Whether small or large, every company wants to maximize its profits through steady sales growth and customer engagement strategies. It needs no explanation that maintaining healthy customer relationships goes a long way towards enhancing an organization’s sales benefits. However, using traditional sales strategies and data entry methods is the least preferred way to maintain customer records. In today’s tech-driven world where most organizations use advanced ERP systems, it is essential to have a fully-integrated software in place for customer relationship management.
While a majority of enterprises use multiple software modules for CRM, several small-scale enterprises still cling to manual processing techniques. CRM software development could be a large investment for small businesses but it is essential to sustain the cut-throat competition. Nevertheless, it hampers their growth and small errors in bookkeeping may yield disastrous results. Taking into account the financial constraints, CRM software development could fit well within the budget if you follow the right approach. That said, developing a custom CRM solution using open-source technologies could bring significant cost savings for SMBs, not to mention the long-term benefits they deliver.
Here, we drive you through five effective open-source platforms for custom CRM development from the standpoint of small-to-medium-sized businesses. First, let us learn the importance of CRM application development for small businesses.
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The Importance of CRM For Small Businesses
Customer relationship management has become a crucial part of every business strategy regardless of the business size or geography. The way businesses interact with their customers ascertains their position in the market and how long they are going to sustain the competition.
However, maintaining customer relationships could be a back-breaking task, especially when you have to simultaneously manage your sales, marketing campaigns, and customer services. That’s where the role of CRM application comes in. A CRM system stores the massive pool of customer data and centralizes the entire process. Besides, it automates all the customer-facing activities and helps you analyze the data in real-time. In the absence of a powerful CRM system, the business would fail to reach its full potential that ultimately affects its sales and profitability.
Also, Read Cloud ERP Development To Enhance Business Process Efficiency
Open-Source CRM Platforms
Here, we shall explore the five most popular open-source software platforms for custom ERP and CRM application development.
Odoo
Odoo is a business process management suite that renders complete support for business functions including CRM, HRM, finance/accounting, manufacturing, inventory, and supply chain management. The Odoo CRM module is fully customizable as per varying business needs and offers 8+ dedicated apps and plugins for customer relationship management. It provides ample features to manage sales, marketing, customer services, and maintain healthy customer relationships. Odoo comes in two product variants, namely the free community version as well as the paid enterprise version. The community version offers all the basic CRM features with easy add-on capabilities while the enterprise version is more advanced and offers several unique features.
Apache OFBiz
OFBiz is an open-source ERP+CRM software suite from Apache Software Foundation. Similar to Odoo, it offers a complete suite of business applications for diverse industry-specific needs of customers. It offers a series of software tools to automate complex CRM operations and aids in tracking workforce activities. The Apache OFBiz source is available to developers for general purpose use, free of cost. Therefore, we can use it to build custom CRM applications from scratch with a wide range of easy customizations.
ERPNext
ERPNext is a similar software platform that garnered significant traction over recent years because of its scalable modules and easy implementation. It is an open-source software suite that renders complete support for custom CRM application development. The ERPNext source code was first introduced in 2010 under GNU general public license by Frappé Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The platform is built on top of a community-based database system called MariaDB and supports the Frappe framework. Frappe is a Python-based server-side framework that enables developers to build custom ERP and CRM applications from scratch.
Dolibarr
Dolibarr is a free and open-source software package that is increasingly popular for custom CRM software development. It offers a comprehensive software module for customer relationship management with all requisite features, integration support, and add-on capabilities. With Dolibarr, enterprises get complete control over the software as they can easily enable or disable various features as per the changing business needs. The software platform is free to use under the GNU general public license 3.0 and is best suited for small-to-medium enterprises.
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Wrapping Up
These were some of the most extensively used open-source software platforms for custom CRM application development. Due to openly available source code, these platforms are free to use and facilitate a hassle-free development process. Also, it means you only have to bear the development cost rather than paying the additional software license fee. As a result, it significantly reduces the overall project costs, making these the ideal platform for small-to-medium enterprises with limited budgets. Nevertheless, it is critical to choose a trusted technology partner to develop high-quality CRM software that best addresses your business needs.
Why Choose Oodles ERP For Custom CRM Application Development?
We are a seasoned ERP development company that specializes in building enterprise-grade software solutions for diverse business needs. Our development team is skilled at using the aforementioned open-source software platforms to solve complex business problems and streamline operations. Our custom CRM software development services enable enterprises to enhance their business growth by increasing their productivity and profitability. We have completed several full-scale CRM software projects for startups and small-to-medium enterprises using open-source software technologies. To learn more about our CRM application development services, reach out to us at [email protected].
