CRM project update

For those of you playing along at home, the CRM game has been delayed till 1Q 2004. Here's the funny thing--We are moving to a new building at the end of 4Q 2003 complete with new XP workstations. XP stations that can't run our current CRM-like program! The president just casually says "so you might be without a database for a couple months". Oh boy!

I have been hearing more about hosted CRM packages, which makes me think maybe I am missing something, as I have been considering 'real' software. This blog post from CRM Mastery E-Journal was helpful in making me feel better:

"Before investing in any new CRM solution, it is my opinion that every SMB should develop an IT strategy that will thoroughly address their approach to combining, sharing and easily being able to 'work with' and analyze all of the customer related information captured in their organization."

I really want to link our CRM to our ERP database, but haven't been satisfied with any of the solutions I've seen, even from our ERP vendor. And the manager of our ERP system is talking about changing systems in the near future, so I can't depend on any integration I do do lasting.

What to do? A true business decision--where there is no easy or right answer. My standard of measurement has been: what is most likely to be used, and used as fully as possible, while not worrying so much about the technology. But that goes back to having order data from the ERP system to make it useful. Argh!