Contractor for CRM: looking for ways to fail the project
In the comments to our previous post, the user raguanec asked if the introduction of a CRM system would be a failure if we turn to small companies or private developers. It was the best of the questions asked that day, and then we decided to answer with a large article in which we consider what it is, ordering corporate software from different types of contractors, evaluate the pros and cons and side effects. But in two weeks the fantasy broke out and we decided not just to pobukhtet, but also to conduct another experiment in our style. It turned out exciting and sometimes mischievous. Enjoy!
And according to the technical task there was a racing car for Formula 1
That same comment thread. They asked - we answer.
It's about custom development and about finding a contractor for the implementation of ready-made software. And we will try to look exactly as representatives of the companies that are commissioned to choose a CRM system most often do: that is, “we need a CRM with several requirements”. We imitate a complete misunderstanding of the processes of software development and implementation. It was especially difficult with freelancers - they had to “order” software, which was to be developed “on the knee” in terms of the rules for creating corporate programs.
Indeed, it is often necessary to see how representatives of companies looking for ways to save on CRM are looking for software on non-core forums, freelancing sites, choosing software exclusively for the price. The situation is initially strange, because CRM is a technological investment in the development of the company, speeding up processes and service. To save on investments is to save on the result. Well, okay, today we are not talking about that.
')
It is necessary to make a reservation that we analyze the history on the example of a CRM system, since this is our topic, and the question initially concerned it, but almost all the pros and cons are relevant for custom development of any software: from the 1C config or site to the IT infrastructure monitoring system .
The main difference between these three categories: you order the development of a CRM system (essentially a program code) from freelancers and you do not receive or receive an implementation project (training, maintenance, improvement, integration, settings, etc.). At startups and mature vendors you get a finished product and implementation project (adaptation, refinement, training, maintenance, integration, etc.).
We make a reservation in advance that there are both positive and terrible exceptions in all groups and generalizations are not the place. However, the general trends are obvious. And in advance, we apologize to all the freelancers and companies whose time we killed. In the end, you have not spent it so much.
It turns out that we can be surprised too.
We in the company RegionSoft never in my life turned to freelancers - all the needs for smart heads and shoulders arms are covered within the state. If suddenly something goes wrong, we havean extra life multifunctional guys who can program and support, and sell, and admin admin server. But, first, it turned out that our employees worked closely with freelancers in their previous jobs. And secondly, we are against boring posts on Habré, so we decided to conduct an experiment and create tasks on freelancing sites. They invented a virtual girl and threw such a task:
So, almost unambiguous advantages of working with freelancers.
Freelance services are cheaper. Here it’s even difficult to argue somehow - in our task we “allocated for the project” 300 thousand rubles, but we were offered both for 20 thousand rubles, and 30, and 350 thousand rubles. Of course, the development of CRM under the order with the specified requirements of 300 thousand rubles. It cannot cost, and we assessed the quality of the proposed template solutions without departing from the cash register. But yes, in almost 90% of cases we received a price tag significantly lower than Vendorsky, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
CRM for 15 days, 14 nights and only from 50,000 rubles
You do not pay for the infrastructure - and this is true, if you compare a freelancer and a hired employee (say, a 1C programmer or a web developer for an easy CRM on the knee). A freelancer does not take your time on ongoing negotiations, does not require a special PC, does not ask to buy IDE, pay for food, internet, etc. In general, this is a comfortable interaction: you are waiting for the solution of the problem and do not worry about the means by which it will be found.
Freelancers can focus on the task and distract from external factors - especially if you are lucky and find the “project” freelancer. As a rule, these are the guys who have the main work and in their free time are sawing the project after the project, without exchanging it for “widgets, applications, patches and coursebooks”. They know their stuff, they have a great stack and are ready to work almost all their free time on your task. Rare species, but even in the experiment we got a couple of these guys.
Freelancers are counting on an unlimited working day and are able to show miracles of speed of work. If a person earns only private orders and at the same time values ​​his name, he really works quickly and almost around the clock. Well, you, in turn, do not need to pay for processing, weekends and respond to the full extent of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation for irregular working hours.
As you can see, there are advantages to working with freelancers, and they are quite weighty, especially for small companies that need software to account for their client base. But before you rush to register accounts on freelancing sites, you should learn about the disadvantages and fun moments of our experiment.
Freelancers break deadlines and do not get in touch - a million jokes, stories, pictures, etc. are devoted to this. Indeed, two guys disappeared in Skype, another one disappeared after the task was clarified by phone. Colleagues confirmed that sometimes it seems that during the project, a freelancer is ill with dogs and cats, numerous distant relatives die, plumbing straits happen, hard drives break down and buggy sims of the whole big three mobile operators. Attack some!
As a rule, freelancers run several projects at the same time and how priority will be set depends on the decision of the contractor himself. This is a big problem, because you are not connected with a freelance contract to the extent that you control his work hourly. A high priority can be obtained in two ways: either to give a really interesting task (which is unlikely to include CRM in the understanding of a freelancer), or pay an amount that covers the risks of other projects (then you lose the goal of hiring such a contractor - saving).
Freelancers are usually multilanders. This is certainly good for them - the guys are always in trend and are able to do small tasks on several variants of the stack of technologies. But this is bad for the customer, since no technology can be studied deep enough for the project.
