We're looking for a basic CRM system to use in our small business. 
We're dealing with a number of authors and publishers and need to have
a system that tracks their contact information and our interactions
with them and easily identifies where in the "sales cycle" we are with
them.  It should have the following characteristics:

-Be able to share data amongst several people in our company.
-Be remotely hosted and web-based (we're geographically dispersed).
-Be very easy to install and use.
-Ideally would be a monthly charge.
-Ideally would synch with Blackberries.  

I'm not sure if something like this exists.  Sugar CRM is one option I
think but that looks like overkill for what we need.  Essentially we
need a web-based shared version of Outlook's Contacts funcitionality
that has some fields that would make it easy to track past
interactions.

If you have any questions or if this requires any clarification please
let me know.  Also, please post your answer as a comment first so that
I can approve it before you post it as the official answer.

Thanks!

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Request for Question Clarification by answerguru-ga on 13 Feb 2006 19:03 PST

Hi there,

Are you currently using MS Outlook as your mail client?

Have you looked at the Outlook Business Contact Manager?

http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/default.mspx

Let me know if this is something your organization would find useful.

Cheers,
answerguru-ga

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Clarification of Question by jpbischke-ga on 21 Feb 2006 15:43 PST

Business Contact Manager woudl work except for the fact that it's not
web-based.  We need something that will allow us to share contacts and
manage relationships over the Net since we're not all on the same PC
network.

We use LivePerson already for Live Chat so I was interested to see
that recommended.  However I wasn't aware that they had any sort of
CRM capability and couldn't find any info about that on their site.

RightNow looks like overkill and I couldn't find any pricing which
usually means it's more expensive than what we're looking for.

We need a very simple app that allows to share contacts and track
e-mails sent, phone calls and status.  It's a bummer that the Outlook
BCM won't work because otherwise that would be perfect.

I would try something likt www.rightnow.com (Right Now Technologies)
which is an extremely popular company for CRM. You may also try
www.liveperson.com.

You should look at www.centerbase.com.  This is a smaller company who
has come out with a new CRM product and their price is lower than any
other I have found.  Essentially they provide one central database
that everyone in your company links to using the internet, so you can
get up-to-date info anywhere.  The hosted version is $39 per month,
per user.  Their software also works with Outlook mail to auto log
your emails under the contact.  Hope this helps.