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SourceTap CRM review
Technical Overview
- Webbased
- J2REE application, should run nicely on Apache’s Tomcat (and other, commercial environments)
- Comes with built-in database (hSQL), but can use MySQL and PostgreSQL (and other, commercial databases)
License
SourceTap is dual licensed, so I guess there are some commercial spinoffs of this project. I was, however, unable to find links to those project on the homepage (didn’t look further). Since we’re only users and not developing some commercial product, I can use the GPL, which makes this product Open Source.
Interface
The interface is cleanish, but far from perfect. Some pages are very stuffed with information, which can make it hard to judge where to look exactly. I reckon this will improve if you use the product for a while, since by then you’ll know where to look. The product is massive, lots of options and features. Not quite sure if I like all of those options, though. Although theoretically it improves flexibility, it makes the product a lot more complicated.
The thing that bugs me the most is that some screens make me scroll horizontally, which is absolutely hate. The “Leads” page does that, and the “Accounts” page and some others. I’m not on a 1600×1200 resolution, but 1024×768 should be enough to view all pages nicely. In my opinion, this is bad website design. Since it’s Open Source, we could improve this, but it would require lots of work.
Each screen is, well, full. I don’t think you can cram any more information and input boxes on the real estate that is my screen. Could be handy for other people, but I don’t really like it.
The menu is nicely made, but has too many options. I think somelike like “Most Used Items” would be a large improvement.
Workflow
SourceTap’s workflow is quite intensive. I’m not sure if that’s good for our way of working. Yes, we need to record everything, but the interface (I’m really annoyed by the interface, it seems) is so full, it can be a pain to work with the system. I remember I had the same gripe with PHProject, which I looked at about two years ago. It’s not that it doesn’t look nice, but if you need to work with it often, you want something easy and quick. The GMail and Hula come to mind.
So the workflow looks okay, in first glance, but very pervasive in our every day work. I think we’d prefer something easier and simpler.
Functionality
I can’t find any “Customer Overview” screen. Well, I can find it, but not in the way I like it to be. I’m not interested in how much annual revenue my customer makes. Or their stock symbol. At least not when they call me with their problems. This isn’t automation, this is a electronic version of an addressbook. Doesn’t do what I want.
Conclusion
No. Not an option. For us at least. I have to admit, I only really looked at it for 15 minutes. But it doesn’t feel good. Since it’s Java it would be easy to extend, but I don’t feel up to it. The program looks a bit amateurish. Not something I would deply at a customer’s site. Or at our own. Let’s move on.
My search for the best, Open Source CRM solution (1)
It’s time we got a bit more organised here. So I’m goin to start my search for the best CRM solution that works on a fully Open Source platform. Now honestly, I’ve never worked much with CRM, so I’m kinda new to the subject. I do know, however, the basics of what CRM is:
“[...] all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer [...]“
And of course, what it should accomplish (ie. why I want a CRM to maintain my, well, customer relations):
“[...] to enable organizations to better serve their customers through the introduction of reliable processes and procedures for interacting with those customers.”
You could get nasty at this point and tell me I’m just one of those off-the-shelf marketeers who want to make the most money out of their customers and I wouldn’t be able to contradict that statement. However, I feel, each company wants to make a profit, since I’m do not have a company so I can give my time and knowledge away. I want to make a living. And the best way to make a living, is making sure your customers are very, very happy with you. Not only will they gladly hire you more often, but you get a lot more satisfaction from your job. If I just wanted to make a lot of money, I wouldn’t have my own company.
Another point for me to consider a CRM solution is that I don’t want IT to work against me. I hate it when you have to refer to people with numbers or the like. The nice thing about automation is that you can get rid of the numbers at the user end. Noone wants to be a number. By using a CRM solution I hope to have information about my customer available at the touch of a button, without asking them for their customer number or something. But that may be a bit further in the future.
Since we’re about to advertise a little (with a snail mail direct marketing approach), I’d like to invest a little time in my ‘prospects’. I’d like to look at their site and jot down my first impressions and ideas about IT on their side. And since we’re talking about 350+ companies, that’s a lot of data. So I want those notes to be available when I start calling them. A CRM would provide me with the means to easily put notes and contact information together. Also, when one of them calls me, I’d be able to quickly search out their profile and give them the best advice possible.
Like all companies, we want to grow. Not too big, but once we get past the ten customers, it’s much more difficult to remember all specifics about a company and the solution deployed there. So I want my CRM to be able to link to our internal information source about the solution deployed there. So that when someone calls, I can quickly find their layout and maybe think of a solution to their problem.
To summarize (and add a bit to the previous), I want to solve these problem with a CRM solution:
- Being able to quickly get an overview of a certain customer when he calls,
- Being able to quickly look at the solution we have already deployed there,
- Being able to easily get an overview of their technical infrastructure,
- Being able to quickly look through previous contacts this customer had with our company,
- Being able to easily look up if the person I’m talking actually has the permission to request something from us (we support an IT department, not all their users directly),
- Being able to note specifics about a company, ie. if their are oppertunities for a future commission or foreseeable problems that we could tackle before the problem actually arises,
- See who I need to send an Invoice this week and what that Invoice should contain.
