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Organizations of all types must keep track of their customers, clients, contributors, and other contacts — whether they be individuals or organizations themselves. When dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) solutions were introduced in the business world, they took the form of enterprise-level software. But this category is gradually being supplanted (or sometimes supplemented) by CRM-capable websites, including many built on Drupal.

For several years, the most popular CRM option for Drupal websites was — and continues to be — CiviCRM, which is an open source and highly capable system. However, it is standalone and not designed for Drupal, but rather “bolted on”: its integration with Drupal is rather convoluted; it typically utilizes a separate database (assuming no table prefixing); and it often leads to duplication of data. CiviCRM has a different templating engine and API, making customization and troubleshooting problematic at best. Developers frequently complain that it is quite difficult to change forms and workflows, or even figure out where to begin such attempts. Its nonintuitive administrative interface can increase staff confusion and technical support costs. Compared to Drupal itself, CiviCRM is large and complex, and effectively results in more than a tripling of the number of files on disk and the number of lines of code.

An Answer Most Fowl

Consequently, a few alternatives to CiviCRM have emerged, including RedHen CRM, created by ThinkShout, a boutique open source web agency based in Portland, Oregon. RedHen is intended to help users in “managing detailed information on, and connections between, contacts and organizations, membership services, event registrations, and constituent engagement.” Best of all for Drupal developers, RedHen is entirely native to Drupal, is designed for flexibility, and does not lock implementers into any fixed information architecture or presentation.