suiteCRM for Orchestra

💬 General Discussion
1

Dear all

we are a professional UK chamber orchestra (charity organisation) and at the moment we are using Access to manage our database (+10K contacts) but we need to look forward and we would like to find another user friendly CRM solution to help us. I wonder if Suite CRM is what we are looking for. I tried quickly the demo version and saw the video, and I like it. But before I proceed to migrate all the contacts, I would like to have your opinion and thoughts.

Basically, we need to divide the contacts we have in macro-categories (attenders, players, funders, promoters, etc) and micro-categories (i.e. Attenders>attenders of concert in a particular area>concert 1 / concert 2 / concert 3 / … ), and it is likely possible that a contact is part of more than 1 group. I drew an overview if necessary.
In fact we send out every 4 months a mailshot and we need to extract the contact, often of a particular area, sometimes of a particular series of concerts, and so on.

We need to import from Excel files, because we receive the data in Excel files and our database is an Access File.
We need to export in Excel files (or .csv), because we should merge the address with cover letters.

We should be able to add categories in the future, when there are new concerts.

We should be able to extract macro-categories but also micro-categories (without doubled records) and also per postcode (when necessary).

With regards to the Players: we should be able to know which players played in which concert, so we can email to all of them.

Is it possible with Suite CRM? I know it is tricky, but I don’t think it is impossible! Please help!
The other option we have is SalesForce but not sure we can afford to work with it.

All the best,

Paolo

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Hey there Paolo.

This post was a while back, but let me know if you’re still interested (just reply here, I’ll get notified). I’m pretty sure all this can be done without touching any code. Just needs to be setup right, and need to get used to how SuiteCRM works.

Just f.y.i. a friend of mine did admin for an orchestra and was quite happy with CiviCRM. But she probably didn’t go quite as far with it as what you’re trying to do… Just wanted to mention it.

John

1 Like
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Dear John
thank you for your message.

We are trying CiviCRM as well but still in the process of setting up the access. So I really don’t know if it works for us. It would be interesting to know who is she working with?

I would be great to give suiteCRM a go, honestly.

Paolo

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she’s no longer working for the youth orchestra that I had in mind. She’s using civiCRM though for this group:
http://cantusnovus.org/

5

Very old post I know but for you and others it seems that SuiteCRM can handle grouping using the Target Lists feature. Basically these arbitrary lists allow one to add Contacts, Leads, and Targets(prospects) into innumerable lists that can be defined with whatever name (aka category) you desire.