There are some other things I’d like to be able to do, but I’m not sure if these are (or should) really be part of the CRM solution itself or if we should use our 1337 hax0r skillz to tie all these things together. The problems include:
- Being able to immediatly get the company profile/overview on screen when they call us, depending on the Caller ID,
- Being able to share our calenders internally in such a way that we can see if a certain company is going to be visited by a collegue soon (or should’ve been visited),
- This is a tough one, especially from a privacy standpoint (imho): Being able to see all previous mail contact our company has had with a customer, but not having to use some internal webmail client from the CRM solution (so we get to search IMAP boxes or something).
I like to border a project like this with prerequisites. These items define the border I have in mind:
- The program has to be Open Source and Free (as in Beer). Sure, we want to pay for a really good solution, but in my experience, vendors ask outragious prices for these things. Also I’d like to be able to make my own adjustments and additions to the code, so it will exactly fit to our needs and within our infrastructure,
- The program has to be cross platform. A webinterface springs to mind, but I personally wouldn’t mind a (yes yes, let the flaming begin) Java application that works on at least Linux, Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows,
- It shouldn’t depend on some commercial third-party software, like Compiere does. Sure, great product, looks really nice, but I don’t want to have to buy a DBMS for about €1000,- or more. That makes the product “not free as in beer” and conflicts with my first prerequisite.
Here follows a list of CRM solutions that fit my bill and at least look mature enough at first glance.
- SourceTap CRM (although I’m not sure if this is a commercial or Open Source solution, I’ll have to look into that)
- SugarCRM (first CRM solution I really looked at, about a year ago)
- OpenCRM
- Hipergate
- CentraView
And maybe I’ll find others along the way. I looked at Open for Business, but I think it’s too massive. It doesn’t offer a sleek CRM-only solution. I’ll start tomorrow with this project, using mostly the demo-pages from the sites themselves.
Machiavelli in World of Warcraft
Yesterday I met a guy on Frostwhisper whose nick was “Machiavelli”. I told him he had a cool name and he asked:
“Thanks. Do you know where it’s from?”
“Yes, a statesman form around 1500, Nicolo Machiacelli, from Florence, Italy.”
<few seconds of silence> “Damn, you really know it!”
Yeah, I can get a kick off knowledge and when I can show it off. But wouldn’t you? 
Spammed to death
Gotta be the season again, ’cause most comments I get are just plain spam. I hate it when that happens. Just deleted 22 comments that were clearly spam. Gotta find some plugins for Wordpress to stop those.
Mac OS X coolness
I’ve told people several times already that I’m very happy with my Powerbook, but once in a while I come across something that’s just so cool I gotta share it with others. My Powerbook has a DVI output, but it came with a DVI-to-VGA convertor. Since I’m having an important presentation next thursday, I’d like to make sure I could connect to another monitor with a VGA connector. Because, if I can make that connection, a beamer shouldn’t be a problem either.
Well, it does. And in a really nice, thought-through way, as I’ve come to expect from Apple. The external monitor is seen as an extra screen, instead of a replacement (like my former laptop used to do). And Keynote is just great. Not only really nice effects, but it even works great with the secondary monitor. It shows me the Presenter tool on my pb, while displaying the slides on the secondary display.
Actually, maybe a modern laptop with PowerPoint does the same, I don’t know. But I really, really like the way this works. *happy*
Elsevier fucked up
Ed pointed me to an article in Elsevier (a Dutch magazine) about Open Source and the Firefox browser in particular. Even though one cannot expect a journalist to do really deep research (well, we should expect it, but the masses really don’t, so it’s of no use to expect it), to at least verify your ramblings would be nice. Especially the last alinea, which talked about how Microsoft’s vulnerabilities are only abused because it’s so wide-spread caused me some annoyance. Anyone who really thinks that’s why Windows is so many times more attacked, I’d like to say, read this about Linux virusses.
Piracy is an obligatory part of the industry!
It has always felt right, but I’ve never been able to really have good argument in favour of it. Luckily, O’Reilly’s Radar pointed me to an article by Chris Anderson about how piracy can never be completely be removed and that it even is healthy from an economical point of view.
Google’s Talk not connecting to other servers
Yesterday a lot has been written and talked about Google’s latest addition to their Beta products: Talk, an IM client. Luckily, they decided to use XMPP, an Open protocol, used by many Open Source messaging servers (Jabber is the one that comes to mind, since we use it ourselves). I think this is really good for IM in general and Open Source protocols in particular. Google also tells us they plan to implement SIP, another Open protocol used primarily for VoIP.
My only gripe with their service, which renders it unusable for me, is that they don’t support connections with other servers. The nice thing about XMPP and Jabber in particular is that everyone can use their own domain with their own XMPP server. Alas, for the moment, Google isn’t supporting that.
(Shameless plug, but if they ever do support it, we provide free XMPP support for domains hosted at our servers!)
Vacation
Had a really good weekend with Monique and Aagje in Ampt van Nijkerk in Nijkerk, next to the Veluwe. Aagje was really wonderful, she was so obedient and good, I’m really proud of her. And of course Monique and I really needed the time together, which improved our relationship. I should plan such weekend more often 
Anyone any idea for the next weekend?
