Yes. We are adamant about technology at SpiceCRM. We started with the early adoption of Angular, embracing this in its infancy. We built a lot of functions using Elasticsearch such as document storage and replacing standard SQL. We believe in HTML5 and in its responsive design. We try to fiercely stay on top of the latest releases of each technological component.

There are several reasons why we do this.

Performance

When it comes to CRM performance, the system is crucial. There is nothing more boring than a slow CRM system. Slow response times will kill user adoption and be a key factor for a failed CRM implementation. The latest technology is one key factors leading to a fast and speedy CRM system. Of course, technology alone does not do it (a fool with a tool is still a fool) but if you know how to leverage technology, the advances are very rapid seeing as the web technology world is evolving very quickly. Leveraging Angular as the core Google Technology has proven to be the right decision for SpiceCRM and supports the fast response times of the system. Elasticsearch and the support for key databases, by mainly relying on MySQL and Oracle, supports the speed and even the high scalability.

Usability

Believe it or not – technology is a primary key to usability. A lot of expectations when it comes to Web Apps, are driven from large consumer sites like Google, Amazon, Facebook or other widely used applications and sites. Of course, it is a user’s expectation that a CRM System as a business application is as easy to use as a Google search. Something that is of course hard to accomplish if not out of reach given the simple nature of the application. However, at least we try hard and strive to get as close as possible. Even here technology is a key enabler. Keeping up with the latest releases ensures support for the latest browser features and the latest available web features. It provides, simply from the look and feel aspect, capabilities that users are already familiar with in their daily web experience. Bringing this to the CRM world is something where the user typically does not usually care about technology or its complexity. It really takes effort to make things work when connecting applications with databases and web sockets and a real time experience to learn. The art here is to make everything look simple and provide a super feel, completely shielding the complexity and technological framework that is required to make things happen. But if you do, a user will feel it and it will be once again a key factor to user adoption.  And that is exactly what leads to a successful CRM project.

Security

Web Security is another key challenge. As we live in an open world with cloud deployments and where the dark side of the web is developing as fast as the light side, it is an absolute must to keep up to date with the technology stack. Nothing should be more worrying to a system administrator than having a system in the business application stack that is not up to date and thus could be a potential security risk.