CRM & Marketing Automation for a certain type of business model
December 14, 2017

CRM & Marketing Automation for a certain type of business model

Colin Butler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Agile CRM

I implemented and used Agile CRM when we downsized the sales team, and wanted something more flexible and modern than Sugar CRM. The main attractions were the graphical workflow process, integration with marketing functions, and the fact that it was cloud based.
  • Integrated and cohesive one-stop-shop.
  • Website integration and intelligent click tracking.
  • Drag and drop sales process GUI.
  • While many aspects of the software are intuitive and simple to implement, much of the marketing automation functions assumed a level of technical familiarity that was beyond the average user. As soon as a tutorial tells me to get something from GitHub, I get the idea they're talking to a technician.
  • The help files, tutorials were of low quality and not always kept up to date with changes in layout of the software etc.
  • During the period we were using Agile CRM, I had to constantly trawl through their update logs and forum. This is because, as the name Agile suggests, the development and improvement of the software was constantly evolving in an organic fashion. But many of the developments were not relevant to us; majorly they were integrations with obscure apps that I would never use. But I had to understand 20 changes to locate the one that had some relevance to me.
  • It may be me but I spent a disproportionate amount of time figuring out how to derive more ROI from Agile CRM. The functionality and facilities were there but I eventually gave up as it was taking too much time and attention.
Agile CRM did most of what PipeDrive did, some of what Hubspot does, and a range of other stuff that I was starry eyed about at the outset. but I eventually concluded that a jack-of-all-trades was not what i was looking for. And while the support team tried, they didn't have English as their first language and weren't on my time zone so all those factors conspired to turn me off on the end.
Agile CRM was developed the the company's own business model. So its very well suited to a SAAS model. And many business models products or services to individual users rather many contacts within the same organization, would find the suite of functions attractive. If you develop or manage your own website, and have some level of expertise in online marketing, then you should be able to get to grips with some powerful marketing automation functions in Agile CRM. After a year or so, I concluded Agile wasn't a perfect fit for my small B2B business. I eventually moved to Active Campaign which while being more of a marketing tool than a CRM, actually turned out to be the perfect CRM for my business.

Agile CRM Feature Ratings

Customer data management / contact management
6
Workflow management
7
Territory management
Not Rated
Opportunity management
2
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
7
Contract management
4
Quote & order management
2
Interaction tracking
4
Channel / partner relationship management
Not Rated
Case management
Not Rated
Call center management
Not Rated
Help desk management
Not Rated
Lead management
5
Email marketing
5
Task management
2
Billing and invoicing management
1
Reporting
2
Forecasting
1
Pipeline visualization
8
Customizable reports
1
Custom fields
8
Custom objects
Not Rated
Scripting environment
Not Rated
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
2
Single sign-on capability
6
Social data
2
Social engagement
2
Marketing automation
3
Compensation management
Not Rated
Mobile access
3