Hi, may I know what industry is your business in? Does you industry has specific needs to Accounts management? From what you had mentioned, the first CRM application that pops up in my mind is SugarCRM. It seems to have what you want Accounts management to do. It has a Quote and Invoice module to work with Accounts as well. I'm not too sure though about the categorising Accounts by products, but I believe that's easily customisable in SugarCRM. The Enterprise Edition allows end-user to non-programmatically customise the application itself.

Hi, your question is very specific and focused. Toaccurately track the conversions you need a tool that handles leads, accounts& contacts effectively with intelligent reports too. I would like to recommendMelssCRM, which may really cater your needs. This tool has specific reports tounderstand the lead conversion by branch wise,staff wise and % of conversionwith all drill –down option. You can also manage your accounts with multiplecontacts and the products they have purchased from you on when, value &sales person details. System had inbuilt quote and invoice facility. Try theprofessional edition www.melsscrm.com

Microsoft CRM Online is a good option for account management and conversation tracking. You can set up workflows and rules to assign accounts/leads to certain users and create reminders to notify them of specific action items. You can also log conversations with topics such as e-mail/phone call and prepare quotes with the built in quoting features. Take a look at the CRM Online Video Gallery to get an idea of how it works: http://smb.ms/blSlPl

Regards,

Jodi E.

Microsoft SMB Outreach Team

msftoft@microsoft.com

Unfortunately you haven't described your organization or size so an accurate response is somewhat of a shot in the dark. There are a couple of very good CRM options that handle the quotation/conversion business management process.

As for a step by step User management system, there are truly no really good options out there. That's where training and better quality personnel come into play. Besides if they are good sales people, they won't follow a rigorous automated structure anyway... so don't waste your time and money.

As for the CRM options, take a look at WORKetc., LeadMaster, Oracle On Demand (if you need that size/horsepower only), ReallySimplerSystems, SalesBoom.

There are others as well. Perhaps you can share your detailed requirements and I can better define your options. Hope this helps.

Food for thought:
Let's start with the end result that we want and work backwards. What are we trying to achieve? A better sense of the account's history / profile? An easier way to have access to this information for our internal team? A portal where the account contact can update their information?

Unfortunately, everyone wants to tell you that their thing is the best. Best at what? Let's work to create definable end-goals and then evaluate software that will fit the bill,

cheers
adrian