Freelancers are often able to speak, but do not know how to do. As we have said, it was not by chance that we created a girl for the experiment - we expected that they would start offering us beautifully. And indeed, some freelancers sent catchy offers, but after the first question about TK, they disappeared. But, fortunately, there were few of them. Although some have even been taught to live.
TK is the cherry on the cake when dealing with freelancers. And if almost everyone asked about TK in Freelance (18 answers), out of 12 FL.ru themselves initiated a conversation about TK two, and that was already in personal communication outside the resource. But with them we were waiting for something interesting. So, for example, one of the performers was ready to write TK per day ( despite the fact that it takes us from 50 working hours to 20-30 working days, and TK of such a level as in our task takes from 100 hours ), the other asked TK with all the diagrams in the UML notation. By the way, several freelancers refused to compile a technical task and sign it. And we, by the way, have already written why this is bad.
Freelancers are not ready to solve technical problems and do not support their decisions or make it more expensive than a vendor. Questions about technical support were either gently bypassed, or went into the plane “there will be a system and we'll see”. At the site of the business, I somehow did not want to know that the CRM system of crutches and bicycles would be serviced at a high price.
But the bikes will certainly be. In our assignment, we gave potential contractors the right to choose the technology that is interesting for them and seems to be the most successful. By the way, we received such a zoo in response:
Some sent their ready-made implementations of CRM-systems and even brazenly plagiarism. In the spoiler - a small analysis of stories.
As you can see, two problems are striking: misunderstanding of what the CRM system is in principle and security problems in particular. The reason for such incidents is simple - freelancers are not ready to design and test, partly from a lack of time, partly from complete refusing to each project. They are not familiar with the concept of refactoring - while, for example, we refactor our RegionSoft CRM regularly and strive to achieve speed of deployment and program operation not by reducing the functionality, but by optimizing the code. By the way, only three asked about the design, but this is a serious layer of work, which the programmer himself should not understand.
Freelancers are often rather inexperienced to understand the requirements of a business - in fact, no one prepared them for developing corporate software and it’s difficult to blame them. But when developing a CRM system, there is a misunderstanding of what primary documentation is, a discount, an offer, a warehouse, a cash desk, a business process, etc. will lead to the fact that instead of a working tool you will get an Excel table with a modified interface and at a high price.
Freelancers are self - confident - they consider themselves professionals in areas that seem adjacent to them. For example, we were overwhelmed with suggestions from site developers. But a CRM system (even the web) is a completely different requirement for working with forms, storing and protecting information, access rights, etc. However, people are ready to take on the job. And if they do not fulfill it or are delayed, you will get problems with deferred deployment and you will continue to work for some time with reduced efficiency.
A good freelancer is hard to find, it is a long and complicated process. By the way, we were lucky - we would choose three people with Freelance for the second stage (the companies from there do not count) and talk to one with FL.ru. But most of all we liked this developer — he wrote on business, professionally, correctly, clearly; talked about the load, stack, variants of implementation, said about the design, mailing. The man got into the task, embraced it, professionally dismantled the words. That was the exception. So we share the find, if someone needs a PHP-person.
Legal issues and intellectual property protection - the company rarely thinks about it when ordering a project. Suppose your concept, your features, and the implementation and design of a freelancer. Who owns the rights to the program? Who owns the code? What happens if you decide to develop the system and sell it? These questions remain open, we have not been answered - if anyone has experience, tell in the comments how legal subtleties are settled.
Somehow even a shame that it turned out so many cons. Although initially there were 18 items on the list, we removed the obvious ones (such as plagiarism, pseudonyms and false phones), subjective ones (yes, we were rude) and rare (like paying for a trip to our office from another country). But the problem is and it is that the CRM developer among freelancers are looking for companies that have a need for software, but little money. And in the end, they lose both time and money, and are disappointed in the very concept of CRM. And this again suffers their own business.
Well, the last remark: do not confuse freelancing and outstaffing. If you take a person or a team of developers for outstaff, they actually completely allocate time and resources for your project, and then the risks and features turn out to be different.
Choosing a freelancer to develop software, make no mistake with the site (choose specialized IT software) and ask for several things.
Sign a contract, take a few contacts, read and verify the reviews and most importantly - do not give all the money at once. And do not forget that this is only a code - and we need more design, integration, customization, training, etc. And all this for extra money.
When for the second decade you touch the market of CRM systems (and any software), you constantly see how the market grows with new participants. Most of them do not hold and year, others change the business model, others are lost from the view. In principle, over the years, successful starts can be counted on the fingers of one hand - and almost everyone knows them.
So how do CRM beginners differ from mature vendors?
A lot of time on the project is an obvious advantage of young teams. There are not so many orders in the work, the marketing policy does not yet bring the flow of leads, and more attention can be paid to a specific development / implementation project. The payment for this is a small experience of implementation at the company, but with due diligence and heads on shoulders, everything turns out perfectly.
Young companies are trying and working on the image. Today, one review in social networks or a couple of nasty comments on Habré can deprive a company of some new orders. It means that it is necessary to make successful projects and satisfy the requirements of the customer, while the image is a completely clean sheet. You can benefit from this - at least you can count on impeccable correctness in communication, a detailed discussion of the project and an early implementation.
