What’s your Approach?

2 Mar 2015

I don’t know if you play video games, but I quite enjoy them. I do find that the way people approach big tasks, like a video game or within their work, varies so much that the people who develop games (and other software) must accommodate these preferences.

Personally, I’m usually quite happy to dip in and out of them, but every once and while, a game comes along that I just lose myself in. All I want to do is play through the story and find out what happens at the end.

I’m the same with books. I’ll find one I like and get so engrossed it in that I will happily spend a full day reading without even noticing the hours going by.

But back to my games—the reason I bring them up is that I am currently playing one of those games that I just never want to leave. What really makes this game so engrossing is the story.

My partner, on the other hand, who is also playing the same game, cares much more about the expansive world. He likes to run around exploring and really only does the main (or side) quests to open up other areas of the map.

Another friend of ours is what I would call a completist. He will complete every side quest, pick up any collectable, light up every corner of the map…honestly, I don’t know where he finds the time.

I suppose my point in all this is to highlight the different ways people approach a task.

One of the ways you could accommodate the different ways people need to work would be by using our Layouts feature. Layouts allow you to set what fields are visible depending at the Profile and individual User level.

So, for example, you might have your Leads show up for your sales team with their phone number right at the top of the screen alongside the Last Action field. That way, they can easily see when this person was last contacted and be able to get in touch quickly without having to search for a number. Your Accounts team, however, might want to see the Outstanding Balance for a Company record displayed prominently.

But what if you have one member of your Accounts team who likes to work more like a sales person—the most important question for them is: What was the last communication you had with this Company? They would prefer to have that sales Layout.

In OpenCRM, you can set the Default Layout at the User level, letting you tailor your system for how you want your departments to approach things, but also for how each member of your team prefers to work.