Tools such as mass mailing, reporting capabilities, integration with Microsoft Office applications, PDF, and full integration with your mail, calendar, and task infrastructure make GroupForce Contact Management a powerful tool to manage your customers and partners, and your interactions with them.

GroupForce CRM

Your sales process can be managed from beginning to end using the GroupForce Opportunity management tool. From defining telemarketing and cold calling targets, to managing leads through your sales cycle, and winning new business, GroupForce provides you with tools to know who your next customer may be, who you compete with, what you are trying to sell, and the actions that need to take place for you to win that business.

GroupForce Project Management

GroupForce Project Management provides with tools to track the progress and performance of your internal and external projects. Project tasks, cash-flow information, resources, and performance indicators are just some of the things captured about your projects.

Strong two-way integration with Microsoft Project provides you with capabilities to perform critical path and Gantt chart analysis and update project information accordingly. Integration with personal To Do’s ensures each project assignee knows what needs to be done, and flexible, e-mail based reporting lets project managers know the state of a project at any given moment.

GroupForce CRM

The GroupForce Invoicing module provides a quick and efficient way to generate invoices in your organization. Invoices can be generated ad-hoc or related to existing quotation, project, expense items, or customer information and printed to your pre-defined invoice layout.

GroupForce invoices handle all local and federal tax models and exchange rate information, including variance in exchange rates from invoice date to paid date.

GroupForce Invoices also provides you with facilities to export information to any accounting package.

GroupForce Quotations

The GroupForce Quotations module provides your users with a tool to build outgoing quotations for clients, including products and services involved, support documents, resource requirements, and all relevant information.

GroupForce CRM

Through the quotation document in GroupForce, users can track all information for the quotation, and at any point compile the information to a Microsoft Word document using a pre-defined template.

Internal approval cycles ensure that quotations delivered to clients adhere to company standards. Integration with Opportunity Management and Project Management ensure a continuous flow of information through your organization.

GroupForce Problem Reports tool

The GroupForce Problem Reports tool gives you the capability of tracking problem reports, feature requests, and enhancements related to your internal systems and your products and services.

A GroupForce Problem Report allows for the tracking of impact, severity, and customer requirements and details of the request itself.

GroupForce CRM

Giving your service personnel a facility to track, manage, and prioritize development time, GroupForce Problem Reports can also auto-generate reports for completed requests.

GroupForce Document Library

The GroupForce Document Library takes advantage of document management paradigms found in larger systems (Domino.Doc) in an easy-to-use implementation for your organization.

GroupForce CRM

The Document Library provides functionality to author, revise, manage and distribute documents throughout the organization. Document revision cycles and security profiles facilitate a centralized location for the maintenance of all relevant company documentation.

GroupForce can be accessed through the following:

* Lotus Notes Client – provides full access to GroupForce functionality
* Microsoft Office Tools – provides task specific tools from common applications like MS Word and Excel (example, telemarketing efforts being managed from an Excel spreadsheet and updated real-time in the GroupForce application)
* Instant Messaging – Quickly “chat” with the GroupForce application to get to information fast
* Microsoft Outlook Client – As an alternative to the Lotus Notes client, a user can choose to use the Outlook client for contact management efforts. All information captured through Outlook is synchronized real-time to GroupForce.
* Mobile Devices – From Pocket PCs, Palm, Smart Phone, and Blackberry devices, GroupForce functionality is quickly available from the palm of your hand.
* Custom Applications – Through GroupForce’s API and web services, you can tie in GroupForce functionality to your existing applications.
* Web Browsers – Access GroupForce via the web, both for your employees, and as self-service options for your customers and partners.

GroupForce CRM

Tags: GroupForce CRM, CRM, Case studies, software

Avidian decided to better leverage the time in Outlook by turning the personal information manager into a full-fledged sales CRM application.
Prophet 4.0, the latest version, offers what the company calls advanced contact management features plus expanded search and platform capabilities.

Avidian built Prophet into Outlook, which gives sales people an application with one database that covers sales, contacts, tasks, e-mail and calendaring — in a format they already know how to use. 70% of CRM programs fail because people within an organization simply won’t use it.

