The important stuff first
This book is designed to make your vtiger project a success. However, I also want your CRM project to be a success. That requires more than vtiger. First things first. (If you want to get right into vtiger, skip to Chapter 2.)
CRM (Customer Relationship Management), as a concept, has been around for quite a while now. What does it mean? Well, for you, integrating a CRM tool most likely means integrating a CRM strategy or initiative within your organization.
Since the beginning of 2007, here at aimtheory (www.aimtheory.com), we had been trying to figure out how we could add real value in the CRM arena. It's a very highly competitive industry (almost $20 per click to get first place on AdWords) and there are new competitors entering the market every day. You've got loads of companies offering new products, companies claiming that they don't sell software (a.k.a. Salesforce) and app networks like Force.com and so on.
We gathered a few pilot customers and rolled out a robust, low-cost, open source hosted CRM service using vtiger. Throughout this pilot period, our goal was to work closely with our customers and prospective customers to understand their greatest challenges in implementing a CRM product. What we found was a huge surprise.
Our initial strategy was to compete with companies that charge per-user fees, because we firmly believe that the pricing model for most SaaS (Software As A Service) CRM solutions is unfair to the customer. While this message drew a lot of visitors to our site, we found a significantly different problem that our customers were facing.