Am I Trying Too Hard?
I was reading recently about Sugar CRM, an open source web-based CRM package. While it’s available to use for free, there is also a commercially supported version. Apparently it’s somewhat popular, although I haven’t used it.
Anyway, I was thinking about installing it on a home UNIX box for personal use…
Maybe this is me being too nerdy. Or maybe it’s me being too anal. Or maybe it’s me being all of the above. Why does someone need a CRM system for their own use?
Well, actually I think there’s a lot of potential use there. Enterprise CRM systems are designed for businesses to be able to track and manage customer and supplier interactions. In reality, individuals have the same needs. You have a lot of “vendors” and “customers” whose interactions you need to track.
You have all of your utilities – cable, water, gas, etc. You have your car mechanic. You have your financial institutions. For all of these suppliers you have account numbers, billing dates, statement cycles, possibly trouble ticket numbers.
Most people track this kind of thing with pen and paper, or maybe keep a notebook if they’re organized. But that’s not very convenient to go back and find 6 months later (especially if you’re away from the house when you happen to want to look up how much you paid for your axle replacement last year, or the phone number of the mechanic who did it).
Then there’s your customers/contacts. There are a plethora of ways to organize “contact information” – Outlook, Palm Desktop software, Plaxo. In fact there are so many options out there already, it’s somewhat disheartening to think of integrating yet ANOTHER data store. But the problem is- these are all good ways of keeping track of basic information about people. Their phone number. Their address. Their e-mail address. But if it’s a casual or business contact you might also want to keep notes on your prior conversations, or indeed when that last conversation was. Current “address book” software doesn’t manage this well. But that’s what CRM is designed for.
Unfortunately CRM in general, and Sugar CRM in specific, is not intended with personal use in mind. Sugar CRM seems to keep track of people first as sales leads, and then as customers with order numbers. Various parts of the process and UI don’t fit the personal-use model at all.
The software is open source, so it should be possible to customize it to fit my needs. But then again, do I really need a personal CRM system in the first place? I’ve probably just gone over the edge and should remind myself that this is excessive.