Prophet for Outlook
Avidian

4.0 Features

Like any good CRM program, Prophet lets you manage contacts, track and manage sales opportunities, share sales information and generate pipeline, forecast, summary and even custom reports. Version 4.0 also offers the following features and capabilities:

•Sales CRM Automation
Set specific follow-up actions at each stage of your sales process. Create automatic discrete e-mails, tasks, reminders or appointments for each step.

•Expanded Search
Prophet Toolbar lets you find specific contacts or opportunities with a single search from anywhere in Outlook.

•Expanded Platform Support
Prophet 4.0 supports Microsoft Mobile Devices and Terminal Server along with Windows Roaming Profiles.

•Usability Improvements
Add date/time stamped notes to contact files, ability to re-size company and opportunity windows and new Sales Data Importing Wizard.

•Improved Report Creation
The advanced report wizard includes more templates, filters and report types plus simple sales forecasts, account details.

Avidian designed Prophet 4.0 for small businesses with anywhere from one to 200 employees.

Tags: Avidian, Prophet, Outlook, software, CRM, small business

Aplicor is the most awarded hosted CRM software and ERP/financial accounting solution in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry.
Online software unique strengths include ease of use, business process automation and business intelligence. Aplicor has the highest average user count in the hosting industry and is the only CRM and ERP hosting provider with a 100% uptime history.

The Aplicor software solution is a hosted, integrated, wireless and Web-based CRM software suite which includes Sales Force Automation, Marketing Automation, Project Office and Customer Support. The entire CRM suite is quick to deploy and easy to use.
Aplicor CRM helps organizations acquire, retain and grow profitable customer relationships by improving marketing effectiveness, increasing sales win rates, growing customer share, decreasing customer churn, automating sales and customer support activities and providing a holistic real-time view of the customer relationship across the organization.

Aplicor CRM

CRM Software benefits:

* The strongest EASE OF USE in the hosted CRM software industry as evidenced in 4 consecutive Users Choice Awards
* The most comprehensive Business Process Automation toolkit for significant staff productivity gains
* Flexible software configuration to adapt the CRM software system to your current and evolving business requirements
* A graphical Customization Designer to modify each page layout and achieve the most relevant and easy to use screens
* Built-in best practices content for suggestive instruction and sales coaching during the sales process
* A business intelligence (BI) information analysis suite which includes data warehousing, online analytical processing (OLAP) and predictive reporting

The company’s CRM applications are designed for mid-market organizations as well as divisions or departments of larger organizations who prefer a pay-as-you-go subscription purchase that includes all IT and support staffing instead of the high-dollar capital outlay for a software license and the additional funds required for implementation consulting services and the hiring of additional IT or support resources.

The company’s business applications are offered on an ASP hosting basis for a monthly pay-as-you-go rental fee. The product acquisition, implementation and time-to-production are achieved in a fraction of the time of comparable applications. Similarly, the acquisition costs are almost eliminated and the overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a fraction of comparable solutions.

Tags: open source, Aplicor, CRM, CRM-ERP case studies, software

absoluteBUSY is a web based system for contact management, marketing and sales support, project tracking and other CRM (Customer Relationship Management) related tasks.

absoluteBUSY web CRM software enables teams and departments to share a central - always up to date - customer database, an online contact manager and a project tracking tool, either over the web or within a corporate intranet. View and update contacts, customer histories, hot leads, projects and pending tasks, from anywhere, with any web browser.

Where can you apply it?

absoluteBUSY web CRM software can be used for: web based contact management, web CRM solution, online project tracking, web based project collaboration, marketing database, online customer relationship management system.

absoluteBUSY

Features:

· online CRM software on open source LAMP stack
· web based CRM and contact manager software
· web based project tracking software

absoluteBUSY CRM functions:

1. Companies (Contact Manager Module)
This is a kind of smart address book containing information about companies, accounts, leads an contact persons. For easy retrieval the contact-manager provides a bunch of freely defineable filter criterias (e.g. country, category, business …). An unlimited number of activities (tasks, memos, ToDo) may - optionally - be linked to each company, thus providing a complete customer interaction history, including documents, quotes and other files.

