Commence

Avantages

The upgrade process was efficient, professionally handled and seamless. Commence is extremely customizable. On startup, it loads almost instantly. I have a very small firm, and I use it constantly for calendaring, contact management, task managment and timekeeping. I've used Commence since the early 2000's, and Commence Corp. has consistently supported and improved its products.

Inconvénients

I rated it tops in Ease of Use, although for a solo user like me there is a learning curve. The User Manual is very good (occasionally a bit technical).

Avantages

Commence user for 15 yrs. As a marketing consultant and service provider to multiple non-profit clients, Commence is the primary Database/CRM software I use for all my needs. I have created multiple Commence Databases for multiple applications on my own to suit my specific and particular needs. I have created Commence Applications for Client Management, Inventory management and GTD (Getting Things Done) for my day to day handling of projects and tasks. ALong with many applications for Personal use as well. Once you get a hang of it, it is really very easy to set-up for your specific needs, and more importantly, to change things on a fly when you need to implement a change. I do that constantly. You can change the look and feel to what works for you. The Agents creation function (which is like a Macro function is quite strong and powerful, and so is the filtering and sorting capabilities. Have to mention the connectivity function of one category to the other, which is very powerful as well. Bottom line. I am not a programmer, I am a marketer and administrator, and I can create, modify and change Commence to suit my needs. I am sure you can too...

Inconvénients

I would like Commence to address in their future version of non web based standalone Commence:
1. Allow creation of some sort of Simple Spreadsheet into the DB. Spreadsheet format is something that we are all fond of and comfortable with, and it would be a great boost to have that functionality built in. If this exists already, and I am not aware of it, please let me know?
2. While adding text in notes, it would be great to have some flexibility to change fonts and sizes within the single note itself, that will allow some emphasis to draw attention to it. Right now only one singe font and size is allowed, which is OK, but in a long note, the change in font or the ability to increase/decrease its size or make it italic or underlining it, would make the notes much easier to read and follow.

Avantages

Easy searchable fields are super helpful in looking up accounts and clients. Other than not, not much else.

Inconvénients

There does not seem to be duplicate check feature. Meaning before we can create an account, if we type in the name, it should check to make sure there is not one already created. We have to do it manually our selves.

Avantages

As a Manufacturers Representative, we have created an implementation of Commence on which we run almost all of our business operations (Opportunity Management, Sales History, Quotations, Forecasts, Tracking overseas, Leads, Target customer, as well as the usual CRM contact info). We developed this in-house from the ground up to meet our specific needs....and so can you! Why shoe horn your data needs into a non-optimal architecture?

Commence RM Desktop is very easily configurable which is a top priority for us as the configuration of incoming and outgoing data requirements seems to change at least quarterly by at least a couple of the Manufacturers we represent. This demands updates to the architecture which would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming if we could not do them in-house.

Commence RM Desktop strikes the right balance with flexibility that can be implemented by non-computer scientists (or expert developers). Their top notch support has been invaluable in the 1-2 instances where we ran into some unforeseen glitches (mostly the result of user error).

Inconvénients

While spreadsheets are the best tool to analyze data, CRMs were never designed to do that. But, the ability to compile reports with totals/summaries is a challenge to implement in Commence RM Desktop (lots of scripting required which we choose not to do due to maintainability concerns). Manually filtering data within Commence (and using the summary button for totals and averages) works great for the most rudimentary tasks, and exporting as tab-delimited TXT takes a few easy steps to get into Excel.

Avantages

Excellent and readily customizable GUI. Enormous flexibility and ability to use "agents" to undertake otherwise complex tasks - no coding required. Agents can integrate with everything from Google Earth to Skype and automate backups to the cloud. MS Office integration allows document generation from within the product, seamlessly merging address data and word templates. Integration with Outlook is excellent. Android integration allows contacts, tasks and calendars to be actively synced to you devices. The server application is also robust with numerous syncing options from network to FTP and email. Cloud integration for documents. Commence manages >10,000 contacts >7,000 companies >100 projects and >30,000 documents in a relational database that has >130 Categories (sub-databases) for us. We can near instantly locate any document generated since 1994 and that is from contacts, companies projects etc. Value for money - hard to beat!