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Part 4 – From NetSuite to Oasis

Submitted by on 06/17/2008 – 2:27 pm11 Comments

My BS detector should have gone off sooner when I made a personal call to Jeff White, VP Sales of Oasis CRM http://www.oasiscrm.com/ sometime in October 06 and I never heard anything back.  When a sales rep does not return a sales call then the chances of anything else positive happening are just about zero.

But I wanted it to work so I called back.  It was clear that we had to move off of NetSuite but there were not that many choices back then.  Looking at the Oasis feature chart it looked like it may fit the bill, Jeff White is a great salesman and the President/Owner Ed VanDuyne seemed like a competent developer and a genuinely nice guy.

The software looked sort of flakey, but they seemed confident that it would do the job for us and I trusted them.  We spent about 40K getting the data converted from NS (see why we left NS post) and another 30 K in software and implementation fees to Oasis.

I will get into the details later but once I had a chance to use the system I realized a number of things.  What I mean is that everyone who touched the system here realized that the Oasis CRM software was unusable.  In my professional opinion the developer or developers of the software are incompetent and instead of admitting that their software was lame they actually defended its lameness. See this post about how I feel about that topic.

Oasis CRM was a total write off.  There was not a single part of the system that was actually useable and I could feel the money slowly draining out of the company.  I had to do something quick.  I figure the hard and soft costs were over 200K for this mistake. 

Adam

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  • http://www.d-toolsblog.com/?p=531 Deconstucting the D-Tools/Zoho CRM System – The D-Tools Lead Qualifying Engine

    [...] Also it needs to be mentioned that this process is only possible with a well designed and properly implemented CRM system.  Don’t try this at home with Outlook, ACT or god forbid Oasis CRM. [...]

  • http://www.d-toolsblog.com/2008/10/deconstucting-the-d-toolszoho-crm-system-the-d-tools-lead-qualifying-engine/ d-tools blog » Deconstucting the D-Tools/Zoho CRM System – The D-Tools Lead Qualifying Engine

    [...] Also it needs to be mentioned that this process is only possible with a well designed and properly implemented CRM system.  Don’t try this at home with Outlook, ACT or god forbid Oasis CRM. [...]

  • Andrew

    Hi Adam, thanks for posting your experience. We are currently looking at Oasis and some of your comments are exactly what i have been feeling intuitively on the concerns we have.

    If possible would you be able to bullet point the main problems your company experienced.

    What solutions did you end up using?

    We are looking for a CRM and Multi Inventory location product to hook into QB Enterprise.

    Thanks again
    Andrew.

  • Andrew

    Hi Adam, thanks for posting your experience. We are currently looking at Oasis and some of your comments are exactly what i have been feeling intuitively on the concerns we have.

    If possible would you be able to bullet point the main problems your company experienced.

    What solutions did you end up using?

    We are looking for a CRM and Multi Inventory location product to hook into QB Enterprise.

    Thanks again
    Andrew.

  • http://www.adaptivechild.com Scott Kouri

    Adam,

    Our company is also updating our sustem to a CRM which we would like to interface with Quickbooks. We have purchased a single copy which I will use and evaluate prior to making a larger purchase.

    Any feedback on what system you ended on using the why you made that chocie would be appreciated. At this point, I have no concerns as we have just received the osftware and not installed it yet. So any bugs I should look for or question during the set up and training would be very beneficial.

    Thank you for your assistance,

    Scott

  • http://www.adaptivechild.com Scott Kouri

    Adam,

    Our company is also updating our sustem to a CRM which we would like to interface with Quickbooks. We have purchased a single copy which I will use and evaluate prior to making a larger purchase.

    Any feedback on what system you ended on using the why you made that chocie would be appreciated. At this point, I have no concerns as we have just received the osftware and not installed it yet. So any bugs I should look for or question during the set up and training would be very beneficial.

    Thank you for your assistance,

    Scott

  • http://www.vestalsgap.com Rodney

    I recently fixed an installation of Oasis for a customer of mine. I was pretty disappointed with the way that it integrates mail into the product; it uses exchange’s manage mailbox functionality. Specifically the problem I had was that the managing account’s username and password were displayed with no encryption on the server. This means that if the login was compromised or someone walked by they would have access to all company email account tied to the CRM. In general the way things integrate and commercial feel of the product have a bit farther to go.

    On a different note, my customer picked the product because it offered quickbooks integration, inventory management as well as order lifecycle (not just sales lifecycle). Were your needs along these lines too (base ERP)?

    Did you look at SugarCRM? With the money you spent you could have taken that product to a whole new level.

    Regardless, its an eye opening post … thank you!

  • http://www.vestalsgap.com Rodney

    I recently fixed an installation of Oasis for a customer of mine. I was pretty disappointed with the way that it integrates mail into the product; it uses exchange’s manage mailbox functionality. Specifically the problem I had was that the managing account’s username and password were displayed with no encryption on the server. This means that if the login was compromised or someone walked by they would have access to all company email account tied to the CRM. In general the way things integrate and commercial feel of the product have a bit farther to go.

    On a different note, my customer picked the product because it offered quickbooks integration, inventory management as well as order lifecycle (not just sales lifecycle). Were your needs along these lines too (base ERP)?

    Did you look at SugarCRM? With the money you spent you could have taken that product to a whole new level.

    Regardless, its an eye opening post … thank you!

  • http://www.d-toolsblog.com/crm-wars/deconstucting-the-d-toolszoho-crm-system-the-d-tools-lead-qualifying-engine/ Deconstucting the D-Tools/Zoho CRM System – The D-Tools Lead Qualifying Engine | D-Tools NewsBlog

    [...] Also it needs to be mentioned that this process is only possible with a well designed and properly implemented CRM system.  Don’t try this at home with Outlook, ACT or god forbid Oasis CRM. [...]

  • kitono

    Check out T-Hub. It may solve your needs. OasisCRM is a joke. They use their customer base as their quality assurance department – relying on them to find the bugs in the software. Then they’ll charge you enourmous “support fees” to fix these problems. New problems pop up after every update starting the whole process over again.

  • Unhappy User

    Worst piece of software ever.
    Adam, we shared the exact same experience.
    Cannot even gauge the amount of lost man-hours and sales loss of productivity due to this faisco of a move, but I would hazard your estimate of six figure losses is accurate. The software’s ineptitude is only matched by the poor service and response from support, which was virtually non-existent. We took it one step further and tried customized work from them, which they happily cashed the check for and never delivered.
    Slowasis has become a company bad joke and I look forward to having this chapter behind us. Truly wish we had seen your review prior to our move…
    If you’re reviewing…STAY AWAY!