Relenta CRM

Dmitri Eroshenko has requested a  review of the Relenta CRM product.

Unless your business gets to a certain size and you have to track a bunch of customers or contacts you probably won’t have heard of the term CRM. CRM is short for Customer Relationship Manager.

A CRM is a productivity tool which puts all your information about each contact in one place. This includes customer profile, correspondence (emails), buying history, buying preferences, automated prompts for next action, contact history (usually over the phone, by fax and by email) etc.

In short its a grown-up version of a Personal Information Manager and in reality, a tool which is absolutely essential for businesses who want any kind of ongoing relationship with their customer base.

The CRM market is super competitive with a bunch of new players as well as companies which have been in the market for some time.

The Relenta product is an online CRM. You don’t need your own server as all the information is stored in their hosted service.

Some CRM’s are built from the technology back to the application. By that I mean the database is the core and the functionality is made to fit around it. Relenta has been built a little differently by starting with David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, then building functionality to support it.

Here are a few of the features which make the Relenta offering unique:

Email Management
Multi-user business-class web-based email is the core of Relenta platform. Any other CRM/contact management service on the market requires that you use a separate email service and/or application. With Relenta, you can keep email history (both sent and received) associated with each contact for immediate access and archiving.

Simplicity
Relenta believe in “less is more”. Existing CRM software can be too complicated for an average user. Their philosophy is to achieve 90% of the functionality required by small business users with only 10% of the application weight.

Web 2.0
Thanks to Web 2.0 concepts. Relenta is a fast, efficient, mean and lean.

Single integrated application replaces many
For efficient sales, marketing and customer service operations, a typical small business requires email, contact management, calendar, lead-capture, and automated newsletter marketing software. In most businesses this functionality is spread over several applications. The data usually resides with different server providers and disparate physical locations. Often information is stored on individual users’ desktops and requires complex synchonization routines. And for the small business the word “complex” means “forget it”. Relenta replaces all that with one simple easy to use, intregrated application.

Having had a look at the Relenta product, I liked the site and the easy user interface.

The product seemed to have everything a small business would need in a CRM. Pricing appears inline with market rates.

Overall a nice product, worthy of review if your in the market for a small business CRM.

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