How to evaluate CRMs and their Consultants

There are a lot of customer relationship management systems available on the market. Prices, features, technical requirements, and customizability (is that a word?) all vary. Whether you're looking at open source software or proprietary, you need to consider several factors before plunking down the cash or working with a certain consultant.

CiviCRM, the open source CRM that we use for our clients, has a comprehensive listing of questions that you should ask before deciding on a CRM.

We also would add some questions that you should ask the vendor or consultant that you are considering. We'll provide our answers as it relates to CiviCRM.

• How long have you been working with the CRM? Almost since the beginning - 2005
• How many implementations have you completed? About 20
• What type of services do you offer on the CRM? Consultation, installation, implementation, hosting, importing, training, support, and some customization
• How many people in your company work on the projects? A large part of the work is completed by the owners with additional implementation, importing, support, and customization assistance from our two other team members.
• What is your pricing structure? We have a basic CiviCRM package for $725 and can add on other services at an hourly or fixed project rate. Also, we offer CiviCRM Rockstar Training at $75/level if you're more of a do-it-yourselfer.
• How do I get in touch with you if I need more help? Initially via e-mail. We can answer a majority of requests that way or we can setup a time to walk through things over the phone.
• How active are you in the community (a question mainly for open source CRMs)? We post any bugs, feature requests, workarounds, or fixes that we find in the system on the CiviCRM site. We also host free monthly Webinars where we show other nonprofits and developers ways that we've implemented CiviCRM for our clients. Recently, we've been keeping up with the latest by following CiviCRM on Twitter through our Data-Scribe® Twitter account.
• Do you consider yourself more of a generalist or a specialist on the CRM? We consider ourselves specialists since we offer full support on CiviCRM and don't outsource our projects. (This question was inspired by the Specialist vs. Generalist posting on SitePoint.)