Share your experience using Saleswhale

My current users use Zoho CRM to manage customer relationship management. They upload leads, customers, and contact details. After that, they make calls, meetings, site surveys, and appointments. Then, they create quotations, transfer these quotations into workflow processes, and finally, create invoices to manage collections.

For CRM, I train myself to use Odoo and Zoho CRM, but in my current job, I supervise my developers' team and make customization for CRM to serve my company. The ERP I use is an application called Dolibarr, which is totally free and has 87 modules and is open source, and I use it for all my needs in my company.

I run Zoho CRM applications because I work as IT director and IT consultant for some companies, some of which are running in Dubai and use Zoho CRM for finance and operation departments. I travel to Dubai many times to make installation, implementation, and train the team on how to use Zoho CRM. Before that, I study myself and make big points to train the staff on how to use this application.

What I appreciate about Zoho CRM is the customization. You can customize everything—what you sell, be it products, services, or projects. You can customize every step in your business.

Zoho CRM has many valuable automation features such as auto-reply, auto-mail, and reminders for customers about last offers and upcoming processes. While I have not extensively worked with automation, I have seen invoices automatically direct emails to customers.

For improving Zoho CRM, I think some organizations may prefer not to have their data on the internet since Zoho CRM runs as a cloud service. Banks and confidential organizations may need an on-premise solution. I don't know if Zoho CRM has a product that runs offline, but Odoo does, and it can run the system on your servers.

I have been working with Zoho CRM for approximately 2 years, and it does not have big issues or troubles, but it is very stable, especially when running small modules like finance to generate invoices and transactions and workflow. All these steps do not have daily issues; it's so easy to use.

I provide support for Zoho CRM, and even if I have any big issue, I contact CRM support to ask about the problem and get feedback for my users.

I would rate technical support from Zoho CRM as a seven. Sometimes, they don't understand what my actual needs are.

Positive

Amazon has AWS, and through AWS, I have a solution for Remote Desktop, but I think it's more expensive, especially in Egypt.

I prefer Zoho CRM because it offers more options for customization compared to Odoo, which makes Zoho CRM more friendly and comfortable for me.

Currently, I am still working with Azure and I use the Azure products for my current work. I use Azure Active Directory.

I don't use products like App Service from Azure or Azure Logic Apps, Front Door, but I think it's very straightforward. Once I take the first step to use Azure, I can track myself to use another application, program, or module in Azure.

I use Office 365 because we actually have Exchange mail server 2019 on premises. In the last few months, I upgraded from Exchange on premise to use Office 365, which is faster, easier to troubleshoot, and more secure.

I use Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as the best solution because I make a private server in my data center room. I have many users that need to access the internet, so I don't join the server to my domain because if I have any malware or other attacks, I can resolve it easily without any damage to my internal network.

Microsoft RDS is more user-friendly and easier to use compared to RDS from Azure Microsoft or another provider. I purchase Microsoft Remote Desktop Services directly from Microsoft. I have had an MCSE and Microsoft account for 15 years.

I work with SharePoint and Exchange, which are famous applications through Microsoft and Office 365. For daily tasks, I use Microsoft tools and Linux tools because I have applications like CRM, ERP, and HRM running over CentOS, an operating system by Linux.

Regarding CentOS, in Egypt, we have issues paying for things from the internet, especially due to the large margin between US dollars and Egyptian pounds. CentOS is totally free from the internet, so I create ISO and install it on the server to use all features, policies, and security modules. Currently, I use 3CX as voice solutions, and Asterisk is the Linux platform I use, along with firewalls by Linux called pfSense. All data centers in my company have products between Microsoft and Linux systems.

For DNS, I use deDNS to make remote access or subdomains from deDNS organization. Sometimes, I pay for a main domain from HostGator and re-route the domain to my data centers.

Based on other competitors, I would rate Zoho CRM's price as a five, as it has a middle-range price compared to others. Overall, I rate Zoho CRM a seven out of ten.

My use case for Campfire Interactive is primarily for opportunity management and sales forecasting, where we manage our forecast for all of our current production parts and our long-term forecast.

We're able to quickly assess changes in the automotive industry now that we have all our data consolidated. For instance, during the union negotiations a couple of years ago, there was a potential strike. We could quickly estimate the impact of any downtime on our operations, broken down by plant. This ability to plan and respond effectively is extremely useful for us.

