Open Source CRM - CentricCRM v3.0 Review

Centric CRM v3.0 has raised the bar once again in Open Source CRMs with more than 75 new features.

Here is a list of some of the new features of CentricCRM 3.0..

General Improvements include:

* Centric CRM has been updated with a simple look and feel to promote productivity and usability
* The global toolbar can now be hidden for systems using a smaller screen resolution or for those users that prefer to use a smaller browser window -- recognizing that some businesses still use 800x600
* 100% compatibility with Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0
* 100% compatibility with Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox
* 100% compatibility with Mac OS Safari

My Home Page

* Managers can now view action lists for users in their hierarchy
* Action lists can be reassigned to other users by a manager
* Additional capability to reassign pending activities and document stores
* Calendars can be subscribed to via iCalendar applications for offline access to calendar data, such as Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird
* managers can now subscribe to other users in a hierarchy

Lead Management Module

* Brand new module for managing leads, from lead transfer, to lead qualification and to lead closure

Pipeline Module

* Integrated with quote management module providing access to quotes and quote functionality

Contacts Module

* New fields have been added to indicate primary address, primary telephone number, and primary email address
* Additional fields include: contact source, contact rating, and text messaging addresses
* Capability to send contacts an email with directions for updating his or her own contact information

Accounts Module

* Custom fields and folders have been upgraded for quickly modifying and viewing custom fields
* Integrated with quote management module providing access to quotes and quote functionality
* Bi-directional account relationships have been added
* Integrated with project management module to allow viewing of associated projects
* Using the "move contact" wizard, contacts and contact data can be moved to other accounts
* New fields have been added to indicate primary address, primary telephone number, and primary email address
* Account documents can be accessed by a WebDAV client

Product Catalog Module

* New capability for accessing company product and services information
* Products and services can be categorized
* Products and services have pricing information
* Each product can be further customized with various options and option pricing

Quote Management Module

* Brand new module for creating and managing quotes
* Create quotes for contacts and accounts
* Track the life of a quote by adding notes, adjusting the status and versioning
* Email a well-formed PDF quote to the customer
* Print quotes for faxing or review
* Clone an existing quote to be used for the same account or for another account
* Add products and services to the quote directly from the product catalog
* Create products during the quote process for organizations that require ad-hoc products and services
* Add terms and conditions from a reusable library
* Add remarks from a reusable library
* Personalize each quote with a company logo or brand logo
* Link quotes to opportunities

Project Management Module

* Dashboard quickly shows the latest project data from the last 24 or 48 hours, the last 2 weeks, or even the last 30 days
* Project progress indicator shows status of a project at a glance
* Team members can now include account contacts
* Users receive an email when invited to a project
* News articles can be assigned a category
* News articles can be emailed to team members or to yourself
* Projects can now be linked to organizations in the Accounts module
* Users can record notes on project activities, which are indexed and searchable
* Project plan indicator shows status of the plan, overdue activities appear in red, other activities appear in green
* Project plans can be imported from Excel documents and OmniOutliner XML documents
* Additional filters have been added to the project plan for incomplete/complete and priority
* All project data is indexed and searchable including uploaded document content
* Project documents can now be accessed by a WebDAV client

Communications Module

* Capability to send campaign recipients an email with directions for updating his or her own contact information
* Broadcast capability to send a communication to a campaign recipient's email and text messaging address

Help Desk Module

* Custom fields and folders have been upgraded for quickly modifying and viewing custom fields

Documents Module

* Brand new module for sharing documents
* Users can create multiple document stores, each with a specific purpose
* Access to each document store can be provided to specific employees, account contacts, departments or roles
* Permissions can be assigned for guests, contributors, and managers
* Documents and versions can be uploaded to the store
* Documents are immediately indexed with content indexers for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, PDF, Open Office and HTML documents
* Documents can be quickly searched for based on document content
* Documents can be accessed by a WebDAV client

Employees Module

* Custom fields and folders have been upgraded for quickly modifying and viewing custom fields
* Managers can review projects associated with each employee

Administrative Module

* Administrator can modify the industry lookup list
* Multiple logos can be uploaded for use in the quotes module
* Company information can be modified, which appears on quotes

Internationalization Support

* Application accepts UTF-8 data for required languages
* Added a dictionary for translating terms, phrases, lookup lists, and reports
* Calendar holidays for Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States
* German language translation provided

Report Module

* All reports upgraded to new version of JasperReports for added features and to support more reporting tools
* Custom reports can include images using the "path_report_images"
which looks in the fileLibrary "report_images" path

Developer Improvements

* Compiles and executes with Java 1.5 and Tomcat 5.5
* Added CRMConnection Class allows Java applications to easily exchange data with CentricCRM, including all CRM data
* Object validation is now centralized for making changes and extending Centric CRM
* All graphs now use new version of jFreechart for easy, professional graphing
* All HTML "containers" are now drawn programatically

Enhancements

* Exporting data now only has a single header row with the column names, which provides for easier importing

Fixes

* CPU intensive documents no longer timeout during indexing
* Project issues and issue replies are now properly indexed

Visit the CentricCRM website for further information.

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