New teams use trendy technology stack. It is unlikely that you will be able to find newbies who make desktop CRMs and write C ++ or Delphi code. In principle, this is not bad - modern development tools allow you to work quickly, build applications from ready-made components, create mobile versions simultaneously with the web, etc. But there are risks: as always, the security issue is in the first place, and the second is the support of the technology itself inside the stack, especially open source. If the technology is no longer supported by its vendor or community, then the software developed with its help will also soon begin to experience problems.
At startups, you can get discounts and bonuses - again, due to the small number of orders, and sometimes the wound price.
Employees of young companies are exceptionally correct and affable. It’s not that we, the vendors, would be angry and rude, but a touch of subservience and hypocrisy will come along. We at RegionSoft perceive our work as doctors - we need to provide expert help, and not send it from office to office, collecting money with a pasted smile. In general, the difference is not critical, but for impressionable persons it is.
It is pleasant to work with young companies, they have adopted a lot from the western practice of communicating with clients and working with projects. It may even be fun for you to observe how the implementation work is going on (for example, you will be given a Gantt chart - this is impressive). But the devil, as you know, is in the details.
An unstable team is a sign of a young company. During the implementation, you risk seeing a shift of individual managers, developers, or the entire state. Such internal instability has a great effect on the relationship with the customer, leads to delays in the timing, loss of important documents and even deliberate sabotage from the guys leaving the company.
In companies that have not had enough implementations, there is almost no customer experience - which means that in certain situations the team may get confused, not find a solution, refuse the correct answer to the question raised. This is not a critical minus and it can be compensated by the intelligence and diligence of employees, but in general it is a shame to be a guinea pig for the money.
Companies can live by mirages - in particular, they can consider themselves to be CRM-developers, but they can only have a contact or transaction management program in their arsenal. They can declare mail and telephony, but implement them through third-party applications (widgets). This is a set of unpleasant surprises, which can fall on you after the conclusion of the contract.
Companies can change prices and delivery schemes - and this is very unpleasant. The price can be pegged to the currency and change along with the exchange rate (in Russia, saving, you know, is not an option) or changing every year (this applies to software rental, that is, SaaS models). Fix the long-term rental value in the contract is unlikely to succeed. There is a way out - to pay a couple of years at once, but then the whole economic meaning of SaaS is lost and new risks appear.
Companies can change the direction of their business - in the event of an unsuccessful start of sales, a young company can abandon the CRM direction or, for example, start delivering only packages from 100 users. The best thing you can count on in this situation is that you need to upload or migrate data within two weeks or a month. By the way, the service may be paid - startups like to take money, for example, for backups, uploads or the right of extended access to your own data.
Alas, a young company (especially if it calls itself a startup) is more a cult around technology and business philosophy, but not the business itself. We will now say something seditious, but the manufacturer of the CRM system cannot be a start-up. Just because a startup is a search for a product and a search for a business model. On the CRM market, everything is linearly simple: develop a powerful functional product and begin to implement, no searches.
There are a lot of stable vendors on the market. Our RegionSoft is one of them. Vast experience and proven by thousands of software implementations - the main advantage of such companies.
Brand companies they cherish . It costs a lot. We have focused on service and professionalism - each client can come with the most difficult questions, get answers, high-quality automation, training and technical support. Similarly, our competitors have built their own strategies for working with clients and try to stick to them.
Vendors use the latest versions of development tools , always up to date with all the updates in its narrow scope. Each company has established preferences in terms of technology stack. Any changes can occur except with the release of a completely new product. Accordingly, developers have accumulated experience, confidence in the choice and reliability of development tools, DBMS, and other software.That is why the majority of old-time business software vendors are eyeing new programming languages, databases, and other technologies, but they always carefully evaluate all the risks of switching to a new stack. But young companies and freelancers sometimes take the risk of taking raw versions of media or languages, and then get production bugs. And the risk is not always a noble cause.
RegionSoft has long found its “golden” stack, we stopped strange experiments with software and make a workable tool. Programmers continually hone functions, refactor, optimize, search for new patterns in order for RegionSoft CRMwas set up in minutes, performed operations in seconds, and integrated with sites, telephony, 1C. For this purpose, we have created additional tools, such as the program script server and the RegionSoft Application Server integration and our own telephony routing server ( VoIP connector ).
Serious vendors have a roadmap for implementation - best practices without stuffed cones and growth problems. These are formed internal patterns and instructions on which the implementation takes place. We also have one, and recently such a guide was issued for clients as well - you can download the diagram and the article right away and read later.
Companies are liable for delays and mistakes- All details are stipulated in the step-by-step technical task (TZ) and stated in the contract. Accordingly, you know in advance the price of the project, terms, responsible persons. All employees involved are available for communication and counseling. Intellectual and human resource gives the opportunity to quickly and productively solve customer problems, work with incidents.
Each vendor has at least one office with staff responsible for all, even the most complex technical issues. And you can be sure that the vendor will not disappear and will not cease to “pick up the phone” without fulfilling its obligations.
Higher costs - yes, an implementation project for a mature vendor usually costs more than an order from a freelancer and sometimes more expensive than an implementation from a startup. In fact, every vendor’s action is legally protected and financially secured - you don’t have to pay twice, and the risk of being left without CRM is minimized.
Although there are situations when a potential client comes with a space-scale project, where everything is intertwined and integrated to such an extent that the forecast for the successful implementation of such a project is surely negative. A competent vendor must either reject such a project, or convince the customer to change the concept, removing the implementation of questionable and inadequate requirements from the project.
