Fossgis: CRM goes GIS - Hartmut Gündra¶

Tags: fossgis, geo

He uses CRM (customer relationship management) for selling geothermal energy in Grünwald. When selling geothermal energy, you have to take into account the location of the potential customer: the price depends a lot on the distance of the customer to the main pipe.

And you have to mix it up with other data. For instance, what’s the current heating method? People with gas are less likely to switch than those that use oil for heating.

As a CRM package, they chose SugarCRM. It is simply the biggest open source CRM package. And it has a good plug-in system. And there is good commercial support for it.

For coupling with GIS they use “MapSuite CRM”, which will probably be released as a sugarcrm plugin in 2012. It uses geoserver and openlayers. For creating custom data they use Arcgis and use the exported shapefiles.

Having map information available when calling a (potential) customer results in better customer service. It helps when talking with the customer: it is easier and quicker. And the general impression it makes on the customer is “competent”. In the end, you have more customer satisfaction.