2. Projects (Project Tracking Module)
Projects can be used in many ways to track project oriented work. Projects are a way of grouping related Actions for a specific project, lead, opportunity etc. An unlimited number of actions may - optionally - be linked to each project, thus providing a complete project history documenting the complete project lifecycle.

absoluteBUSY

3. Activities (Task Tracking Module)
Activities can be stand alone or - optionally - be linked to a company, a person and a project. Activities are assigned to a certain user. On login all pending activities for the active user will be listed, thus providing an automatic reminder of things left to do. File upload is also possible for an activity, so it is possible to store quotes, drafts, contracts etc. and then easily find them again in the respective customer-history or project-history.

4. Sales (Sales and Opportunities Tracking Module)
Sales can be linked to a company/contact-person/project. Sales can have several sales stages, a sales data and a pending/won/lost result. The sales-pipeline is shown as simple list, ordered by prosepected sales date. On each company/person/project view screen a total summary of all pending/won/lost sales is shown + a list of sales details.
The sales reporting section lists top companies and top projects for immediately identifiying the most profitable businesses.

absoluteBUSY

5. The Reporting Module
The reporting module contains functions for generating reports, statistics and data downloads. Downloads in CSV format can be used for further offline processing. (e.g. generating mass mailings to all customers with third party mail merge tools).

6. The Administration Module
The ADMINISTRATION module contains functions for user management and access control. All administration is done through a web based interface. User access is managed by a group based profiling system, which allows different access levels for different users. Users can be locked on the fly, which will then prohibit any further transactions for this user.

Live Demo

Tags: absoluteBUSY, review, CRM, CRM news, open source, software, download

Customer Relationship Management Software, or CRM Software, is a large class of software programs essentially designed to help businesses manage their customer information. The concept of Customer Relationship Management Software is a bit unclear for most people and in today’s business environment the term CRM Software has broadly come to mean any program that can manage customer information.

Customer Relationship Management Software to most people means a program that helps manage customer information. This is true; but the same can be said of other types of programs. There are three basic groups of customer management software. The first group being Contact Management which allows businesses the ability to organize and manage their customers and accounts, track all the associated communication and events, and perform follow ups. The second group is Sales Force Automation (SFA) which includes all the abilities of Contact Management and adds features to track sales opportunities, review all related correspondence and events, and report on the sales pipeline and related data.
Customer Relationship Management Software makes up the third group and provides all the abilities of the first two as well as abilities for tracking invoices, integrating accounting, organizing order information, and more. CRM Software typically provides the ability to track and organize every aspect of a relationship with a customer from the point of first identification as a lead through and beyond the point that they are an ongoing customer.

Customer Relationship Management Software can be a major undertaking, with the cost for many systems over several million dollars and the implementation period lasting a year or more. Before making a commitment like this, every business should ask if they require a full CRM Software program. The key is to evaluate what the business needs are.
If the focus is to organize the customer and company information and be able to easily follow up with clients, then Contact Management Software will provide what is needed. For sales based businesses that need to track all customer correspondence and activities as well as tracking the sales process and performance, Sales Force Automation Software is likely the solution. For larger businesses that need to track customer and sales information as well as accounting, ordering, reconciliation, support, and all other aspect of customer contact then CRM Software may be the way to go.

CRM Software

As previously noted CRM Software can cost millions of dollars and take years to fully implement. This can, in part, be due to the complexity of the systems. Many provide every feature a business could need to manage all aspects of customer contact, including accounting, support, marketing, sales and so on. The systems can be so feature rich that users have a difficult time learning all the functions they are required to use. In many situations businesses find their employees working with only the sections of the CRM Software that are essential and entire modules go unused. This can be a source of frustration and create inconsistencies in the customer data. This often makes having CRM Software worse than not having it.