To realize this, you need to deeply understand the essence of possible problems, and this is possible only with the advent of a lot of experience, which is not available for freelancers and startups.
Lack of industry specialization - indeed, among mature vendors there are a lot of CRM-ok “for” (real estate, online stores, advertising agencies, etc.), but there are very few with really redesigned industry processes. Just because the creation of such versions is expensive, because you need an investor (not the one before whom the pitches are read, but the one who actually orders software) and professional consultants. At one time, the RegionSoft team made a CRM system for television and radio broadcasting.(teleradiohldingov) - it was a difficult and lengthy process, but the product is still easy to "do" the rest and is in demand.
A large pool of customers takes away all the resources of the vendor, but nevertheless, it builds its business processes in such a way as to fulfill all obligations. It is extremely rare that a client’s project start may be postponed for a short time due to the workload of all employees.
Conflicts between customer and contractor- a serious destructive force of the implementation project. The client turns on the “Flattened” mode, the vendor turns on the “Not written to the TOR” mode and a clash of interests begins, which can lead to a crash of implementation. The recipe is simple - to find compromises and be attentive to legally relevant documents (including TK as an integral part of the contract).
There are specific disadvantages peculiar to individual companies. It is
better to identify such risks during a conversation with each specific vendor.
There will be no conclusions and recommendations on companies - we have already written about the choice of vendor in the detailed article about implementation.
Most micro and small businesses sometimes go through all three types of contractors. And this choice is determined by several reasons.
However, do not forget that the implementation is much more than just the program code of the project. It is necessary to meet deadlines, achieve automation goals without losing money, time, nerves. To get the desired result, it is worth considering all possible options and only then make a sensible choice: solve problems or create new ones. Alas, the desire to make quick and maximum savings is rarely justified. The choice of a CRM system is an important step in developing a business at new speeds. Implement corporate software is better next to experienced people who understand the details of the process and problems of your company.
Professionals are in all three groups. Just the density is different. The choice is yours! The main thing is not to get the cat in the bag.
And according to the technical task there was a racing car for Formula 1
That same comment thread. They asked - we answer.
What are we talking about?
It's about custom development and about finding a contractor for the implementation of ready-made software. And we will try to look exactly as representatives of the companies that are commissioned to choose a CRM system most often do: that is, “we need a CRM with several requirements”. We imitate a complete misunderstanding of the processes of software development and implementation. It was especially difficult with freelancers - they had to “order” software, which was to be developed “on the knee” in terms of the rules for creating corporate programs.
Indeed, it is often necessary to see how representatives of companies looking for ways to save on CRM are looking for software on non-core forums, freelancing sites, choosing software exclusively for the price. The situation is initially strange, because CRM is a technological investment in the development of the company, speeding up processes and service. To save on investments is to save on the result. Well, okay, today we are not talking about that.
')
It is necessary to make a reservation that we analyze the history on the example of a CRM system, since this is our topic, and the question initially concerned it, but almost all the pros and cons are relevant for custom development of any software: from the 1C config or site to the IT infrastructure monitoring system .
Who are we talking about?
- About freelancers. This is a popular class of developers who are ready to take on the project and ... And then how the card will lay down: complete it in good faith, make friends with the customer and have a stable income for support; piling on templates and selling them to a greedy customer at a dumping price; start, fail, return the money; take a prepayment, pick a couple of times to clear your conscience and disappear from the radar; chat and gulf. And the distribution of variants of events, alas, is not always in favor of the first.
- About young start-ups who, in the wake of the IT boom, decided that they were doing CRM systems. Well, or contact managers. Or maybe a business plan. No, task-system. Well, or, in the end, intuitive dashboards for advanced leaders. Such companies are again divided into two large parts: the first, their minority, will develop the product, grow, look for niches and price frames; the latter will quickly realize that it’s useless to chase the existing CRM developers, close the case and open a coffee shop, barbershop or go to consulting. They have learned business, you can teach others.
- On the companies-vendors of CRM-systems that have been on the market for a long time (more than 5 years). These can be large and very small companies, but the main condition is a developed product with stable updates, support, own development, and well-established conditions of interaction with customers. Simply put, these are regular vendors. For example, we. Regionsoft Developer Studio is a small company, but has been on the market for 16 years, and has been developing its CRM system for 11 years. We have stable and frequent minor updates, once every year and a half or two years - a new “tricked” version is released. This is our main business, we have our own development department, technical support, several manager-consultants and tested the product on more than 6000 clients with different types of business. And we in the market are, of course, not alone.
The main difference between these three categories: you order the development of a CRM system (essentially a program code) from freelancers and you do not receive or receive an implementation project (training, maintenance, improvement, integration, settings, etc.). At startups and mature vendors you get a finished product and implementation project (adaptation, refinement, training, maintenance, integration, etc.).
We make a reservation in advance that there are both positive and terrible exceptions in all groups and generalizations are not the place. However, the general trends are obvious. And in advance, we apologize to all the freelancers and companies whose time we killed. In the end, you have not spent it so much.
It turns out that we can be surprised too.
