Oct 17, 2010
WORKetc Review: CRM meets Project Management and Billing
Recently, a comment on one of our posts (The cost aspects of CRM for SMBs) led us to analyze a web based SaaS application WORKetc. WORKetc as the name suggests is an enterprise application which helps you manage your work flows and plus,It follows the rule of 80-20 and takes the most used features of CRM, Project Management and Invoicing and clubs them into an easy to use application. Lets have a look at the offerings of the service with regards to a few keypoints.
Why WORKetc : The pain points that WORKetc targets to address are :
- A lot of different softwares for different functions lead to high maintainence and training costs. WORKetc lets small businesses consolidate down to the single software.
- Customer have started with either too simple or too high level software. This has led to increased complexities and increased costs in the system.
Who will use WORKetc: WORKetc positions itself as an application that helps consolidating your work flow right from generating a sales lead to the end of project thus offering several advantages including:
- Reduction of training costs as employees get trained only in one software.
- Providing consistent look and feel to the whole workflow.
- Reduction of IT budget as you dont invest in multiple applications.
The above said positioning makes the application very lucrative for the Freelancers and small/medium businesses which can’t afford costs of multiple software apps and have resource crunch in the form of time and money to train the resources. Most of the human resources for such businesses are usually remote resources and its really impractical for them to train so many remote contractors.
What is Inside (Feature Set): WORKetc is a relatively complex application since it consolidates many single purpose applications into one but folks at WORKetc have done a great a job in figuring out the most valuable features for each use case while still maintaining the intuitive UI and a great UX. The feature set includes but not limited to:
- Web Based CRM
- Project Management Software
- Invoice & Billing Software
- Shared Software
- Helpdesk managment
- Document management
- Email Campaign Management
A more comprehensive list of features can be found out at WORKetc’s site.
How Much it costs : WORKetc comes at an affordable and genuine price tag. The plans start from as small as 29$ per month for a single user license and you can buy licenses on per user basis. You can have as many clients as like without paying for them. Only employees of your company need to have a license. A 15 days trial is available without even the need of a Credit Card. You can signup for the trial here.
What more can be done: A Few welcome additions to the application would be:
- The CRM module is quite complete but addition of marketing campaigns would be a great additional feature.
Conclusion: Although a great application, but WORKetc is currently oriented to Freelancers/companies who run most of their business online. It would help you considerably reduce your Saas applications budget and training cost. But if you are a CRM user who works mostly offline like Export/Insurance sector SMBs, then WORKetc might not be the right solution for you.
