[Debconf-team] survey of CRM options

[Allison Randal <allison@lohutok.net>]

Last weekend I worked on a survey of available CRM tools under a FLOSS
license. My full notes are here:

https://titanpad.com/hHhmrGb7uY

My ultimate conclusion is that none of the options provide enough of an
advantage over sponsors-table (for sponsor contact workflow) and RT (for
sponsor invoicing workflow), to be worth trying to make a switch right
now, as we're spinning up for the next year.

Where a CRM would provide a substantial advantage right now, is in a
persistent, searchable record of sponsors from all previous years. So my
suggestion is to set up a CRM during the dc15 cycle, and beginning to
use it as an archive of past data. (I'm happy to import data from
sponsors-table for previous years.)

My top preference of the available options was ERPNext (though it would
have been koalixcrm, if that codebase was actively maintained). Tryton
has some interest (gobby-style client/server, rather than a web interface).

Allison

(That's email 3 of 3 I promised in the sponsors team meeting earlier
this week.)