Freelancers: sawing on the knee
We in the company RegionSoft never in my life turned to freelancers - all the needs for smart heads and shoulders arms are covered within the state. If suddenly something goes wrong, we have
By the way, we created the task for Freelance (Habra project, spending on 1 task from 500 rubles), FL.ru (conditionally free platform) and Kwork (we re-requested the registration letter 7 times, but did not receive it - respectively, from the game dropped out). Let's say right away: a good business will not be called free, and FL.ru has pleased us with shkolota, plagiarism, and courageous CRM developers for three months. Freelance - on the head a better project, with adequate guys, though not without companies and their salespeople, but it seems that this is not prohibited. However, all the details will tell in the course of history.
So, almost unambiguous advantages of working with freelancers.
pros
Freelance services are cheaper. Here it’s even difficult to argue somehow - in our task we “allocated for the project” 300 thousand rubles, but we were offered both for 20 thousand rubles, and 30, and 350 thousand rubles. Of course, the development of CRM under the order with the specified requirements of 300 thousand rubles. It cannot cost, and we assessed the quality of the proposed template solutions without departing from the cash register. But yes, in almost 90% of cases we received a price tag significantly lower than Vendorsky, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
CRM for 15 days, 14 nights and only from 50,000 rubles
You do not pay for the infrastructure - and this is true, if you compare a freelancer and a hired employee (say, a 1C programmer or a web developer for an easy CRM on the knee). A freelancer does not take your time on ongoing negotiations, does not require a special PC, does not ask to buy IDE, pay for food, internet, etc. In general, this is a comfortable interaction: you are waiting for the solution of the problem and do not worry about the means by which it will be found.
Freelancers can focus on the task and distract from external factors - especially if you are lucky and find the “project” freelancer. As a rule, these are the guys who have the main work and in their free time are sawing the project after the project, without exchanging it for “widgets, applications, patches and coursebooks”. They know their stuff, they have a great stack and are ready to work almost all their free time on your task. Rare species, but even in the experiment we got a couple of these guys.
Freelancers are counting on an unlimited working day and are able to show miracles of speed of work. If a person earns only private orders and at the same time values ​​his name, he really works quickly and almost around the clock. Well, you, in turn, do not need to pay for processing, weekends and respond to the full extent of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation for irregular working hours.
As you can see, there are advantages to working with freelancers, and they are quite weighty, especially for small companies that need software to account for their client base. But before you rush to register accounts on freelancing sites, you should learn about the disadvantages and fun moments of our experiment.
Minuses
Freelancers break deadlines and do not get in touch - a million jokes, stories, pictures, etc. are devoted to this. Indeed, two guys disappeared in Skype, another one disappeared after the task was clarified by phone. Colleagues confirmed that sometimes it seems that during the project, a freelancer is ill with dogs and cats, numerous distant relatives die, plumbing straits happen, hard drives break down and buggy sims of the whole big three mobile operators. Attack some!
As a rule, freelancers run several projects at the same time and how priority will be set depends on the decision of the contractor himself. This is a big problem, because you are not connected with a freelance contract to the extent that you control his work hourly. A high priority can be obtained in two ways: either to give a really interesting task (which is unlikely to include CRM in the understanding of a freelancer), or pay an amount that covers the risks of other projects (then you lose the goal of hiring such a contractor - saving).
Freelancers are usually multilanders. This is certainly good for them - the guys are always in trend and are able to do small tasks on several variants of the stack of technologies. But this is bad for the customer, since no technology can be studied deep enough for the project.
Freelancers are often able to speak, but do not know how to do. As we have said, it was not by chance that we created a girl for the experiment - we expected that they would start offering us beautifully. And indeed, some freelancers sent catchy offers, but after the first question about TK, they disappeared. But, fortunately, there were few of them. Although some have even been taught to live.
Miracles and only on freelance sites
For example, freelancers ignored questions and rushed into battle - think that we should build a CRM! And even sought to do something else besides the standard CRM.
True, a single participant with FL turned out to be adequate and lowered the customer from the sky to the ground. In fact, the original task and the truth is very difficult. And there is the development of such software from scratch is much more than two million.
Unfortunately, representatives of the companies, official and partisan, met at both sites. From the point of view of the promotion channel, this is probably not so bad, but somehow it is not very nice. In our opinion, taking client tasks on freelancing sites is not entirely grown-up. However, it’s not for us to advise on advancing; we are going back to working out.
Part of the answers was frankly illiterate and reminded a deaf person to a blind person - we even joked inside the company that you’ll order from the next CRM-pro, and then, on September 1, the school got lessons, and the project would fail due to the performer’s employment.
Or, for example, a developer for whom you need to keep your staff of architects, engineers and product managers. Perhaps, with such an arsenal of IT services, the company itself will cope with the CRM system.
To someone, everything that is not Yandex is not serious. It also remains a mystery how the perception of the “seriousness of the product” will be ensured, how much should a choice be made and the main thing - what is it, a CRM system like Yandex? Again, there is a latent feeling that the interlocutor is a company representative.
And here is an example of a discreet, high-quality and honest answer. We liked the approach and even the technology stack. And again we have a faint feeling that we communicated with a representative of a company or a group of developers, and not with a private executor.
True, a single participant with FL turned out to be adequate and lowered the customer from the sky to the ground. In fact, the original task and the truth is very difficult. And there is the development of such software from scratch is much more than two million.
Unfortunately, representatives of the companies, official and partisan, met at both sites. From the point of view of the promotion channel, this is probably not so bad, but somehow it is not very nice. In our opinion, taking client tasks on freelancing sites is not entirely grown-up. However, it’s not for us to advise on advancing; we are going back to working out.
