Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Are you a Web / Software Development firm that have a less than 10 person
staff of designers and programmers? If so, what software do you use for the:

**1** Sales Process (track leads, automate `service-oriented` proposals,...)

**2** Project Management (timelines, create milestones based on the proposal, assign resources, ...) and...

**3** Support phases (maintenance, support tickets, etc.) for delivering your services to clients?

So many products that do 1-specific task but not all 3.

The problem with SugarCRM is the costs for a small firm. Their commercial version is $500/per user/per year. What alternatives are out there to make business more productive and seamless?

There are great products like ACT for customer management -- great for documenting a history of contact with leads, reviewing the cycle of sales, writing proposals, etc... but how do you get that information to transition to a "project" for the project manager to take over -- assign staff, track milestones, track hours, etc.?  Then have that automate the billing process.

Thanks for your input!

ClientSpot (http://www.myclientspot.com) might be a good solution for you - it does typical project management things like task and time tracking, file uploads, assignments, deadlines, calendars, etc., and also supports custom databases to track things like contacts, sales leads, etc.

Doesn`t handle the "ticketing" part though.