What it is
SuiteCRM is an open source customer relationship management system written in PHP. It tracks accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, cases and campaigns, with workflows, reports and a customer portal. It is maintained by SalesAgility, which created it in 2013 as a fork of SugarCRM Community Edition. Its interface and modules can be extended with custom fields, modules and logic hooks.
Because it is open source and self-hosted, a business owns its data and can extend the system freely. It runs on a standard LAMP stack, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, which makes it straightforward to connect to other systems through its API or directly through the database. Commercial support and hosting are available from SalesAgility and partners.
How I use it
- At Brikers Inc. I designed and oversaw delivery of the company's end-to-end ERP on a LAMP stack with SuiteCRM and Twilio.
- SuiteCRM was the core, with Twilio inbound funnels and IVR routing callers by intent.
- Around it I built the annual inventory count and warehouse bin-location systems, and a parts catalogue seeded with machine make, model and type data.
- I managed the team delivering the ERP, website, IT infrastructure and security systems.
SuiteCRM is the right tool when a business wants a full CRM it can host and change itself, without per-seat licence fees. I reached for it at Brikers because it gave the ERP a proven customer core on the same LAMP stack as everything else, so it could be wired into the phones and the parts catalogue.
Questions
Can Shawn Mervin customise or integrate SuiteCRM?
Yes. At Brikers I designed an ERP on a SuiteCRM core and wired it into Twilio for inbound sales and IVR, with inventory and parts systems built around it.
Is SuiteCRM a good choice for a small business?
It suits a business that wants to own its CRM data and adapt the system, and has someone to host and maintain it. If you need none of that, a hosted CRM may be simpler.