Part of the answers was frankly illiterate and reminded a deaf person to a blind person - we even joked inside the company that you’ll order from the next CRM-pro, and then, on September 1, the school got lessons, and the project would fail due to the performer’s employment.
Or, for example, a developer for whom you need to keep your staff of architects, engineers and product managers. Perhaps, with such an arsenal of IT services, the company itself will cope with the CRM system.
To someone, everything that is not Yandex is not serious. It also remains a mystery how the perception of the “seriousness of the product” will be ensured, how much should a choice be made and the main thing - what is it, a CRM system like Yandex? Again, there is a latent feeling that the interlocutor is a company representative.
And here is an example of a discreet, high-quality and honest answer. We liked the approach and even the technology stack. And again we have a faint feeling that we communicated with a representative of a company or a group of developers, and not with a private executor.
TK is the cherry on the cake when dealing with freelancers. And if almost everyone asked about TK in Freelance (18 answers), out of 12 FL.ru themselves initiated a conversation about TK two, and that was already in personal communication outside the resource. But with them we were waiting for something interesting. So, for example, one of the performers was ready to write TK per day ( despite the fact that it takes us from 50 working hours to 20-30 working days, and TK of such a level as in our task takes from 100 hours ), the other asked TK with all the diagrams in the UML notation. By the way, several freelancers refused to compile a technical task and sign it. And we, by the way, have already written why this is bad.
What we were told about TK
Here, for example, correspondence with a superhero who is ready to create a technical task in one day. Prior to discussing the speed of development is not reached
But the second performer, not ready to participate in the development of technical specifications and his signing. But ready to write code quickly and inexpensively.
But the second performer, not ready to participate in the development of technical specifications and his signing. But ready to write code quickly and inexpensively.
Freelancers are not ready to solve technical problems and do not support their decisions or make it more expensive than a vendor. Questions about technical support were either gently bypassed, or went into the plane “there will be a system and we'll see”. At the site of the business, I somehow did not want to know that the CRM system of crutches and bicycles would be serviced at a high price.
But the bikes will certainly be. In our assignment, we gave potential contractors the right to choose the technology that is interesting for them and seems to be the most successful. By the way, we received such a zoo in response:
- “We will do the technology stack ourselves, the MySQL DBMS will be free” (to be honest, we didn’t understand the stack that we’ll make ourselves — they will write their own interpreter? Who knows?)
- php + mysql
- PHP (laravel, zend, codeigniter, yii and symfony); Python (django); Ruby (RoR) - but this was suggested by a company, not a private freelancer
- Php
- php (yii) - three times
- PHP (Laravel), Golang, NodeJS (sailsjs)
- asp.net core? DB postgresql or mySql - this was again the company
- 1C-Bitrix - twice.
Some sent their ready-made implementations of CRM-systems and even brazenly plagiarism. In the spoiler - a small analysis of stories.
Holes in someone's safety, mistakes and collapse
One of the freelancers sent us several links to their projects - domain + login / password. We logged on to the first system and ... surprised us: we got into a live customer base with full names, phones, dates, deals, statuses and managers. But! First thought - the numbers invented. They phoned five numbers from the database and introduced themselves as advertisements for an invented beauty salon and car dealership. All alive and match the names! Here is such a security of personal data on the web - directly illustrative, textbook example.
Below is the interface of another masterpiece. The usual form in elementary design. But at least without mistakes and jambs, everything is functional, although not a user friend.
Unlike this CRM system, which, at the very first attempt to move it, issued a database crash, then rose, and then finally painted, even opening a piece of the source code. We did not break, honestly! We are generally more on desktop systems.
Well, the grammatical errors in the menu are already beyond good and evil. I wonder how the client accepted this software?
Below is the interface of another masterpiece. The usual form in elementary design. But at least without mistakes and jambs, everything is functional, although not a user friend.
Unlike this CRM system, which, at the very first attempt to move it, issued a database crash, then rose, and then finally painted, even opening a piece of the source code. We did not break, honestly! We are generally more on desktop systems.
Well, the grammatical errors in the menu are already beyond good and evil. I wonder how the client accepted this software?
As you can see, two problems are striking: misunderstanding of what the CRM system is in principle and security problems in particular. The reason for such incidents is simple - freelancers are not ready to design and test, partly from a lack of time, partly from complete refusing to each project. They are not familiar with the concept of refactoring - while, for example, we refactor our RegionSoft CRM regularly and strive to achieve speed of deployment and program operation not by reducing the functionality, but by optimizing the code. By the way, only three asked about the design, but this is a serious layer of work, which the programmer himself should not understand.
Freelancers are often rather inexperienced to understand the requirements of a business - in fact, no one prepared them for developing corporate software and it’s difficult to blame them. But when developing a CRM system, there is a misunderstanding of what primary documentation is, a discount, an offer, a warehouse, a cash desk, a business process, etc. will lead to the fact that instead of a working tool you will get an Excel table with a modified interface and at a high price.
Freelancers are self - confident - they consider themselves professionals in areas that seem adjacent to them. For example, we were overwhelmed with suggestions from site developers. But a CRM system (even the web) is a completely different requirement for working with forms, storing and protecting information, access rights, etc. However, people are ready to take on the job. And if they do not fulfill it or are delayed, you will get problems with deferred deployment and you will continue to work for some time with reduced efficiency.
