In INTERVOLGA I am occupied with Bitrix24 implementation and customization and often asked about other CRM systems. The questions are very different: someone wants to move from amoCRM and asks if we can transfer existing data to Bitrix24 and how much it will cost, someone examines different CRM systems to choose from before implementation and asks questions about their differences, another one has faced some strong technical limitations customizing an existing system and wants to be sure it won’t happen again if they decide to move to Bitrix24 etc. It is difficult for me to give a fair answer since we work only with Bitrix24. In order to close this knowledge gap I’ve decided to “touch” most popular of them and compare them with Bitrix24.

How many customers use the self-hosted Bitrix24?

More than a million companies use Bitrix24. I believe there are at least 60% of them are inactive or just trying B24 for testing.

Therefore, consider 400 thousand of them. Let's drop those who are completely satisfied with the cloud version and do not want anything more.

Let it be 200 thousand. Let's drop those who do not want to spend money and energy on the boxed version (the financial costs at the initial stage for the cloud version - at least 20 times less).

So, there are 20 thousand customers left. These are companies that have bought or are ready to buy a self-hosted version and invest in the development of the system "for their needs." These are serious customers. They are waiting for a good job.

Bitrix24 software improvements are complex. To fulfill them, you must understand the tasks of the business, know the structure of the system and be able to solve problems. Competent developers are few. There are even fewer active developers.

The market is promising but empty. We develop and support corporate portals on a self-hosted version of Bitrix24. Our goal is to take a larger share of this growing market.

An important step towards this goal is to have a broad outlook and deep competence in how to create extensions for Bitrix24, how to evaluate this work and how to properly do it. The price of the error is high.

The article gives an overview of the tasks of extending the functions of Bitrix24 for the summer of 2016. Each task is commented and evaluated.

In latest Bitrix24 Update «Corsica» there are some new functions — Open Channels, CRM-forms, E-mail- и 1C-trackers. We have examinted them and are ready to share our results. We will tell you about Email-tracker for workflow automation in your company.

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How should Bitrix24 be implemented? Is it possible to be prepared for this task? The implementation of a new system is always an answer to a specific problem. And the company managers and especially employees can rarely imagine a way to success. We have analysed a big amount of implementation projects and have prepared some recommendations regarding the technology of the successful implementation. 

Bringing order in the organization is a creative task. You must push yourself and your colleagues, perform qualitative changes. It can only be fulfilled by a strong-willed and wise leader.

This article describes how it can be done with the use of Bitrix24. We advise you to read the article Manifesto of Bitrix24 implementation, where the main "commandments", i.e. principles of work are summarized.

To experienced administrators and IT-employees we recommend to explore a high quality (though voluminous and complicated) training course (in Russian) on the portal implementation from 1C-Bitrix.

This article describes the sequence of Bitrix24 implementation steps within 7 steps - "dys". Every step is not 24 hours, but a more extended time period, usually 1-2 business weeks.

We are going to talk about a small or a medium-size company without any experience in the serious automation of processes.

The key thesis is the following: the Bitrix24 implementation is based on the employees' constructive attitude and diligence. 
Work with people is about love and not about violence.

We have heard many times from our customers the following question: how to tune a cloud version of Bitrix24 for correct work with several regional representative offices in the same portal. Company Management wants to rule and collect accounts in one place, but be sure that access rights and scopes between regions are strictly determined. Such organizational schemes suit for any net structures or franchise companies. See details in the article.

NDA and features of the case

It is a real story about the project of Bitrix24 implemantation at an enterprise.

We signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), according to which we could not name the exact field of the Customer's activities (the company is specific, almost unique), show screenshots and say aloud any kind of particularities.

We continue the topic of the Big Bitrix24 implementation. That means that you've bought the box version and you are developing its capabilities.

A serious implementation of Bitrix24 will surely require integration with the external systems. For example:

1. Uploading the products database to the CRM from the warehousing or another accounting software.

2. Synchronizing counteragent companies with the accounting or recording program.

3. Binding leads and transactions to the requests for the warehouse or production.

4. Creating leads at registration of new applications in other systems (sites, email, electronic archives, etc.).

5. Receiving reports, including data from Bitrix24 and other systems.

This article is about love.

Bitrix24 is used to solve management tasks in different organizations.

In some cases there are 5 employees, in other cases - 500.

Maybe you have 5 transactions a week in CRM, or maybe 500 calls a day.

Even the concept of "project", "transaction", "offer" have different meanings in different organizations.

How do you use it then? Why does it work at all?

I must say that creation of a software product "for any company", what Bitrix24 has become, is a surprising phenomenon. Who is this system for? What organizations is it for?

For everybody? or for "nobody"?

You can say that Bitrix24 is suitable for everybody to solve 80% of tasks. And for the remaining 20% everybody needs a fine setting and update.

In accordance with the principle of Pareto the first 80% are easily implemented. We are trying, studying, watching videos, getting used. Everything works. This is a small implementation.

The remaining 20% are more difficult. You need the research and the expert's work. Sometimes - "in terms of workflows". Sometimes - a database designer, a REST API expert and a programmer on some kind of React JS.

In this article we talk about a most interesting case of developing "the second type applications" for cloud Bitrix24 and show the possibilities of expanding the service functionality.

Last Bitrix24 reports and webinars were dedicated to business processes in general sense and says almost nothing about their implementation in CRM. We are sure that every specialist who work with Bitrix24 CRM can name several problems which should be automated. Let's examine below one of them and offer an algorithm to solve it using business process.

In this article we will examine the question of business process control in Bitrix24. We will show you examples in which you will find the answers for questions like where to find running business process, how to stop specific process, how to restart stopped ones, and how to determine who impedes the work in the company. 
We will give you some recommendations which enable Administrator or an employee to watch and control business processes in Bitrix24.