Is it me or is CRM counter-productive? Not according to the company I have just been helping do a large scale Sage 1000 implementation for.  They want to rip it out and just stick to good old fin and ops. Why? Because the maintenance of customers (and now with version 2.2, suppliers) is just so long winded when compared to the ‘old’ way of doing this. Yes you can turn the maintenance options back on in the menus but now version 2.2 gives you a warning about mainting a customer/supplier through fin and ops. Of course we all know the integration is poor, this implementation had 8 companies and that caused all sorts of problems.

So why even use the CRM part? Well many sites find the dashboard, and the fact you can add your own reports quite useful. If you are very sales focused then the ability to enter and track prospects before they hit the fin and ops is useful. Don’t get me wrong, CRM on its own is, and always has been (even when it was accpac CRM) is a great product. As a bundle it just doesn’t work that well and certainly can be counter-productive. Net result, rumour has it Line 500 sales are still good as many organisations simply don’t need it.