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In-Depth CRM Review

X2Contacts

• Telephone:  
• Email:  Contact X2engine
• Web: http://www.x2engine.com/

• CRM Category: Strategic Solution - Open Source
• Sub-Category: Social Sales Management
• Seats: Small Business/Mid Market

About the Company:

Please note: We have only just initiated a dialog with this solution developer. So, we are still fully researching their background.

X2Engine Inc., of Santa Cruz, California was founded in 2011 by John Roberts, an open source CRM developer, entrepreneur and angel investor. Prior to founding X2Engine, John was a co-founder and CEO of SugarCRM Inc. John is the co-author of a software engineering patent and has over twenty years of experience designing CRM systems from inception in the mid-1990′s to today’s state of the art open source virtual private clouds.

X2Engine, is a new commercial open source based, CRM company. The company provides developer, software and hosting services for X2Contacts a new open source, social sales management, CRM application currently in world wide beta.

X2Engine is designed to be both compact yet incredibly easy to run and extend. Similar to WordPress in simplicity, x2engine is centered around two objects, Contacts and Actions. By condensing the core features of todays far more complex and costly CRM systems into two hi-performance modules, Contacts and Actions. X2Engine provides twice the power of traditional CRM systems with a fraction of the complexity.

The meaning of X2Engine : Starting with X as in your customers and 2 as in amplifying your actions with your customers, powered by an intelligent workflow engine = X2Engine. To learn more about what X2Engine can do for you, check out our feature overview page.

About the Product:

Please note: We have only just initiated a dialog with this solution developer. So, we are still working this solution through our review process.

Unlike many existing CRM applications that have become unnecessarily complex and bloated while attempting to be everything to everyone, X2Engine has been designed as a very usable, social, yet flexible and extensible, application enabling users to focus on relationships with people rather than their relationship with an overgrown CRM application.

• Significant effort was devoted to the X2Engine user interface to ensure optimum usability and to enable a wide range of users to be immediately productive. Many sales management applications have attempted to awkwardly bolt-on “social” features like chat after the fact, while X2Engine was designed from the ground up to leverage both interactive capabilities and the flexible, modular look-and-feel associated with social media sites.
• Every record (i.e., Contacts, Accounts, etc.) in X2CRM includes the record info itself, as well as the following elements:

—> A flexible text box for any type of notes, unstructured data, etc. Users can also create and include any type of X2Tags, which are similar to Twitter’s Hash Tags, in the text box and then easily locate tagged records via X2CRM search. X2Tags allow both organizations and individuals to easily customize records to meet their needs without having to add new fields to the database itself.

—> A blog-like History feed that allows users to quickly review record activity.

—> A right-hand column of modular, customizable widgets such as Chat, Twitter Feeds, Note Pad, maps, etc. These powerful widgets allow a user to interact, collaborate and retrieve additional info while still viewing an individual record, avoiding the need to traverse the application to access specific functionality.

—> Flexible search and sort capabilities, including universal search, enables users to quickly find and view records of interest.

 Contacts

Recognizing the importance of relationships with prospects, customers, partners, and other constituents, X2CRM is centered around Contacts.

• Contacts can be captured directly from the web, imported from different applications or file types, or manually entered
• Streamlined Contacts entry form significantly reduces manual data capture time and effort
• Range of Contact data can also be captured whenever relevant, including lead source, rating, background info, etc. Including a phone number or email allows users to directly connect with the Contact through a simple mouse click.
• Users can also include a Contact’s info for social media sites including Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ . When the appropriate social media address info is included, a Contact’s Twitter Feed will automatically appear in a Twitter widget whenever the record is viewed, and the Contact can be reached directly via Skype (clicking on Phone also launches Skpe using the Contact’s phone number instead of the Skype Name).
• Users can also attach any type of file to the record, and can easily “Share Contact” which sends an email with the record info along with a personal note to an input email address (e.g., “please follow up with the following lead”).
• Contacts can also be assigned to specific users along with a priority and a flag indicating whether Contact is visible to other users or not.
• Contact fields can easily be customized as needed to meet organization, company, or industry-specific requirements