A good freelancer is hard to find, it is a long and complicated process. By the way, we were lucky - we would choose three people with Freelance for the second stage (the companies from there do not count) and talk to one with FL.ru. But most of all we liked this developer — he wrote on business, professionally, correctly, clearly; talked about the load, stack, variants of implementation, said about the design, mailing. The man got into the task, embraced it, professionally dismantled the words. That was the exception. So we share the find, if someone needs a PHP-person.
Legal issues and intellectual property protection - the company rarely thinks about it when ordering a project. Suppose your concept, your features, and the implementation and design of a freelancer. Who owns the rights to the program? Who owns the code? What happens if you decide to develop the system and sell it? These questions remain open, we have not been answered - if anyone has experience, tell in the comments how legal subtleties are settled.
Somehow even a shame that it turned out so many cons. Although initially there were 18 items on the list, we removed the obvious ones (such as plagiarism, pseudonyms and false phones), subjective ones (yes, we were rude) and rare (like paying for a trip to our office from another country). But the problem is and it is that the CRM developer among freelancers are looking for companies that have a need for software, but little money. And in the end, they lose both time and money, and are disappointed in the very concept of CRM. And this again suffers their own business.
Well, the last remark: do not confuse freelancing and outstaffing. If you take a person or a team of developers for outstaff, they actually completely allocate time and resources for your project, and then the risks and features turn out to be different.
Conclusions and recommendations
Choosing a freelancer to develop software, make no mistake with the site (choose specialized IT software) and ask for several things.
- Examples of work with evidence that the portfolio belongs to this particular developer.
- Technology stack and explanations on it.
- Features of the creation, coordination and approval of technical specifications.
- General experience with the necessary software class.
- Legal aspects of the assignment of rights to created software.
- Features of technical support, training and further refinement.
Sign a contract, take a few contacts, read and verify the reviews and most importantly - do not give all the money at once. And do not forget that this is only a code - and we need more design, integration, customization, training, etc. And all this for extra money.
Young companies: risk is a noble cause
When for the second decade you touch the market of CRM systems (and any software), you constantly see how the market grows with new participants. Most of them do not hold and year, others change the business model, others are lost from the view. In principle, over the years, successful starts can be counted on the fingers of one hand - and almost everyone knows them.
So how do CRM beginners differ from mature vendors?
pros
A lot of time on the project is an obvious advantage of young teams. There are not so many orders in the work, the marketing policy does not yet bring the flow of leads, and more attention can be paid to a specific development / implementation project. The payment for this is a small experience of implementation at the company, but with due diligence and heads on shoulders, everything turns out perfectly.
Young companies are trying and working on the image. Today, one review in social networks or a couple of nasty comments on Habré can deprive a company of some new orders. It means that it is necessary to make successful projects and satisfy the requirements of the customer, while the image is a completely clean sheet. You can benefit from this - at least you can count on impeccable correctness in communication, a detailed discussion of the project and an early implementation.
New teams use trendy technology stack. It is unlikely that you will be able to find newbies who make desktop CRMs and write C ++ or Delphi code. In principle, this is not bad - modern development tools allow you to work quickly, build applications from ready-made components, create mobile versions simultaneously with the web, etc. But there are risks: as always, the security issue is in the first place, and the second is the support of the technology itself inside the stack, especially open source. If the technology is no longer supported by its vendor or community, then the software developed with its help will also soon begin to experience problems.
At startups, you can get discounts and bonuses - again, due to the small number of orders, and sometimes the wound price.
Employees of young companies are exceptionally correct and affable. It’s not that we, the vendors, would be angry and rude, but a touch of subservience and hypocrisy will come along. We at RegionSoft perceive our work as doctors - we need to provide expert help, and not send it from office to office, collecting money with a pasted smile. In general, the difference is not critical, but for impressionable persons it is.
It is pleasant to work with young companies, they have adopted a lot from the western practice of communicating with clients and working with projects. It may even be fun for you to observe how the implementation work is going on (for example, you will be given a Gantt chart - this is impressive). But the devil, as you know, is in the details.
Minuses
An unstable team is a sign of a young company. During the implementation, you risk seeing a shift of individual managers, developers, or the entire state. Such internal instability has a great effect on the relationship with the customer, leads to delays in the timing, loss of important documents and even deliberate sabotage from the guys leaving the company.
In companies that have not had enough implementations, there is almost no customer experience - which means that in certain situations the team may get confused, not find a solution, refuse the correct answer to the question raised. This is not a critical minus and it can be compensated by the intelligence and diligence of employees, but in general it is a shame to be a guinea pig for the money.
Companies can live by mirages - in particular, they can consider themselves to be CRM-developers, but they can only have a contact or transaction management program in their arsenal. They can declare mail and telephony, but implement them through third-party applications (widgets). This is a set of unpleasant surprises, which can fall on you after the conclusion of the contract.
Companies can change prices and delivery schemes - and this is very unpleasant. The price can be pegged to the currency and change along with the exchange rate (in Russia, saving, you know, is not an option) or changing every year (this applies to software rental, that is, SaaS models). Fix the long-term rental value in the contract is unlikely to succeed. There is a way out - to pay a couple of years at once, but then the whole economic meaning of SaaS is lost and new risks appear.
