New service: CRAM

What is CRAM? Well, to my other half, CRAM is what has kept me away from her for the last two weeks. But to everyone else, CRAM is “Customer Relationships Awesomely Managed” (I can thank Ms Dunphey for the name).

Customer Relations Awesomely Managed

CRAM is my own CRM and is in the final stages of being accepted before I throw it out to the masses.  It’s a system designed to be simpler than SalesForce, more embedded than Highrise and much cheaper than SugarCRM Pro. It’s the first stage of a series of “business tools” that I’m building to help small-medium businesses and stay-at-home-entrepreneurs manage the tediousness of business.

The main motivation behind CRAM was that my existing system wasn’t doing it for me.  I’m actively involved in several businesses and keeping track of the contacts, emails, appointments, tasks relating to each was starting to get a bit difficult.  I needed a CRM but I wanted something that would allow me to manage my different businesses and allow collaboration within each.

I hunted around and had a play with several of the offerings out there which are all quite good.  What stood out for me however, was how simple a CRM is at it’s core.  I therefore decided to take bits I liked from each of the ones I tried, created a moodboard, and set about building my own.

It’s taken me about 2 weeks so far to get something together that I’m happy with.  Like SalesForce, CRAM is focused about securing prospective buyers and like HighRise it revolves around creating “deals” where different contacts come together to work on a deal together.  You can have a supplier, your prospect, your business partner and your accountant as contacts working together in a deal.

CRAM’s strength is that it allows you to step deals through your own custom “sales process”.  You can track how much time deals spend in each step of your process and (eventually) identify which contacts are better at moving deals through the steps.  A powerful tool in refining your sales.

CRAM Sales Process editor

The most powerful aspect however, is that it’s already embedded with the other business tools I’m developing.  The dream is a you can have your staff walk a prospect through your sales process, close a deal, send clients an invoice, manage your inventory, print shipping labels and track your business finances all through one easy to use portal.

If you want to have a go, shoot me a message.  I’ll be happy to give you a trial in exchange for your feedback!