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Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

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Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#251

Post by torgard »

carstenhag wrote: post #248
nickelcitymario wrote: post #46

I work at a company that uses Salesforce as the system that runs the whole business. CRM barely touches on what we use it for. We use it for inventory, logistics, accounting, customer support, managing our partners (dealers), managing our suppliers... as well as sales. I spent 2 years as a Salesforce developer, and still dabble in APEX from time to time. All of that is context for what I'm about to say: Salesforce is…

To be honest, it sounds 100% like SAP / ABAP. A lot of terribly outdated stuff. But it can do everything you can imagine. If it can't, there's 1-2 recommended products that expand features on top of SAP. The moment your business wants to do things a way that isn't SAP's way, you completely butcher everything though. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541092

My first internship was as a Dynamics AX dev. Me and another guy. Our mentor was a super-duper senior architect something something. He once asked us what we were planning on doing, career-wise, and we were kinda surprised; obviously we were working towards becoming Dynamics AX devs, and were hoping for a job at that place.

He got a somewhat wistful look in his eyes, and said (more to himself than to us) he wished he could go back and choose not to do that.

I'll never forget that. He was earning an insane amount of money, working super high-level at one of the largest IT firms in the country.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#252

Post by dzhiurgis »

actionfromafar wrote: post #247
lkrubner wrote: post #244

I worked on a "Salesforce killer" that was actually meant to make Salesforce stronger by fixing its biggest known problem: that sales people hate using it. Our goal was to let sales people send text messages, which we would then use NLP to interpret correctly, and then add to salesforce. A sales person might sell a million bottles of shampoo to Hilton Hotels, then she might get in her car and drive home, on the way h…

I may have too limited an imagination, but using NLP to interact with a computer UI is a Very Hard Problem . To me it feels like the old joke you know, 1 - Use NLP to interact with SalesForce competitor. 2 - something something. 3 - profit! Apologies in advance for the snark, I'm really curious. I mean, how much time would be really saved by talking to the phone vs more traditional inputs? Is it the dictaction which…

I wonder how much of that could be solved by Siri + Shortcuts (+ Salesforce)

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#253

Post by arethuza »

torgard wrote: post #251
carstenhag wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, it sounds 100% like SAP / ABAP. A lot of terribly outdated stuff. But it can do everything you can imagine. If it can't, there's 1-2 recommended products that expand features on top of SAP. The moment your business wants to do things a way that isn't SAP's way, you completely butcher everything though. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541092

My first internship was as a Dynamics AX dev. Me and another guy. Our mentor was a super-duper senior architect something something. He once asked us what we were planning on doing, career-wise, and we were kinda surprised; obviously we were working towards becoming Dynamics AX devs, and were hoping for a job at that place. He got a somewhat wistful look in his eyes, and said (more to himself than to us) he wished he…

I think a lot of ERP stuff is like that - pays well but few people regard it as fun - not least of which is that end up with knowledge of very niche technologies that don't really progress very rapidly.

Edit: Mind you for job security and cash generating potential they are can be pretty good - years ago I knew of people on £3000 a day in the UK working on very niche financial systems - but you basically had to have a lot of domain knowledge (financial consolidation) and decent development skills.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#254

Post by arethuza »

paxys wrote: post #16

The biggest mistake a competitor can make is thinking Salesforce is a CRM. They may sell themselves as one, but that is just to get a foothold in a company's sales system. Salesforce actually sells (1) an ecosystem that lets your company connect to any other software out there and (2) a platform on which you can build...basically anything. These two together ensure that every one of their customers is 100% locked in…

"The biggest mistake a competitor can make is thinking Salesforce is a CRM"

A lot of CRMs seem to evolve into general purpose platforms - Salesforce and MS Dynamics being the ones I am familiar with.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#255

Post by rtpg »

blast wrote: post #242
rtpg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people don't appreciate enough that Salesforce is selling a... Smalltalk OS that everyone shares access to. It's nifty!

How is it like Smalltalk?

There’s a lot of introspection tools within the UI, pointing you to implementations. The code management is happening “within the system”, so to speak. There’s just a lot of “everything is within this system and is inspectable”

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#256

Post by actionfromafar »

mrklol wrote: post #249
actionfromafar wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may have too limited an imagination, but using NLP to interact with a computer UI is a Very Hard Problem . To me it feels like the old joke you know, 1 - Use NLP to interact with SalesForce competitor. 2 - something something. 3 - profit! Apologies in advance for the snark, I'm really curious. I mean, how much time would be really saved by talking to the phone vs more traditional inputs? Is it the dictaction which…

It’s the advantage (like they said) that you don’t have to login into Salesforce. This tool slows them down, and via voice they don’t have to use the salesforce application directly. Imagine you have awesome ideas and plans and have 8 hours a day. But if you can only be productive for ~6, you’re losing a ton of time just because the tool is bad designed/planed/slow/{insert more words here}. If you want more about tha…

I just feel that "via voice" is what makes me having doubts. Almost any tool could be adapted to a "via voice" interface, but which tools will become better for it?

I have a hunch that almost any custom interface on top of Salesforce would improve it.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#257

Post by rodolphoarruda »

I worked as an implementation consultant during the 1st or 2nd generation of CRM apps back in the fist decade of this century. Then, since 2010 I became a CRM end-user, mainly of Salesforce.

After all those years listening to sales people complain about workflows and broken UI/UX, I realized the perfect system for this type of user is a message driven minimal UI app.

System would send email/IM to users all day long asking questions about news leads, changes in opps stages, phone calls, contracts sent for signature etc. Sales folks would click a link, fill in a 2 field form and hit save. Call that "micro updates", if you will. The system mimics the sales manager who nudges the sales person for updates. Navigation within the app is minimal, so there is no room for alibis like: "Oh, I'm not updating it because it takes too much of my time. I was doing sales work instead."

All this would be for the operational CRM. Analytical/management parts of the system would present the typical UI/UX we all know about.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#258

Post by arethuza »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #257

I worked as an implementation consultant during the 1st or 2nd generation of CRM apps back in the fist decade of this century. Then, since 2010 I became a CRM end-user, mainly of Salesforce. After all those years listening to sales people complain about workflows and broken UI/UX, I realized the perfect system for this type of user is a message driven minimal UI app. System would send email/IM to users all day long a…

"message driven minimal UI app"

Via Slack/Teams/WhatsApp?

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#259

Post by iFelix »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #257

I worked as an implementation consultant during the 1st or 2nd generation of CRM apps back in the fist decade of this century. Then, since 2010 I became a CRM end-user, mainly of Salesforce. After all those years listening to sales people complain about workflows and broken UI/UX, I realized the perfect system for this type of user is a message driven minimal UI app. System would send email/IM to users all day long a…

Interesting! Hubspot launched a chat interface[1] but it doesn't have that component you describe where it pro-actively asks you for things.

I think logging will eventually become much less painful than it is today with good integrations and LLM, most of it could be done automatically.

[1] https://chatspot.ai/

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#260

Post by iFelix »

lkrubner wrote: post #244

I worked on a "Salesforce killer" that was actually meant to make Salesforce stronger by fixing its biggest known problem: that sales people hate using it. Our goal was to let sales people send text messages, which we would then use NLP to interpret correctly, and then add to salesforce. A sales person might sell a million bottles of shampoo to Hilton Hotels, then she might get in her car and drive home, on the way h…

Yes, I also think logging calls/meetings will become a thing of the past with LLMs and good integrations.
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