Isn't it everyone's dream to have ALL of their preferred systems available from a single platform? I'm not just talking about a little project management software here and a little CRM there, and maybe sprinkle some billing and document management capabilities in as well. What I'm talking about is having your #1 choice, best of breed project management solution, CRM, etc integrated into one tool out of the box. Well, I hate to break it to ya- but the chances of you finding this utopian tool is about the same as me winning the lottery.
I came across a press release that argued that Small Business Suffers at the Hands of SaaS Vendors. According to the article, a small business is anything with 100 employees or less. The main point being that while everyone is jumping onto this cloud-computing/SaaS bandwagon, many small businesses are signing up for several different softwares. Sure, the result can be pricey with five different subscriptions- but if a company is signing up for five different subscriptions, they should probably spend more time on prioritizing what is most important to them to keep costs down. In other words, they should probably ask themselves which software is most important to their business process.
The problem that may surface with these "all in one" products is that they may have too many tools and features, none of which are quite as robust as what your company actually needs. What makes specifically project management or specifically CRM tools great is exactly that- all of the focus is put into developing the software the best it can be for those purposes. In my opinion, it is best to invest in the integration to merge the best tools together because I believe that having the abilities and features that are most important to your business process is what really will reflect in your bottom line.
Janelle Abaoag, Project Insight
