In-Depth CRM Review

     SplendidCRM

 SplendidCRM Software, Inc.
 705 Laurel Bay Lane
 Holly Springs, NC 27540

 

About the Company:

Founded in 2005, SplendidCRM Software provides a Microsoft-centric open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application that, unlike most open-source solutions built for a Linux environment, enables users to leverage their existing Microsoft infrastructure. The company is located in the Research Triangle of Raleigh, North Carolina, and is privately held.  

About the Product:

New SplendidCRM 3.0 Enterprise Edition

The release of Version 3.0 marks a milestone as it introduces the SplendidCRM Workflow Engine as a flagship feature in the new SplendidCRM Enterprise product.

A SplendidCRM workflow is a series of actions or alerts that is triggered by an event. For example, when a potential customer submits a request on your web site, you may want to alert everyone on your sales team that they have a new prospect. And, one week later, you may want to email the customer to determine if their needs were satisfied.

With Version 3.0, SplendidCRM is expanding its product line to include a Community Edition, a Full-Featured Edition, a Professional Edition and an Enterprise Edition. The Community Edition provides core CRM features to the community for free. The Full and Professional Editions add advanced CRM features, such as reporting and order management. The Enterprise Edition includes the advanced features and adds the workflow engine.

Latest release supports PostgreSQL and Mono/Linux:

• SplendidCRM 2.1 is now available on the PostgreSQL database platform as well as on SUSE Linux using the Mono libraries.

"Site-based and hosted application providers need a database infrastructure with uncompromising performance, reliability and scalability," said Fred Holahan, VP of Marketing for EnterpriseDB Corporation, the leading provider of Postgres products and services. "By supporting PostgreSQL, SplendidCRM now offers its customers a CRM experience based on the world’s most advanced open source database solution."

To see this new functionality, please visit

http://postgresqlmono.splendidcrm.com

New features in 2.1 include:

In addition to the technology enhancements, the SplendidCRM query system has been optimized to focus on retrieving active fields. This optimization dramatically increases the performance of SplendidCRM when managing tables with more than 100,000 records.

• Credit Card management and processing using the popular .netCHARGE component (licensed separately) allows SplendidCRM to become your primary order-management system.
• PayPal Instant Payment Notification is now supported, thereby ensuring that sales are automatically and instantly tracked by the CRM.
• Built-in Language Support has been added for 24 languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Greek, Finnish, Hindi, Croatian, Korean, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
• Incorporation of AJAX into sub panels enables the list to be sorted and paginated without the full page refresh.
• PDF Generation of Invoices, Orders and Quotes is enabled via a combination of Dynamic Buttons, imported RDL reports and the Microsoft Report View.
• Dynamic Buttons further extend the data-driven foundation of SplendidCRM. By dynamically rendering the buttons, you get to add field data to the buttons. This is important because it allows you to add a Print Invoice button that references a specific report.
• Silverlight graphs replace the old flash-based graphs and allow you to customize the XAML output in the same way that you customize an ASP.NET page to produce HTML. This approach also allows you to embed more business logic into a graph.
• Regular Expression Validation of the EditViews give your users immediate feedback when they type an invalid email address or phone number
• Migration to ASP.NET themes and skins simplifies the code and makes it easier for developers to create their own themes and skins.
• Persistent System Log helps you track the overall health of the system. Administrators can view warnings and errors with sufficient information to help developers pinpoint the problem.
• User Login tracking helps administrators track the usage of the system.
• In-place migration of a SugarCRM MS SQL database dramatically reduces the effort to migrate to SplendidCRM.

