What issue tracking software would you recommend for a small janitorial company?
Without knowing a few key pieces of information off the bat (like the number of users who will be using and administering the application, the approximate number of clients that will populate your solution’s database, how many locations your business operates from, whether you’re comfortable storing your product, service, pricing, knowledgebase, and client information off-site with a 3rd party-hosted solution provider, or whether you insist on keeping all your business data in-house, etc., to say nothing for what your current IT infrastructure looks like at present), it’s a lot more difficult to give anyone a well-focused recommendation since those factors are far from insignificant when determining the best solution for your company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) requirements moving forward.
Based on the requirements stated thus far – for ease of use, comprehensive issue tracking & reporting capability, plus a web-based interface for customer self-service and knowledgebase support resolution, I can pretty easily recommend the Professional Edition offering from Salesforce.com (http://www.salesforce.com/crm/service.jsp). But, again, this may be overkill considering that your omission of any sales or marketing requirements may mean that you won’t make use of those capabiliies that are also available for this product "out of the box". Most businesses stand to benefit greatly, however, from maintaining a "single version of the truth", so-to-speak, of their customer data. In other words, maintaining a single customer record across all customer relationship-related departments (whether it be inbound, aka service related, or outbound, aka sales & marketing centric) is an approach that can open the doors to a very personalized relationship with your customer base like few others.
If your outbound needs are already spoken for, however (and happily so) you might want to consider other possibilities. But for a broadly applicable solution with ample room within which to grow, Microsoft CRM (http://crm.dynamics.com/solutions/customerservice.aspx) presents another solution worthy of consideration as it can be deployed either in-house or in a third-party hosted capacity (as is the case with Salesforce.com).
Hope this helps,
Philip de Souza
IT Strategists
2001 S. Barrington Ave., Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Tel: (310) 231-0488