Companies can change the direction of their business - in the event of an unsuccessful start of sales, a young company can abandon the CRM direction or, for example, start delivering only packages from 100 users. The best thing you can count on in this situation is that you need to upload or migrate data within two weeks or a month. By the way, the service may be paid - startups like to take money, for example, for backups, uploads or the right of extended access to your own data.
Alas, a young company (especially if it calls itself a startup) is more a cult around technology and business philosophy, but not the business itself. We will now say something seditious, but the manufacturer of the CRM system cannot be a start-up. Just because a startup is a search for a product and a search for a business model. On the CRM market, everything is linearly simple: develop a powerful functional product and begin to implement, no searches.
"Adult" vendors: stability - a sign of excellence
There are a lot of stable vendors on the market. Our RegionSoft is one of them. Vast experience and proven by thousands of software implementations - the main advantage of such companies.
pros
Brand companies they cherish . It costs a lot. We have focused on service and professionalism - each client can come with the most difficult questions, get answers, high-quality automation, training and technical support. Similarly, our competitors have built their own strategies for working with clients and try to stick to them.
Vendors use the latest versions of development tools , always up to date with all the updates in its narrow scope. Each company has established preferences in terms of technology stack. Any changes can occur except with the release of a completely new product. Accordingly, developers have accumulated experience, confidence in the choice and reliability of development tools, DBMS, and other software.That is why the majority of old-time business software vendors are eyeing new programming languages, databases, and other technologies, but they always carefully evaluate all the risks of switching to a new stack. But young companies and freelancers sometimes take the risk of taking raw versions of media or languages, and then get production bugs. And the risk is not always a noble cause.
RegionSoft has long found its “golden” stack, we stopped strange experiments with software and make a workable tool. Programmers continually hone functions, refactor, optimize, search for new patterns in order for RegionSoft CRMwas set up in minutes, performed operations in seconds, and integrated with sites, telephony, 1C. For this purpose, we have created additional tools, such as the program script server and the RegionSoft Application Server integration and our own telephony routing server ( VoIP connector ).
Serious vendors have a roadmap for implementation - best practices without stuffed cones and growth problems. These are formed internal patterns and instructions on which the implementation takes place. We also have one, and recently such a guide was issued for clients as well - you can download the diagram and the article right away and read later.
Companies are liable for delays and mistakes- All details are stipulated in the step-by-step technical task (TZ) and stated in the contract. Accordingly, you know in advance the price of the project, terms, responsible persons. All employees involved are available for communication and counseling. Intellectual and human resource gives the opportunity to quickly and productively solve customer problems, work with incidents.
Each vendor has at least one office with staff responsible for all, even the most complex technical issues. And you can be sure that the vendor will not disappear and will not cease to “pick up the phone” without fulfilling its obligations.
Minuses
Higher costs - yes, an implementation project for a mature vendor usually costs more than an order from a freelancer and sometimes more expensive than an implementation from a startup. In fact, every vendor’s action is legally protected and financially secured - you don’t have to pay twice, and the risk of being left without CRM is minimized.
Although there are situations when a potential client comes with a space-scale project, where everything is intertwined and integrated to such an extent that the forecast for the successful implementation of such a project is surely negative. A competent vendor must either reject such a project, or convince the customer to change the concept, removing the implementation of questionable and inadequate requirements from the project.
To realize this, you need to deeply understand the essence of possible problems, and this is possible only with the advent of a lot of experience, which is not available for freelancers and startups.
Lack of industry specialization - indeed, among mature vendors there are a lot of CRM-ok “for” (real estate, online stores, advertising agencies, etc.), but there are very few with really redesigned industry processes. Just because the creation of such versions is expensive, because you need an investor (not the one before whom the pitches are read, but the one who actually orders software) and professional consultants. At one time, the RegionSoft team made a CRM system for television and radio broadcasting.(teleradiohldingov) - it was a difficult and lengthy process, but the product is still easy to "do" the rest and is in demand.
A large pool of customers takes away all the resources of the vendor, but nevertheless, it builds its business processes in such a way as to fulfill all obligations. It is extremely rare that a client’s project start may be postponed for a short time due to the workload of all employees.
Conflicts between customer and contractor- a serious destructive force of the implementation project. The client turns on the “Flattened” mode, the vendor turns on the “Not written to the TOR” mode and a clash of interests begins, which can lead to a crash of implementation. The recipe is simple - to find compromises and be attentive to legally relevant documents (including TK as an integral part of the contract).
There are specific disadvantages peculiar to individual companies. It is
better to identify such risks during a conversation with each specific vendor.
There will be no conclusions and recommendations on companies - we have already written about the choice of vendor in the detailed article about implementation.
Selection triggers
Most micro and small businesses sometimes go through all three types of contractors. And this choice is determined by several reasons.
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However, do not forget that the implementation is much more than just the program code of the project. It is necessary to meet deadlines, achieve automation goals without losing money, time, nerves. To get the desired result, it is worth considering all possible options and only then make a sensible choice: solve problems or create new ones. Alas, the desire to make quick and maximum savings is rarely justified. The choice of a CRM system is an important step in developing a business at new speeds. Implement corporate software is better next to experienced people who understand the details of the process and problems of your company.
Professionals are in all three groups. Just the density is different. The choice is yours! The main thing is not to get the cat in the bag.
Important announcement
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/336746/
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