There are a lot of CRM systems in the wild. Some of them are even free but every one I've seen seem predicated on one factor -- money. Specifically, which customer bought which widget, which customer hasn't bought widgets for a year, how many millions in what widget line were bought across all sectors of a market. This is great; this is a necessary thing for 99% of CRM users out there but I work in academia, and specifically in libraries, and what I wasn't seeing was a CRM focused on librarian-patron interactions -- what professor published which work, how many instruction sessions did this department need. I want something like a hopped-up Rolodex that can detect patterns and gank info out of academic databases.
I'm hoping this can be that. At some point. When I figure out what I'm doing.
- Easy to get data in, easy to get out (JSON, APIs)
- basic address stuff (name, department, email)
- Maybe some FOAFy stuff to describe relationships? Or some other RDF triple-esque thing.
- Easy to use for non-Poindexters (e.g. librarians)
- Integration with something like Google Scholar for auto-populating of e.g. prof publications.
- Some sort of calendar integration (iCal?) for instruction sessions and etc.
- (lots of other stuff)