Actions

• Users can quickly schedule Actions, which are tasks to be completed in the future
• Actions can be assigned to specific individuals, along with priority, visibility and reminder indicators
• Actions can be independent tasks, or explicitly associated with Contacts, Sales or Accounts
• Users can conveniently view their Actions, today’s actions or everyone’s actions, and can, of course, flexibly search and sort for quick retrieval and optimal viewing

Sales

• Sales opportunities are simple to create, assign to colleagues, and associate with Contacts and/or an Account
• Like all X2CRM records, Sales records have been streamlined to minimize required fields and, as a result, the time and effort required to get critical sales info into the system, while still giving users the option to include, as needed, pertinent Sales-related info such as Quote, Stage, Source, Probability, Description, etc. Custom fields can also be added when appropriate.

Accounts

• Accounts are companies or organizations and these records are easily created with a bare minimum of required fields, but with the option of including additional info and assigning the Account to a colleague.
• Contacts can be associated with Accounts giving users a complete view of an organization or company, allowing them to manage/target organizations in a consistent, coordinated manner.

Shared Documents

• Users can quickly and easily create, share, and collaborate on a variety of different document types within X2CRM
• Document editing access is set by simply selecting which colleagues are permitted to edit any given document
• A WYSIWYG editor enables even users with limited computer experience to create rich documents

Communication and Collaboration

• Chat capabilities allow employees to effectively and efficiently communicate and collaborate within X2Contacts itself, so all users don’t need to standardize on a particular chat platform or launch a dedicated chat application
• Chat is designed for daily, impromptu communication and feeds are cleared every 24 hours to enhance readability (use Social for longer-lasting communication). In addition to the Chat page, users can quickly chat and review their feed from within the Chat widget located throughout the application
• Clickable hyperlinks within Chat and Social allow users to include and link directly to sites and info across the Web
• Social is an organization-wide discussion forum where users can efficiently communicate with one another or everyone in the organization. The Social feed persists until it’s explicitly deleted
• In addition to the Social page, users can communicate with each other from a colleague’s Profile page where posts can be public or private and a wide variety of file types can be uploaded and attached to posts

Mobility

• X2CRM automatically includes a specially designed mobile application for smartphones called X2Touch, a lightweight, yet powerful, interface which gives users quick access to basic X2CRM functionality through increasingly ubiquitous smartphones.
• X2Touch allows users to create and access Contacts records and chat with other users
• X2Touch includes support for iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry OS

Profile and Settings

• Every X2CRM user can create and manage their own Profile, which includes their contact info.
• Users can also communicate with each other through the Social functionality found on each Profile page, designating posts as public or private and attaching a wide range of uploaded files to posts. Previous posts can be easily reviewed in the blog-like feed found on the Profile page itself.
• Users can customize their personal preferences and look-and-feel within Settings. Here they can make a variety of  changes including language, time zone, background color, menu color, etc. A collection of attractive background images are available out-of-box or users can upload their own background images. Once a background image has been selected, users can make the X2Contacts application transparent by simply clicking on the background image and then have it reappear instantaneously by clicking on X2CRM.

Administration

Price:

X2Contacts is a free open-source solution.

You can download X2Contacts here: http://www.x2engine.com/download/ 

Rich's View:

This review is undergoing a major update and should be available real soon now!

Go ahead, Get a second opinion:

I have never claimed to be the only source of CRM software reviews. If you would like an alternative view of this CRM solution, here are some links that you can visit. However, if you are looking for totally independent, no BS! CRM reviews, I will look forward to working with you when you get back to my site!  

 I have yet to find an objective independent review of X2Contacts.

Short List:

If you are considering this program, you should also look at these other CRM solutions:

Now, get the rest of the story!

(coming soon!)

Rich's Recommended Web Sites  

      http://valleytechblog.com/

      https://twitter.com/#!/x2engine

      http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-roberts/0/702/302

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Tagged as: X2CRM