Understanding the Choices for CRM Software

by Mohit J. White Hat Link Building Services

CRM software is actually so much more useful and powerful than you may initially think. Of course, it’s a problem that a lot of people don’t appreciate the importance of CRM in general, but you’re a smart business owner, and you know that it’s key to customer retention, failed to mention conversion.

However, while CRM software can make this whole process go so much more smoothly, you’re faced with a lot of options when looking for CRM software. This especially applies to sales CRM software, which is complicated in an industry that has inflated ridiculously with features and implementation choices that will just make your head spin.

Unless you’re a software guy, and where not condescending to you if you’re not, it’s really hard to understand what the heck any of this even is, and what the consequences are for picking one of these choices. So, today, I’m going to help you figure that out. We’re going to look at the primary ways in which the software is implemented, explain what they are, and list out their pros and cons.

The truth is, you can put these into two categories for the most part, and were going to simplify it in that manner.

Local Installation

This is the way that all software used to have to be handled. Before broadband connections being ubiquitous not only across addresses but with in various points of a building, and well before the Wi-Fi of today with 5G signals that outperform coaxial cable, software had to be installed locally on individual machines, and possibly within a mainframe that talked to these installations via very primitive network cables.

Times of change, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a local installation doesn’t have its merits. The thing is, you have a choice when it comes to updates, features and configuration that the other alternative will address in a minute doesn’t offer. You have more control over your software, and you have a physical copy of it that is guaranteed to work as long as your system is able to run it. Updates of operating systems can eventually deprecate the software into oblivion, but that takes a long time because Windows and Linux are very big on legacy support.

Software As a Service

Software as a service, commonly abbreviated as SAAS, is all the rage these days. It is more affordable, in the long run, for software developers to offer software in this manner, and it has its pros and cons as well.

Service-based software is run remotely, and usually runs through a browser interface that can be accessed from any device capable of rendering modern W3C-compliant web code, even phones, thin clients like chrome notebooks, or smart TVs if you’re particularly clever.

The advantages to this are that, with the right permissions to access it, it’s entirely, and I mean entirely, platform-agnostic. However, the problems are that browser-based software can be slow, and if the browser on the user and is bogged down with various extensions, it can be downright frustrating to engage.

One advantages that updates are organic, and just appear, because are done from the other end. But this can be a disadvantage if you dislike what a new revision of the software does, because you can’t roll back unless they’ve implemented that is a feature, which they commonly will not do.

Which CRM software is right for you? When it comes to sales CRM software, it’s actually probably a good idea to go with software as a service, because sales as an industry changes rapidly, and it will reflect the updates without trouble. Just beware of prices and especially if they charge for the bandwidth or processing units you use.