When to Upgrade

While you are used to your CRM program, it's ins and outs, quirks and nuances, there does come a time when you either want to, or have to, upgrade.  I've been working in the IT industry since 1994, and believe there are 4 main reasons why people upgrade - not just CRM systems, but office suites, browsers, operating systems, etc.
 We'll focus on "desktop" CRM systems in this article, not online (i.e. "cloud") systems.

Here are the 4 reasons I see upgrades:

1. New machine.  With a new machine, you will have to reinstall the application anyway, so this is a good time to purchase the upgrade, sometimes on special with a new PC, but sometimes just to start fresh.  Additionally, if you don't have old media, often you cannot download something that is 3 or 4 years old, so the vendor may require you to purchase a newer version.
2. New machine with incompatible operating system.  For example, a new 64 bit vs 32 bit system, or new OS, like moving from XP to Windows 7.  Older CRM systems like GoldMine or ACT! 2000 won't run on these systems, so an upgrade path is necessary.
3. New office suite.  This one is a bit tricky, and is hard to forecast.  For example, Office 2007 will only work with ACT! v2008 and newer.  If you're running ACT! v2007, you will not see any errors, but the export to Excel functions and Word document merges will not work in ACT! (grayed out menu buttons in ACT! are the tell-tale sign) ACT! 2000 will open an Outlook mail message, but there is no Excel export and it does not work with Word.
4. More or better features.  Eventually, if you're CRM vendor is in for the long run, they will continually update the program, and eventually the new and improved feature set will be such that you will be able to work more efficiently with an updated system.  The integration of SwiftPage into ACT! is an example of this.

Finally, the steps to upgrade can be extremely simple - moving from and older version of ACT! to the latest release is as simple as opening the "old" database from the new version.  Moving from GoldMine or Maximizer to an updated system most likely will involve a time intensive export/import of data from one system to another, and customizing layouts, documents, and reports.  There will also be a learning curve to adapt to the new system, but I find that most popular CRM systems are built with the user's most common tasks in the forefront, and the adoption process is very rapid.

Hope this helps, please contact me if you have any questions about moving up to a newer, or different, CRM system.