We have observed several enhancements to the user interface and the pricing table. On the other hand, there is another module that I haven't been directly involved with: the costing, pricing, and quoting module. The team is continually working to improve this process, providing us with new ways to manage our workflow and process flow. From this perspective, having our cost estimating history and quoting history all consolidated in one system has been a significant improvement for us.

We have dozens of manufacturing plants whose systems do not communicate with each other. Campfire Interactive allowed us to bring all of our data into one platform.

The reporting tools are really useful, and we are able to integrate some other reporting solutions by presenting the data to the Microsoft Power BI platform.

The role-based access control is a useful feature in Campfire Interactive, giving us control over who can see what. However, there are certain processes that require particular users to have overall admin rights, which unfortunately grants them too much authority. We want to refine some of the roles further to ensure that access is appropriate. Our IT team began addressing this issue a few months ago.

I wouldn't say there are any system issues. There are minor enhancements that we request from time to time, and the Campfire team collaborates with us on those. These enhancements are not system issues; rather, they are opportunities for us to learn how to utilize the system more effectively. As a result, we come up with requests to add different cost categories and additional reporting functionality. When I think about the system, I focus less on issues and more on how the Campfire client integrates it into their business processes and trains users to use it correctly. This integration is really the key point; it's all about how the client incorporates the product into their workflows.

Regarding BI Reporting, the standard reporting module within Campfire Interactive primarily gives you an Excel data dump, and while there are some visualizations for creating dashboards, I found those limited for my needs. We started presenting the data to Microsoft Power BI, which is much better for generating the reports I want.

The forecast accuracy of Campfire Interactive has been generally good, with no significant issues. However, there are some improvements we could make to achieve more granular data. For example, we have parts that are common to multiple vehicle programs, but the system does not allow for custom volume settings for each program.

I've used other systems and each has its pros and cons. Campfire advantages include speed and an easy to use price table. One area for improvement would be the integration of actuals from our ERP systems. There is currently no interface within the Campfire application to assist with the alignment of actual ship records with the forecast part records.  

I have been using Campfire Interactive since 2020.

It is stable. I can only think of one issue where some data seemed to be missing. It was reported once in five years.

Campfire Interactive is scalable for our organization. Since we are owned by a private equity company, it’s quite possible that we could acquire another company and merge it into our business. Campfire Interactive is fully capable of scaling up and handling any additional volume we want to put into it.

We have close to 180 people working with this solution.

I would rate the technical support a six out of ten. The response time is great, and the engagement with the Campfire team is also very good. However, the main issue tends to be the timing of deploying new enhancements. It often feels like the delivery of certain updates takes longer than expected. Even when we know we're ready to implement changes, there can be unexpected delays. I think they are trying to harmonize the various environments that their clients have, which makes sense to ensure that everyone is on a more common system instead of each client using a unique custom application. While I understand their efforts, the process does feel slower than it could be.

Neutral

I have used another system and there are pros and cons to each.

It took about six months for me to launch the Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting System. However, this is highly dependent on the client. A properly prepared team could likely launch it in one to two months. 

Similarly, we could have launched the costing, pricing, and quoting module faster, but we had our own issues to work through at the same time. 

There isn't any maintenance; just typical ongoing data changes.

It's difficult to measure return on investment precisely, but I believe one of the biggest benefits is that it provides the sales team with a tool to develop a strategy on a customer-by-customer basis. This allows us to anticipate our staffing needs effectively. We're able to analyze changes in the forecast, identify which programs are ending, and determine which new programs we should prepare to quote and staff for. Overall, I would say that enhancing our commercial strategy has been a significant advantage, resulting in millions of dollars in additional revenue that our sales team has been able to achieve through effective planning.

Its time to value was immediate on the forecasting side. However, it took us a few years to catch up on the quoting side. I believe that the delays were largely due to our approach and the way we wanted to implement things, which ultimately slowed us down.

I don't know the full scope of our subscriptions for all the modules, but from what I've seen before, it seems fairly expensive. The high cost may drive some potential clients to consider developing a homegrown solution internally.

We do not use any Material Index Management, but we use their pricing table to manage our long-term agreements, which include price reductions year over year. We can budget for those price reductions in the future.

I would recommend Campfire Interactive to other users, but the choice really comes down to the specific use case, the importance of having built-in interfaces to manage your ship data, and how important it is to be able to give different programs different take-rates. 

Overall, I would rate Campfire Interactive an eight out of ten.