How can a team or can a team develop a CRM system in two months?

Question

We have an offer to develop a CRM, but we have only two months. We have team of 3 or 4 programmers (2 are experienced and 2 are good prorammers). Should we accept the offer? AND Is there any good opensource i.e. free CRM or ERP system? (written in java) with which we won't start from scratch?

Answer 1

1. Yes, "it" can be done

2. No, you shouldn't accept the offer

3. You have to give a lot more information about the requirements for any useful answer to be given here.

Answer 2

Does the two months include the ENTIRE project, or at the end of 2 months are you going to deliver a beta? There is always - ALWAYS - time required for change requests, so work that into your schedule.

I don't see why you couldn't write up a CRM in 2 months to be honest. If you are working from scratch, it will be tight with lots of OT I'm sure but I think you can do it.

I wrote a CMS in just over 2 months by myself. I don't see how a CRM could be that much different.

Answer 3

If someone asks a group or company to develop a full CRM system in 2 months, is only to have someone to blame to when it is not finished in time. It's a trap, run away.

Answer 4

Use a few days to spec the project together with the customer. Do prototypes on ALL of the interfaces.

This will greatly help you understand the scope, time and skill-requirements.

That's about the best advice I can come up with.

Good luck, mate!

Answer 5

I would stay away from this one. 2 months is a very short time period to implement a full system, even with competent programmers.

Answer 6

Use another CRM to do it.

Answer 7

If they're looking for custom CRM in 2 months they're either looking for a scapegoat or they know next to nothing about CRM.

Have you asked them if Outlook's contact management might suit their needs? If they need something more flexible tell them to check out www.salesforce.com and please call again the next time they need help.

You'll do them a far greater service by getting them what they need than taking their money for something they don't and they'll be more likely to come to you again if you're fair and honest with them.

Answer 8

If you need to ask...

you don't know what you are getting in to.

Estimating projects is difficult and there are many recommended techniques. Posting to this site is not among them.

Answer 9

There are a few open source CRMs. Last time I was looking at CRMs systems I found an article called The Top 10 Open-Source CRM Solutions. It lists a few Java based solutions. We used SugarCRM which tops their list but it is implemented with PHP.

Answer 10

It is possible to build a basic CRM in 2 months. But why reinvent the wheel? There are heaps of open-source alternatives but in my opinion it is best to use a hosted web-application and if you have any specific needs utilize the API offered in one of the CRM solutions.

For example: Highrise, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM. The latter is open-source and you can host it yourself if you need to.

Answer 11

IFyou have a perfect specification in the forms of e.g. an existing CRM system then I would study that specification and probably conclude with that it could be done...

But NOT by 3-4 developers, get rid of all but the best one (for this project) and let him do it alone...

With 3-4 devs it's bound to fail...

Answer 12

Depends what they are after I developed a really decent CMS in .NET within 2 months as one person, and it's in production happily for 6 months. It's mostly edit-in-place AJAX stuff with ASP.NET home-grown MVC development.

Since you got more than 1, why not.

But ensure that the requirements are not bloated, and be realistic about it.

Answer 13

You need to ask some of these questions:

• What contact information to you need to track beyond the basic name, tel?
• Do you need to relate contacts to companies?
• Do you pay commissions to third party agents?
• Do you need to track opportunities? With values?
• Is the customer's sales process well defined? Do they have statuses to define where an opportunity is in the pipeline?
• Is the sales process long and complex or just a telephone sales call?
• Do you need to track salesmen, regions, quotas? Do they need to do account management of existing customers?
• Is there a call center? Do they do inbound or outbound?
• Are the sales guys on the road?

With the answers to those questions you will be a step closer to answering your own question.

Answer 14

I would see if Java is truly a requirement and if not, go with SugarCRM. SugarCRM is a full-featured, Salesforce.com-style CRM system. The "Community Edition" is very capable out-of-the-box. Any customization is likely to be doable without programming. If you truly need deeper customization, the source is open and free.