How to shortlist CRM vendors?

Mid Sized Businesses are increasingly finding it hard to shortlist the CRM vendors before they start the technical and commercial evaluation. I have listed some points which may serve as a roadmap to CRM vendor shortlisting.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Open mind

1. Look at vendors offering a full suite of CRM application functions that are seamlessly and architecturally-integrated. There should be atleast modules supporting sales, marketing and customer support automation.
2. Suites with modules which can be added in incremental manner and licenses independant of modules.
3. Shortlist applications that has features needed by a company of your size. Often large and expensive software has features that you will never need. But ofcourse look for inbuilt features like workflow manager, business rules, form builder, report builder etc. which gives the application desired flexibility.
4. Look for multi-channel application support for self-service, particularly for the sales and customer service functions.
5. Intuitive and easy to use features will ensure least resistance and rapid adoption.
6. A web-based application with zero-footprint client. It should be 3-tiered.
7. Application can be configured and customized with industry standard tools. The configuration and customization should be easy,fast,easily deployable and most importantly should be preserved when you migrate/upgrade to new versions.
8. It should be easy-to-maintain.Web-based architectures and industry-standard components will make it easy.
9. Look for vendors who are specialized in mid-market and are there for a long time and not 'Johnny come lately' types. Also exclude traditional big enterprise solution providers who claim to 'also having MSB solution'.
10. Keep in mind the scalability of the application you will need now and in 5 years down the line.
11. Go for stable and viable vendors. It is estimated that half of the existing CRM application vendors will exit the market over the next 3 years. Check their presence, profitability with no intention to quit in the near future.
12. Check whether it has open API and web-services to facilitate integrations with other important applications in your organization. If it has Out-Of-The-Box integrations with some applications check whether it matches with your existing applications or applications you plan to buy in future.

Tips & Warnings

• Also follow up with a good,structured Request for Information(RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) document and send it to the shorlisted vendors.
• Keep your budget in mind while shortlisting the vendors. Sometimes good things comes at a good price.