Summary: Small to mid-size business can afford a comprehensive, fully functional and beneficial CRM. All it takes is a little effort on your part to check out what options are available. This article provides several features a small business CRM program should be able to provide you.

Whether a small business or an enterprise, broad expectations from a CRM system remains the same: value for money is a prime consideration, more so for SMBs.  If you are running a small to medium business, you need to check your CRM options for both affordability and features.

CRM for small businesses today is synonymous with web-based CRM.  Web-based CRM has settled the affordability issue in favor of SMBs that can now consider deploying a CRM solution.  SMBs have far greater options now.  Earlier they were limited to selecting from generic CRM systems that needed expensive customization and open source packages that did not offer a satisfactory range of features.

Features that a small-biz CRM should be able to provide you include:

• Marketing automation – It should enable you to put routine marketing chores on autopilot.  It should facilitate multi-channel communication and follow-ups with customers and prospects.
• Sales force automation – Empower your sales managers to track sales performances.  Distribute leads to increase direct sales.
• Email management – Utilize emails as a tool for promoting your business.  Get your emails past spam filters.  Speed up communication with auto-responders and newsletters.
• Contact management – Track your emails, faxes and telephone correspondence with business partners, customers and prospects.
• E-commerce – An essential feature for your online store.  Shopping carts plans to up-sell and cross-sell, credit card processing and online money transfers are some of the features that the
  e-commerce module should have.
• List management – Effective database management for customer profiling.  Target your customers in a more systematic manner and communicate with the appropriate segment when required.
• Billing – Financial reporting and automated billing programs.  Easy integration with a third party accounting program is an added advantage.
• Calendaring – Organize your tasks and execute your agenda on time.
• Help desk – An important module for managing customer support requests.

Affordability of your CRM solution has to be measured with respect to the features offered and their suitability for your requirement.

There are several low-cost CRM options available in the market.  The personal edition of Etelos CRM for Google Apps is free.  The professional edition costs $12/user/month and the enterprise edition costs $24/user/month.  freeCRM is amongst the best CRM solutions for small businesses.  The single-user version is free while the PRO version costs $15/user/month.  LeadsOnRails is a CRM system that has been developed with the intention of providing the best lead management system for SMBs.  At $350/user it is considered to be a good value for the money by industry analysts.

Open source CRM is an excellent proposition for SMBs that are looking for generic CRM software or those companies that are testing the CRM waters before opting for a particular brand.  Daffodil CRM and SugarCRM are two popular web-based open source CRM systems. 

Conclusion
When implementing a CRM solution for your business, have a budget in mind.  This will enable you to get a better understanding of your requirements vis-à-vis superfluous modules.  A realistic budget is the first step in assessing affordability and features.