Overview

OppTuna is a CRM system from Purplewire, an experienced developer of business process software including the ChannelSUITE line of sales channel administration tools.

The CRM product space covers a wide spectrum of functions, as described in our CRM Overview. Some systems that call themselves CRM are glorified contact managers, some concentrate on forecasting, and others are geared towards marketing support. Some CRM systems are targeted at the Enterprise with a capital E, some are targeted at individual salespeople's desktops. Some try to be all things to all people. Some CRM systems can't decide whether they're an application, a "cloud", a "platform", or a "cloud platform" (not to mention any names!)

Here's where we fit into that spectrum:

• We concentrate on the functions where communication, collaboration, and process are most important: Leads, Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, and Issues (aka "cases" or "tickets"). We focus on making those features EASY and EFFECTIVE.
• We don't complicate the interface with non-collaborative features that are already well served by software on your staff's desktop, such as email, appointment calendars, etc, or by other third-party specialty providers (for example, email service providers). We're not the only software you need, but we play nice with your other software.
• Our software is designed to serve small and medium businesses well, but we've got enough meat for the bigger guys too.
• We're not a DIY development platform. You probably don't want to be a CRM software developer, that's why you're looking at OppTuna! Most organizations won't need customizations beyond the tools we've provided to your system administrator, but those that do need custom features can get them, and will find us more flexible and more affordable than the competition (or the consultants who make a living doing big-bucks customizations on the competition's "platform")

Purplewire Background

Purplewire has been developing web-based business software for 15 years, first as a division of another company, and for the last 9 years as an independent, privately owned company. Much of our experience involves work in the sales channel and in post-sale support, including our flagship ChannelSUITE product line and extensive custom development work for small, medium, and Fortune 500 organizations.

The Road to OppTuna

About 10 years ago, Purplewire felt a need for a collaborative sales tool for our own use. We had already tried Act and Goldmine -- they helped the salespeople, but provided no ability to collaborate on opportunities, and provided no management insight. Salesforce.com wasn't on the radar screen yet. So, being engineers with expertise in web-based business process software, we did the obvious thing: we started to build our own. Over the next several years we continued to refine it based on real-world user feedback from the most critical beta-test squad out there -- the guys down the hall. They could be brutal! By this time it was obvious that Salesforce.com was for real, so we gave it a try. The verdict: Impressive, but not right for us. Too complicated, too expensive. And while it had a lot of features, the ones that were important to us weren't that easy to use.

Time passes, we keep refining our sales tool, now called "PW-CRM", in our "spare time" (ha!) while we develop our ChannelSUITE product line. We take another look at Salesforce.com and a couple other CRM systems, and come to the same conclusion as before: Good stuff, but doesn't really serve our needs very well. We sell a couple copies of PW-CRM as customized systems to other companies that felt the same way. Maybe there's a place in the market for a new CRM? We start an ambitious new 3rd generation of the PW-CRM code, utilizing a lot of the technology we developed for ChannelSUITE of the last several years, with the goal of taking a CRM system to market as the easy to use, easy to learn, customizable alternative. And so, here it is: OppTuna.