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Zurmo CRM Version 1.0 Now Available

By Meenakshi Shankar
TMCnet Contributor

Zurmo is an open-source customer relationship management application, claimed to be an easy-to-use, easy-to-customize CRM application that can be adapted to any business use case. Developers of this application confirmed on the general audience release of Zurmo Version 1.0.

“In 2002, 47 percent of CRM implementations failed and today that statistic remains the same. The total lack of progress in our industry to improve this number is pathetic. We believe in CRM, but users continue to perceive it as a clunky, burdensome tool that wastes their time and only provides value to management. This space needs a major disruption and user adoption needs to be the focus,” Ray Stoeckicht, co-founder of Zurmo said in a statement.

“Zurmo makes CRM enchanting. This might be the first time in the history of the world that the word 'enchanting' has been used to describe a CRM system,” Stoeckicht emphasized.

Built-in gaming mechanics incentivize users to follow CRM best practices and aim to make the application more enjoyable than traditional CRM systems. Co-workers engage in friendly competition with one another and receive points and badges for categories such as creating new business, managing time effectively, and using the system for internal communication rather than email. On the other hand, Zurmo Social CRM is intended to severely cut back on internal e-mail communication so that users can spend more time interfacing with customers.

Apart from built-in gaming mechanics, the application is equipped to fully handle internal Social CRM functionality. Also, it helps users get their job done through complete Sales Force Automation, Activity Management, email tools for communicating with customers, and more.

“Zurmo for is for a Community of Open Source (News - Alert) Software Developers. It exists because we are determined to build the best engineered Open Source CRM on the planet,” Jason Green, co-founder and chief executive officer at Zurmo stated.

Zurmo team believes that the robustness and flexibility of the application make it a powerful foundation for building customized solutions and industry verticals. Interestingly, the company is actively works with other software development teams who utilize the software as a springboard for launching unique projects of their own.

The new version Zurmo 1.0 is the culmination of two years of full-time software development by seasoned engineers in the Open Source CRM field. It addresses users, developers, and the enterprise. Company statement clarified that additional enterprise class functionality will be added to the Zurmo Open Source product with the upcoming release of Zurmo 1.5.

Zurmo is being used by a diverse group of organizations both internationally and in the US. Back in November 2012, Zurmo announced the addition of reporting and workflow as part of Zurmo Project’s strategy to make full Enterprise-class CRM functionality available freely and openly.

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