CRM For Small Construction Biz

MichaelLC

A fiend of mine has 'hired' me to find a CRM-type solution for his small construction company. They're about 10 people now, maybe will grow to 15 in a few years, but not beyond that. He's using Google Apps for most/all of his contact and appointment management - basically writing stuff on a piece of paper in the field or at the office and hoping someone inputs into the computer.

He'd like something that creates an 'account' where he can store contact info, appointment history, and some attachments - pictures of the job, etc. Main factors are easy & mobile accessible, since his guys all have Android phones.

I'm very familiar with Siebel, but that's slightly outside his price range. Looking at salesforce.com, but don't know if that's overkill. Any experience with a CRM geared towards small business, particularly construction/landscape type work? Thanks.

bowen

He should avoid a hosted solution if he wants to save money.

Salesforce.com looks like the best one that fits his needs, but, again that's a fee /month/user (so $25 per month, and another $25 per month for every user, two users would probably be $50 a month).

There's always custom solutions too. Small businesses that have software developers do this kind of thing, but there's a premium tagged to it. The bonus, it's custom to your business. The downside, while you won't be paying nearly as much as you will for the oracle jazz, you'll still be paying more than salesforce. If salesforce even does what you need (upload images/documentation, usable by your techs, etc).

I think salesforce is probably the best out of box, cost effective strategy for them at the moment.

MichaelLC

Yeah, I know hosting costs more, but it's pretty much him and his wife are the office. Everyone else (including him) do the labor - which is why he's trying to get better organized, he's doing too much.

For some of these hosted options, would 2 users be enough for just him & his wife, or would he need an account for each crew chief? He'd like them to be able to upload contact/appointment info if someone walks up to them at a job site, for example.

bowen

I can't say for certain. He'd probably need one for each person that wants to upload data. If not it'll be deferred to him to handle it.

So you're easily ballooning costs if you start expanding. If he's not going to expand with more employees anytime soon, he can probably get by.

Delzhand

CiviCRM is what we use for clients. It's free/libre/open-source. We use it because it integrates well with Drupal, but supposedly it can be run as a standalone app.