The first step is to evaluate exactly what the company needs to accomplish. Look at how things are done now, what things need to be changed, and what things need to stay the same. Evaluate all your options for CRM Software, and consider creating a system personalized for your business. If your accounting software is working well and you do not wish to change it, consider adding a Sales Force Automation program that will permit you to create your own custom Customer Relationship Management system.
Many businesses find that by carefully looking for the functionality they need, they can essentially create their own CRM Software system by putting together carefully chosen programs.

Tags: CRM, software, outlook, customer, relationship, management, open source

ERP5 is one of the most advanced open source/ free ERP platforms.
Nexedi, the inventor of ERP5 has released the first open source ERP for smartphones, called ERP Mobile. The ERP Mobile, new member of ERP5 family was presented simultaneously to the public during the Linux Solutions 2007 exhibition in Paris and to selected ERP users in Tokyo and in New York.
The addition of ERP5 Mobile to the collection of freely available Business Templates makes possible the access of ERP5 from any web enabled mobile device, such as the Nokia E61 smartphone.
Jean-Paul Smets, CEO of Nexedi declared that “The user interface of ERP5 Mobile has been designed with the special requirements of mobile devices in mind and is optimized for easy and efficient access to ERP5 on small displays.”

Screen of ERP5 Mobile

Nexedi’s Marketing VP, Kristian Rother also declared that “This latest Business Template has turned ERP5 into a truly pervasive system. ERP5 Mobile can be used anywhere to query, update and enter employee or customer data from the ERP system or to view production schedules and accounting transactions.”
The web enabled and standard compliant Nokia E61 smartphone was certified for ERP5 Mobile as “reference development environment”. Nokia E61 smartphone was chosen because of its effective design and because of the implication of Nokia in favor of open source- free software, such as Python.
Download ERP5 Mobile for Nokia E61 Smartphones here.

Video of ERP5 Mobile

Tags: ERP5, Nokia E61 Smartphone, ERP5 Mobile, open source ERP

Open MFG provides manufacturers and distributors a well designed client- server application, with work flow and modules for managing complex manufacturing and kitting of products, covering manufacturing, supply chain and accounting. Open MFG makes it easy to create products using a bill of materials.
Open MFG can be on its own or integrate with third party accounting system and also has made source code available for customers. This is an unusual step for a vendor of a low- cost ERP solution.

Open MFG 1.3

At $2,500 per user for a perpetual license or $1,100 per user per year for a subscription license with 15 users, Open MFG gives firms a flexible, low- priced ERP solution.
To manage the software over time isn’t cost a lot, but external expertise will likely be required to make significant modifications.

Performance indicators:
- Easy to use- Good
- Workflow- Excellent
- Customization- Fair
- Administration- Good
- Reporting- Good

Tags: Open MFG, Open MFG 1.3, Open Source ERP, performance, accounting, low_price, software

SOLIS- automation of business processes

SOLIS is an informatics system, a complete solution, web integrate for selling and customer relationship management for import and distribution companies. SOLIS appeared as a desire to relieve and optimize company’s work, which are on import and distribution market. SOLIS integrates the link clients-offer-order-delivery-supply-supplier, being a real success for the person involved in these processes. The SOLIS project was created four years ago, and until now was and it is a continuing development, that results by the customer’s needs.
SOLIS is a powerful instrument which can help for the communication process, between the company’s departments or between the company and clients or suppliers. This can be done by it client-server technology that they can offer. This technology permit introduction and visualization of the information, by who is interested, in real time, no matter or the station number, and no matter if they are in the internal company network, or if they are connected truth the internet.
SOLIS system has a unique data base, accessible in real time, with products, clients, contacts, personalized offers, commands and command checks, reservation, contracts, bills, pro-forma’s, expedition notices, etc. and permit fast looking for clients, visualization of the real situation (send offers, processed commands, contracts, service activity, pay situation), offering a fast answer to clients solicitations, received by phone, e-mail or fax.
SOLIS can be a great solution for selling administration and customer relationship management.
Download

Tags: open source, SOLIS, selling administration, CRM, open source CRM, CRM case studies