Matt is one of those IT-type guys that you ran into a few years ago and you see every so often. He's been off on a ski trip and you are finally getting around to talking with him about your problem. You meet at a local coffee shop and with the tape recorder running you start discussing...
Matt: So, you want some type of CRM solution.
You: You know about CRM?
Matt: Sure. I've one of the people who went skiing with us last week kept talking about how they were doing an upgrade to his CRM software and that's why he could afford the time away from work to join us. He said that with the IT people doing the upgrade to the software his entire office is just about shut down.
I think I've got the perfect solution. Just talk to your IT office people and get them to setup your own CRM server. It should be easy for them. I could get it up and running in a few hours, but
Matt grins
You can't afford my rates.
You: Yea, I was just talking earlier to a neighbor and she mentioned Act! I think that's up on my list of possible solutions. I'm just worried about the cost.
Matt snorts
Matt: Act!? Client-server software is so… 90's. I mean, it's fine if you want to go that way, and you have a large sales force or something. But you don't need that. That's like buying a Porsche when all you need is a set of roller blades so you can go the four blocks to work and back. What you need to do is talk to someone in your IT group, get them to look on the web. There are open-source solutions out there right now that they can download and setup on a system for you. It'll be web based so you don't need any client software installed on your system. And open-source software is normally free to use. If you have a half-way decent IT group they should be able to stand up a Linux box with an Apache web server in no time. Then just install this on the server and you should be up and running.
You: Apache? Linux? Huh?
Matt: Don't worry. The IT people will know what all of that is. Just talk to them, tell them you want an "open-source CRM solution" and I'm sure one or two of the geeks in the group will already know where to find it. If they don't then it will be easy for them to Google it and go from there. It is more than likely that they'll have to setup a database on the box. But since most open-source applications can talk to a MySQL server they can set that up for free on the same box.
You: Ah… Thanks Matt. I'll get right on this.
Matt: No problem. Like I said they should be able to whip this out in no time. I'd offer to help out but you know how busy I am right now with…
And the conversation goes on for a little bit more where Matt talks about all of the stuff he is doing and then he rushes off with another Cup'O Joe in his hand.
Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Matt interview.
No comments:
Post a Comment