New features in 2.0 include:

• Campaign Emails with bounce handling allows you to keep in touch with your customers and track the ROI of a campaign.
• Inbound email allows automatic importing of email from a POP3 account, such as Gmail, with automatic linking to existing accounts, contacts, leads or prospects.
• Advanced Searching allows the use of searching operators <, <=, >, >=, !, != and = as well as date range searching. The new operators can be used in conjunction with the boolean AND, OR and NOT operators.
• Saved Searches allows you to save and recall named searches as well as the automatic saving of your last search in each module .
• Customizable Search dialogs allows you to customize the fields you search on using the same Metadata Drive User Interface (UI) that is used to edit the DetailViews and EditViews.
• Auditing tracks changes to all fields and allows viewing of the change log.
• Database backups ensure that you will not lose your critical information.
• Scheduler allows you to schedule campaigns and backups at virtually any frequency.
• Mobile Browser support enables you to access your data anywhere including on a PocketPC, SmartPhone, iPhone or Blackberry.
• Import SugarCRM language packs allows you to import the language packs available on SugarExchange, including Right-to-Left (RTL) languages.
• Import Report Definition Language (RDL) files allows you to create reports, including invoices, using Microsoft's Report Designer.

The current release version supports SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2000, Oracle 11g, Oracle 10g, Oracle 9i, IBM DB2 Express-C 9, IBM DB2 Express-C 8 and MySQL 5.

SplendidCRM was built on the Microsoft technology stack (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, C#, and ASP.NET) using Visual Studio 2005 Professional. This gives many more CRM users an open source alternative, without having to bring in an entirely new and unfamiliar computing environment.

SplendidCRM, unveiled in 2005, is a highly competitive, open-source CRM application that builds on the design of SugarCRM, the number one open-source product in the field. Yet Splendid CRM adds value to the equation through its Microsoft-centric design philosophy that leverages a pure Microsoft technology stack (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, C# and ASP.NET).

The incorporation of key .NET 2.0 technologies allows integrators to add user-customizable features to SplendidCRM using Master Pages, Themes, WebParts and AJAX technologies. Master Pages and Themes work together to dramatically simplify application development and allow for an unlimited number of page layouts to be predefined, allowing CRM users to select from a list of layouts that suit their personality. WebParts makes it easy to define regions that end-users can control, especially on the SplendidCRM home page, where users can hide or move content according to their needs.

SplendidCRM was written in C# using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The primary difference between the Open-Source and Professional versions is that the Professional version includes the source code for the SQL functions, views and procedures.  This makes the Professional version ideal for integrating into your existing systems.  The Professional version also includes the source code of the SplendidCRM Plug-in for Outlook 2007.

SplendidCRM Live Software-as-a-Service

SplendidCRM will be providing cost-effective CRM services on an all-Microsoft 64-bit technology stack. SplendidCRM is a fast-growing open-source CRM with over 100,000 downloads, 5,000 installations and 126,000 Google AdSense page impressions per month.

"We have been waiting for the right time to offer hosting services. Microsoft has helped us select the right time with their new BizSpark startup program," said Paul Rony, President of SplendidCRM. "SplendidCRM Software has been a Microsoft Certified Partner for several years as well as a Microsoft Hosting Partner, but this new BizSpark program will accelerate our entry into Software-as-a-Service and dramatically reduce our startup costs. We intend to pass these savings on to our customers." SplendidCRM will be going live in an all-Microsoft Windows Server 2008 64-bit environment with SQL Server 2008 64-bit Enterprise on its database servers.

SplendidCRM will provide three levels of service. Community Live is for small companies that just need the core CRM modules, such as Accounts, Contacts, Leads and Opportunities. Professional Live is for companies that need Order management and Reporting. Enterprise Live is for companies that need a powerful CRM with full workflow capabilities. Enterprise Live also includes the ability to receive PayPal notifications and import old PayPal transactions so that eBay sellers can immediately benefit from the use of the CRM.

SplendidCRM Live pricing is $10/user/month for Community Live, $20/user/month for Professional Live and $30/user/month for Enterprise Live, which is available at

https://live.splendidcrm.com

Price:

 For pricing details, please contact the company directly.

Rich's View:

 Sorry, we have yet to review this CRM solution.

Short List:

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