My VP and I are actually looking into purchasing a similar type of software. Each one of them has its pros & cons. We recently did a demo of Netsuite (www.netsuite.com) and it was great but you can't buy it. You have to purchase a license to use it.

You need to figure out if you want to purchase a whole software package or just purchase individual licenses. I would demo as many as possible. Most companies will do an online demo for you. Good Luck TUT!

Shawn

thanks for the input - it is very appreciated.

I sent out an office-wide e-mail to everyone I work with (almost 30 people) requesting their input, and surprise! surprise! only got ONE response and that was from my broker. On top of that - one of the suggestions my broker gave me was that I use....... OUTLOOK. ummm..... wow.

::: jeez :::

I'll update you all once I've decided what to go with and why I chose it over other options.

;-)

"Client management" is a very vague term and can mean a lot of things to different people. The generic term for such software is "CRM" (for "client relationship management") but what you are asking for includes some project management features, and to get all of that in one place you will probably need to look at some sort of database built on FileMaker or Access, particularly for the reporting stuff.

A more standard way to do it with off-the-shelf software is to use one program for contact management (such as Outlook or OS X Address Book), put dates and task lists into a program such as Outlook or iCal (some of these dates can be read by iCal, as demonstrated by the "birthday" feature) and then to configure the accounting software for account aging, category reports and so forth. A simple way that agencies with only a few clients do that within their accounting software is to have separate sub-accounts for each client such that all of the consulting income for client A goes into one account, consulting for client B goes into another, dry goods sales to either client go into a third and fourth account, etcetera.

Most business management tools that handle such things as inventory, invoices, tasks and contacts do not include very good accounting portions, and most accounting tools do not include very sophisticated task and contact management. The reason, I suspect, is that most businesses do not integrate, but a private individual has more flexibility and an ability to abuse tools to do things that they were not designed to do.

Both Outlook (for Windows) and Entourage (for Mac) allow you to use a variety of contact fields for purposes other than they were designed. Change the contents of a stupid, unused field to be something else and just remember it yourself. Off-the-shelf CRM software for Windows includes GoldMine and ACT! For the Mac I find that most small business people do best with the free Palm Desktop for OS X, which used to be called Claris Organizer. Just be aware that programs such as Palm Desktop are designed to handle may hundreds of tasks and scheduled items, not tens of thousands (as some of my clients have tried).

Depending on how much stuff you need to track, finding a real database solution that you can customize in FileMaker or 4D or Access is often the best long-term move. Until then you can punt, but be sure to think through what you are doing and have a plan to get all of your data OUT of whatever format you put it into.

Microsoft CRM and SalesForce are two popular ones.

Though, now there is also the free open-source Sugar CRM www.sugarcrm.com/crm/

Some of my colleagues use GoldMine and they love it.

I've been looking for something myself lately, as what I have in place isn't working for me right now.

Thanks,
Ramiel

Here's a OpenSource software which I'm looking to install and use myself.

xrms.sourceforge.net/

It looks very promising, unfortunately the demo's on their web site don't work right now.

It runs on a PHP/MySQL system, generally a Linux server. If someone needs it hosted; since my company is
a hosting company, I'm happy to install it for you (just message me directly)... our web hosting is $14.95 per month..
I'm not trying to use this as a method to get customers... just in case someone wants this software and doesn't
know how to install it on their web site, I'm offering to help.

I've been looking for a Customer Management application that would allow me to track:
- who referred what lead to me
- spoke with prospect on what date, about what, and where did we leave off, and what's needed for follow-up/and when to follow up..
- a ticketing system inside that allows me to track the many different customer's

Though when I think about it, it would be great if the software would integrate with emails that I use to interact with the prospect...
I'm not sure how helpful it would be if it integrated with my QuickBooks Premier accounting software.

I would imagine that the Microsoft CRM version may integrate with Outlook/Exchange perhaps. Though I'm not a big Microsoft fan.



Thanks,
Ramiel