Why is there no integrated CRM, Accounts, Invoicing, Small Business Management System, SaaS or not?

October 16, 2009 by Mark T Littlewood

What we really want for Christmas is simple.

We want a CRM system for less than 30,000 records, that integrates other functions – event management, invoicing, accounting, email, letter writing, newsletter and campaign management. Tea making optional.

It would be great to be able to create tags that enable us to search simply for, for example, ‘CFOs in companies in the north of England from mobile marketing businesses’.

We are happy to use a SaaS solution but need to be able to use it when offline – I find that I get a lot of use out of CRM systems on the train from London to Cambridge and the tunnels, pathetically patchy and poor signal mean that Dongles, Smartphones etc are effectively useless.

Does anyone have any bright ideas – is this such a big ask? Hundreds upon thousands, if not millions, of customers must need something similar.

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6 responses to “Why is there no integrated CRM, Accounts, Invoicing, Small Business Management System, SaaS or not?”

  1. Andrew Mitchell says:
    October 19, 2009 at 12:06 PM

    http://www.salesforce.com/

    It’s worth the investment in time and money, even for a startup.

    Handles offline.

    Great API’s for LinkedIn, eventbrite and and and.

    Andrew

  2. Duncan Stockdill says:
    October 19, 2009 at 2:03 PM

    Mark, it doesn’t make tea, but Javelin CRM is a SaaS solution and ticks a number of your boxes including integration with other functions such as accounting (xero, freeagent, kashflow, freshbooks) and newsletters (mailchimp). You can use tags to achieve your search too. No offline mode yet. Good luck in your search.

  3. Stuart Turner says:
    October 19, 2009 at 2:25 PM

    Hi Mark,

    You aren’t going to find the perfect answer, however from your post; suggestion would be to try Zoho CRM. It has off-line capabilities; however it would be good to get more detail on what you are looking to do when off-line.

    As an aside, if you are using exchange, then you automatically get off-line for tasks, contacts, calendar and email which you can resync to Zoho on your return.

    If you use a file server product that allows easy on and off line (we have two that we could show you), then you can work on files as well.

    Happy to show you a quick (non-sales) demo.

    Regards,

    – Stuart

  4. Mona Hilton says:
    October 19, 2009 at 6:23 PM

    Hi Mark, Sales Advantage is very integrated (but no offline now).

    What makes Sales Advantage different from CRM is it’s the only “system” that it addresses all the components of sales and marketing in one system completely seamlessly.

    It incorporates contact management, email marketing (and two-way interactive responses), website/internet/social networking lead capturing and follow up, follow-up/workflow process automation (with auto fulfill), marketing/agreement drag and merge, proposal/quote creation (drag & drop), sales tracking & pipeline management, cross functional task list integration and management reports.

    Plus, it’s web based, integrates with Outlook and has mobile device access, and it’s very intuitive and includes an electronic “Sales Assistant” for each user (to fulfill the mundane tasks). All for much less than salesforce.com.

    What really counts, though, is Sales Advantage is proven to increase sales conversion rates an additional 9%-38% in 90 days of use.

    Definitely worth a look at http://www.sales-advantage.net. Would be delighted to show it to you.

    Regards, Mona

  5. Mark Littlewood says:
    October 21, 2009 at 12:40 AM

    From @ritters90 That CRM may fit the bill for you again here is the link http://www.interaction.com/interaction/

  6. Mark Littlewood says:
    October 21, 2009 at 12:41 AM

    From @Eileentso have you seen @relenta? I haven’t looked in the last few months, but worth your checking out re http://bit.ly/SMECRM