Podcasting
When will normal radio stations start to record their programs and distribute them via a podcast? Listening to my favourite program when I want to would be really great…
A glimpse of the future?
Just imagine this. You’re sitting behind your pc and listening to some music. You’ve been listening to this music for quite a few days now and really think it’s time for something new. So you open you surf to your personal music taste site, made especially for you by recording which music you listen to. There are recommedations there, calculated by datamining the profiles of thousands of other listeners. You get an Amazon-style “Users who listen to this music, also listen to:” list and you see some unknown artists in there. So you start your music program, and search for this artist in the online music store. Of course you get the option to preview the music and you like what you hear from this unknown artist (at least, to you unknown) so you decide to buy the whole album. With two clicks the album is bought and downloaded to your computer for easy listening.
The future? Yeah right! This is now. That’s how I found the album of Wealthy Beggar, apparently a Dutch band, even! (Didn’t know that until I just searched for their homepage.) My “search” was a combination of AudioScrobbler, Apple’s iTunes and the iTunes Music Store (which is embedded in the iTunes player, maybe an ‘abuse’ of Apple’s ‘monopoly’, but hey, this is an abuse I can live with!). I love technology. Great music too!
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Interface design
I saw Minority Report yesterday and it was good. Not specially good, but just good. One thing I really liked was the “User Interface” used by Tom Cruise to search through videofragments. First really okay example I’ve seen in “future human-computer interfaces”. Something to think about, I guess.
A Quick and Dirty IQ Test
| Your IQ Is 110 |
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Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Movie
Is a complete waste of time. Went there with Monique tonight and it really blows. The book was so much better and the conversion to white screen completely degraded the whole story. No fun at all. Monique was bored the entire time, I did have some laughs, but only because I recognised parts from the book and envisioned the whole story by it. Absolute no-no.
War of the Worlds on the other hand, is a really entertaining movie. Just like Madegaskar. Better spend your time on those movies.
Online booking sites are frauds
I mean the kind that offers you an easy way to book a hotel. I’m looking for a hotel at the Veluwe for the weekend of the 19th till the 22nd of this month. Well, we don’t have such a large budget to spend on these things, so I’m looking for… well… not cheap… but not expensive either. So I started looking at several sites that offer multiple hotels and an easy search mechanism. Since we prefer to take Aagje with us, I’m expecting slightly higher prices than the prices listed there. But not 130 euros more expensive…
I saw a hotal priced at 99 euro for two nights. Since we want three nights, it had an option and the price became 151 euros. Reasonable. Having a dog with you costs another 15 euros a night, which I think is quite reasonable too. Especially since Aagje is an Alt Deutscher Schäferhund, which isn’t a small breed. So I sms’ed Monique with the 195 price tag, telling her it might become a bit over 200 because of insurrances and the like. Well… not.
The final price was almost 300 euros. How come? In the final step of booking the hotel, all of a sudden, a lot of extra costs are added to the bill. No explanation, no notice whatsoever, just almost a 100 euro higher bill. I’m sorry, but I consider such a thing fraud. Especially when those costs are very vague like “Arrangements/extra costs” (45 euro) and “Bookit insurrance” (2,50 euro). No explanation whatsoever. I hate that.
I’m calling the hotel to see if I can get it cheaper if I book directly with them.
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The Internet is in danger!
Well, according of what I understand of it. But Cisco is not helping 
I made a mirror of Lynn’s presentation of the Cisco Vulnerability (~2MB), just because I think people should be made aware of this (and it’s a real shame Cisco’s lawyers are overreacting this way). An excellent explanation can be found here, at Dagmar’s blog. Hope this helps a bit.
Or maybe not…
I talked with Bart a bit about my ideas from last night, but it seems those were already launched with x.500, but never really took off. Which is a shame. Still, I have a nagging feeling that I’m overlooking something about information-enabling users. Maybe not in the address books, but with something else that I should be able to think of. It’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t spit it out. But it might be something that we can really make a bang with… Or maybe it’s just a fancy of the mind after listening to too much “Tsjakka”-talks at ITC.
Taalverloedering of niet?
De laatste tijd is er veel op het Internet te lezen over taalverloedering door SMS en MSN taal. Laatst heb ik hierop gereageerd op één of ander forum op het Internet en vandaag kom ik dit artikel tegen in de RSS van Onze Taal. Niet dat ik zo’n taal-nazi ben, maar het is best interessant om regelmatig van dit soort artikels te lezen. Ik ben het overigens helemaal eens met de deskundigen in de tekst, het is geen verloedering, maar een creatieve uitspatting als gevolg van technische beperkingen of mogelijkheden (in geval van SMS, beperkingen, omdat je zoveel mogelijk in 1 berichtje wil krijgen en in geval van MSN van mogelijkheden, want ineens kun je letterlijk je woorden versieren).
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While reading up on the probably-not-really-neutral (due to the NPOV dispute tag) of Wikipedia’s description of Web 2.0 the thought arose to do some research in those identity-systems that were so heavily discussed on /. recently. It’s on my ToDo.
