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Cloud Expo Authors: Pat Romanski, Maureen O'Gara, Elizabeth White, Adrian Bridgwater, Jeremy Geelan

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On Asking Bad Questions (Or, What Small Business CRM is Best?)

We hear it all the time. What CRM is the best? Google it and you’ll get a litany of responses, almost all in contradiction of one another. Some say Salesforce. Some say Zoho. Some say Capsule, some say Brightpearl. You get the idea.

Thing is, they’re all wrong. See, there is no “best” CRM. It doesn’t exist. Instead, there’s dozens of “good” CRMs with individual strengths and weaknesses. Asking which one is best is like asking for a town’s “best” restaurant – it’s a contextual matter. What kind of meal are you looking for? At what price? Who’s eating with you? Is atmosphere important, or just the food? What are you looking for?

Finding a suitable CRM is a similar process. You’re not looking for “the best” CRM – if you’re asking that, you’ll just find opinions (and the Internet has many…). Instead, you’re looking for the CRM that’s most suitable for your business. What issues are you trying to solve? What needs must be met? What does a sales cycle look like? What’s the priority – sales, customer service, project management? What are the different use cases? What are you looking for?

Even companies of the same size, in the same industry, will have different answers to those questions. They’ll need different solutions, too. That’s why we’re not resellers, and it’s why we stay away from software “verticals.” Software is your company’s backbone: it’s too important to not get right.

Do your research and find the solutions that make sense for you business – it’s worth your time and money. If you’d like some additional guidance, let us know in the form below (or via our contact page). We’d love to chat!

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VM Associates is a New York City cloud computing consulting firm. We help companies transition into newer, better, smarter software. Contact us to talk about your business, the cloud, and how we might help.

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More Stories By Chris Bliss

Chris Bliss works at VM Associates, an end-user consultancy for businesses looking to move to the cloud from pre-existing legacy systems.

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