A few weeks back I had an opportunity to speak with CRM Magazine's Lauren McKay for an article she wrote on Intuit's latest incarnation of Customer Manager. I wasn't the biggest fan of Intuit's original entry into CRM/contact management back around the 2003 timeframe, but I was still glad they recognized the need for small businesses to have a better handle on customer information.
In 2009 many small businesses still use Quickbooks, Excel, Outlook, mobile devices, filing cabinets (and in some cases all of the above) to keep up with customer information. And this makes it difficult to have a full picture of what's going on with a customer, to share information about customers with other employees serving them, and to quickly respond to - as well as proactively predict - changes in customer needs.
I really believe 2010 is the year "meat and potato" small businesses will really dig into CRM. The time is right. They are ready. And they are in need. Which is why I was really interested to talk with John Flora - Intuit Product Manager focused on Customer Manager. John discusses how the four million Quickbooks customers impacted what went into CM, how it will work with Quickbooks, and why it was important to make CM a SaaS application instead of an installed software app. He also talks about why they made CM accessible via mobile devices as part of the subscription price of $9.95/mo for up to 5 users.
To hear the conversation (roughly 15 minutes) use the player below, or click here to download the mp3:
FYI - Paul Greenberg (now known as the Leo Tolstoy of CRM) devoted a chapter of the latest edition of CRM at the Speed of Light to small business. And you can download a pdf of the chapter for FREE - no registration required - with this link. Paul was gracious enough to allow me to add my two cents in the chapter.
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