Western Railroad Discussion > CRM for Class II and Class III carriers?

Anyone has experience or suggestions on implementing a Customer relationship management (CRM) marketing software on shortline/regional carriers?

Thank you.

CRM (brand-name, Microsoft product) is complicated and very slow... Overall a burden to use and maintain. It screws with your Outlook application and is known for crashing it. Suggest you try other competing databases and see what's out there, but I wouldn't choose CRM for my company. Yes, I use it for a rail-related function.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/15 01:42 by MarsLight.

We implemented three on a supplier to Class II and III railroads - salesforce.com, an internal one, and Trackweb by Softfront.  I'd say it depends on what you are looking for as the main purpose of 'CRM'.

SFDC is very much oriented towards sales, and unless you're a very large railroad with hundreds of sales opportunities I wouldn't see the need.  Trackweb we customized to be a call tracking system, and for that it works pretty well.  

>CRM (brand-name, Microsoft product) is complicated and very slow...

Maybe it confuses itself with the other CRM: Crew Resource Management.

MarsLight Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> CRM (brand-name, Microsoft product) is complicated
> and very slow... Overall a burden to use and
> maintain. It screws with your Outlook application
> and is known for crashing it. Suggest you try
> other competing databases and see what's out
> there, but I wouldn't choose CRM for my company.
> Yes, I use it for a rail-related function.
>
> Posted from iPhone

Of course, your mileage may vary. We have it running where I work with no problems. Complicated to set up, sure. But extremely adaptable.

It is complicated and adaptable, maybe useful for a Class II road but Class III? You really don't
need it for a couple dozen shippers.

Out