Engaging Customers with Open Source CRM

Communications Today
Ref: http://www.communicationstoday.co.in/perspective/15086-engaging-customers-with-open-source-crm
Date : Sep, 2017

 



“To ensure customer loyalty and retention, CRM has emerged as an essential tool, especially in verticals like: hospitality, telecom, BFSI, education, hospitals, and retail.”



Dr-Devasia-Kurian-astTECS

Dr Devasia Kurian , CEO , *astTECS

As organizations prioritize customer engagement and retention the Open Source based CRM solution is getting even more widely accepted, helping organizations boost efficiency, reduce costs, and propel their businesses forward. Open Source powered CRM has become an intelligent tool to drive customer engagement and operational tasks.

With increased adoption of Open Source solutions, vendors are offering customers an open enterprise collaboration platform that seamlessly integrates with their entire set of applications. Accelerating this growth, collaboration tools like cloud-based infrastructure are offering a viable alternative and it looks like hand-held devices, smart-phones, and social media would shape the CRM and customer support strategy in the coming years.

A Powerful Solution Ideal for SMEs

Customers are increasingly beckoning with digital and social channels to engage with brands. To ensure customer loyalty and retention, CRM has emerged as an essential tool, especially in verticals like: hospitality, telecom, BFSI, education, hospitals, and retail. With on-premise CRM application suite, enterprises can enhance their capabilities and engage more efficiently with their customer-base intensifying focus on productivity; by leveraging its powerful workflows and actionable insights and take agile decisions for business acceleration.

The Open Source based CRM solutions available today, manages the complete customer relationship process and combines all key customer management applications that include: lead management, contact management, account management, ticket management, role management, and activity management. By bundling disparate categories into an all-embracing solution and replacing the proprietary license-model with Open Source, it is indeed a powerful and comprehensive tool.

As per industry reports the market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 20 percent. Pure play vendors are showing strong revenue growth as large enterprises and SMEs are focused on enhancing customer engagement, support capabilities, and cost efficiencies. Systems integrators and Open Source CRM solution providers are collaborating to deliver compelling set of communication solution in conjunction with proprietary products and helping organizations meet their business demands while protecting their IT investments, reducing operational costs, while eliminating high licensing fees.

Features and Benefits

Open Source CRM offers a compelling range of features and benefits that include: low cost of ownership, increased ROI, no licensing, easy to use intuitive interface, easy integration with third-party modules, secure access to CRM data, highly flexible and user-friendly modules; thus, making it a strategic business enabler, by delivering value to the enterprises across verticals, faster.

Customization and Customer Support

As Open Source CRM is enabling a crucial part of business communication, customization and support is an important aspect. Open Source modules allow businesses to access and manage features and add-ons they require and remove all the clutter that is not useful. Dedicated support can be obtained from fee-based vendors or from the user community to help organizations install, configure, and customize the CRM as per their business requirement. Consultancy services are also available from the vendors, systems integrators, and the partner/reseller community.

The emergence and maturity of Open Source based CRM solution will result in improved customer engagement & efficiency, increased conversions, augmented employee productivity, accelerated deliveries, reduced costs, and higher revenue potential.