The following is a paid review. However, it completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid.

I was recently called by a business named “Commit” to check out their software called CommitCRM. I already know that there is a good amount of the technicians reading this already know what CommitCRM is since the Technibble forum members usually mention CommitCRM this when the topic of client management software comes up. However, for those of you who don’t know what it is; CommitCRM is a client relationship manager, service management and billing solution that is aimed at the ongoing needs of small to mid-sized computer service businesses who do the following:

• Provide maintenance services
• Handle customer support calls and on-site visits
• Perform local repairs
• Manage Service Contracts and need full control over their status
• Provide outsourcing of IT support services
• Manage IT projects
• Sell hardware and off-the-shelf software
• Provide managed services (MSP)
• Track Customers’ Assets – Equipment, Software, Subscriptions
• Bill customers for labor, expenses, products and parts

I believe this would be pretty much most of the Technibble readers.

While I was on the phone to one of their representatives I noticed something interesting. This person was very passionate about the product and really believes in what they are doing. I get marketing calls all the time but this one was different as it wasn’t marketing spiel or paid happiness, this was real. You don’t see that much now days and I believe that says a lot about a company.

Anyway, to begin the review of the product. I downloaded a 30 day, fully functional free trial from their download page and installed it. The setup of the software is fairly straight forward where you create the admin username and password for the software, enter a few details about your business, select the correct regional settings and choose which Quickbooks package you are using if you have it (since CommitCRM has the ability to export accounting data to Quickbooks if you purchase their Quickbooks addon).

Once I had finished the initial setup, the first thing I noticed was that the home screen layout is very Quickbooks like which makes it easy to know what order things should be done in. The second thing I noticed is that it appears very finished and refined. Down the left hand side there are 15 sections and I’ll briefly explain what each of them does.

Accounts – This is where you enter your clients details and keep track of what type of contract/assets the client has with you. It can also show all your past history with them such as support the tickets they have filed in the past, amounts owing etc..

Tickets – This is the ticketing system where you enter in problems that the client has reported and can view any currently open tickets. From here, you can assign that job to one of your own techs who will receive a message that they have been assigned a job in the internal messaging system. When the job has been complete you can assign a charge to that client for a particular ticket and that will automatically add to that clients amount owing or subtract from their time if they purchased a block of support time from you.

Dispatcher – The Dispatcher is a calendar system that looks a lot like Outlooks calendar system. In here, it will show you each of your staff members (technicians, consultants etc.) calendars and what they have assigned to them for that time. This would make it much easier to make the most of your staffs time since the technicians always know where they need to go next and the person doing the dispatching doesn’t double-book them.

Charges – Charges is fairly simple, it will show you the current charges that have been billed (or not billed) to clients. You can filter these by the client, which employee charged them, date ranges, labor, expenses and parts.

Items – Items is items you define things like expenses, labor, products and parts. You can define how much they are and how they are charged.

Contracts – Contracts lists the contracts that you currently have (or had) with various clients. It will tell you the name of the contract, the client, what type it is (time period, block of time, block of money or block of tickets), when the contract ends etc.. What is great about this contracting system is when one of your own technicians or consultants uses up time helping a client or closes a ticket, it is automatically subtracted from the contract you have with the client.

Documents – This section holds various templates that your business uses so you can easily print them off like special work orders, wireless settings, backup checklists etc..

Assets – This section allows you to easily track and manage customer equipment, PC inventory and software licenses/subscriptions. There are areas to enter license keys, hardware serial numbers, dates that warranties finish and more.

Opportunities – In this section you can track business opportunities, store detailed information about prospective customers and contacts, track all the past interactions for each customer up to the sale point (phone calls, meetings, tasks, events, information requests, etc.), pursue sales opportunities and track the status of each opportunity, forecast potential revenue, measure the effectiveness of sales efforts, and more.

Messages – This is an internal email-like messaging system. This is where technicians can see tickets assigned to them and other relevant information. Messages sent though this system can also be emailed so technicians who are already on-site can receive information.

History – The history section is simply a log of all the changes that have occurred within the CommitCRM system such as messages sent, charges applied, tickets closed etc.. It has the ability to filter this information by date, which employee did it and by type.

Knowledge Base – This section allows you to create your own knowledge base where each article is assigned a title, problem description, and solution. The Knowledge Base can be expanded with an additional add-on to help your technicians solve issues when on-site and also allow customers to access articles from a web interface, so they can resolve issues on their own.

Calendar – Same as Dispatcher

Employees – This is where you keep information about your employees. It has the usual contact information that you would expect in such a section but you can also assign other useful information such as their rate per hour. The ticketing system makes use of this information so that if their rate is specified as $50 per hour and that technician spent 3 hours onsite, the customer will be charged $150.

Reports – This allows to view reports on from just about any part of the business such as contacts list, accounts, history, tickets, charges reports etc.

Some other features worth mentioning is that CommitCRM synchronizes nicely with Outlook. If you have a Smartphone that synchronizes with Outlook (which most Smartphones do) you can take much of the data around with you such as your calendar. You can push its integration and synchronization abilities even further with featured called “Online Services” where you can take variables from the application and use them somewhere else like creating a Google Maps link of the clients address to send to your onsite technicians phone.

There are tons of other little features such as a little timer that you can use while working on a clients support ticket. Once you stop the timer, that time is applied to the clients account and based on what type of contract they have with you, it either charges their account or subtracts time if they prepurchased time from you. There are many more features like this but it would take far too long to describe them all.

Stability and Ease of Use
After playing with the application for a few hours I found it to be rock solid. It didn’t crash or do anything unexpected. It took me about 10-20 minutes to learn how to use the programs main features and I also noticed that on just about every page in the application there is a help link with text documentation and even demonstration videos. Commit has spent a lot of time making sure that their customers know how to use the application. They also provide free support which is available to both paying members and those who are still on the free trial.

Pricing
CommitCRM’s pricing changes depending on how many active employees will be using the system. The base price is $249 USD which includes the actual software and one active employee license. If you need to add another employee to the system at a later stage it costs $149 USD per employee. However, you can also purchase “value packs” where you can get discounts if you add 3 or 10 employees at once.

Pros and Cons
The Pros of this application is everything I have listed above part from pricing. I really enjoyed using this application and the only Con I could find was the pricing. The base price is $249 which is a good price for a 1 man operation but if you need to add many employees can get a little steep ($499 for a 3 employee license). Of course, if your business is at the point where you have 3 or more employees on the books then $499 isn’t going to break the bank. Other than the pay-per-employee system, CommitCRM is very flexible with their licensing. You can install it on as many computers as you like regardless of the amount of employee accounts you have purchased and you can reassign these paid employee accounts to other employees at any time.

Conclusion
I do believe you get what you pay for with this. It may cost a little more than some other CRM software, but the application is highly refined and does much more than other CRM’s. If a CRM the central point of your business you will want the support and stability that CommitCRM provides.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. There are plenty of technicians on the Technibble forums who are already using it and mentioned that they really like it when the topic of CRM’s come up. Check them out: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

To check out the CommitCRM website: Click Here

To download the 30 day trial: Click Here