May 2012
How to keep an Egg in more than one Basket
CRM lets you segment data without having to decide into which pigeonhole, or basket you are going to store that information. Here are a couple of examples:
You are able to link a contact to more than one company – a consultant may work for several of your clients and need to maintain the correspondence on the contact level rather than company. No problem!
You have created a plan of action that you want to assign to several of your team members instead of just the one. No problem!
You want to send a bulk email out to a segment of your customers whose profile matches up with a great product you are about to launch. No problem!
You've had details of a new contract document drawn up that you wish to share with various members of a projects team to review together, with any amendments to the document being instantly available to all members of the team as soon as they are saved. No problem!
Using a feature-rich, cloud-based CRM solution such as OpenCRM, there is no need to choose which basket, just store your eggs in all of them!
Technorati claim code: VA4ME6REY98X
Conquering The Waves
Sterling Power has been around since 1992, founded on the idea of bringing new technology into the marine market at a reasonable price. Their business is about providing electrical power products and solutions for uses in places where a connection to the mains is unavailable, unreliable or intermittent. We are delighted to announce that Sterling Power has chosen to use OpenCRM for their hosted CRM requirements.
Setting the Industrial Sector in Concrete
We are pleased to announce that Pneutrol Ireland have selected OpenCRM to be their CRM software solution of choice. Pneutrol Ireland are known throughout the global concrete industry but are active in pioneering solutions for a wide range of industrial sectors.
Keeping Customer Service at the Forefront
As well as reporting and resolving problems, the support desk has the means to be a pro-active department that aims not only to solve problems, but to take preventative measures and stop those issues arising in the first place.
Support and Helpdesk tools in OpenCRM offer you the ability to do this and more. With the Helpdesk tied in with the rest of your CRM solution, the support team has a complete picture of customer accounts including order history, previous helpdesk issues, preferences and all other correspondence with the customer.
When a support query arises, the first steps are to establish who the customer is and what the issue is - the tools are there to offer a rapid resolution. Easy cross-referencing within the Helpdesk module means you can search for any similar issues which may have arisen in the past and what measures were taken to resolve them. Also, the details held on the customer record mean you can easily see if there is any history with this particular customer and how any pain points or other issues have previously been dealt with.
The cloud-based connectivity also means that support issues are visible throughout the organisation. Technical staff, sales, marketing, the finance department and development teams can all view the types of issues coming in on the support desk, making any troubleshooting a much easier discussion, as everyone has been put on the same page.
Reports showing analysis of Helpdesk tickets, broken down into the categories you need, can easily be created and scheduled to be mailed out to the relevant members of your organisation, in good time before any weekly or monthly meetings. Of course the creation and sending of these reports can be automated in your OpenCRM solution.
The above examples show how support enquiries and issues permeate all departments of an organisation, and how using a hosted CRM solution such as OpenCRM you can keep the Helpdesk at the heart of the organisation and in doing so keep the customer at the forefront of your business.
Instinct or Insight
Many decisions are made on gut instinct and indeed some have become famous for making their fortune by making some “game changing” gut instinct decisions. But for most this approach is likely to be hit or miss, and place the emphasis on “miss”.
Here is where CRM comes into play. Whilst not wanting to remove any of the creative thought process that might be the life and soul of a business, a CRM solution provides a bit of a safety blanket for the instinctive. By offering insight and analysis on previous decisions that were based on instinct, you are able to compare outcomes, and decide whether your instinctive decision in a given situation is likely to be the right one. Instead of fully reining in the free thinking spirit, this allows you to develop that instinct whilst maintaining a level of balance and security. So instead of pitching instinct against insight, CRM lets you do the free thinking and analyses whether to give the green or red light.
Sales Pitch: Whether it’s to see if you have stayed within budget, worked to the allocated timescale, prioritised your jobs correctly - using OpenCRM you can analyse the success of any given project or group together project statistics in a report to give you an accurate snapshot of your levels of success in project management. Click here for more information
Don't be Forced....
There was a great campaign being run by Microsoft Dynamics Online a little while ago that speaks to a subject that is close to our hearts.
Dont allow yourself to end up being tied into a solution that relies on a 3rd party leveraging, granted, a great development and delivery framework that relies on the high cost partner to maintain. Force.com has got to be one of the best development concepts in modern computing. I am not refering to the technical underbelly which makes or breaks software delivery platforms such as these, I am talking about the 'hard sell' and the power of the support mechanism to get you to buy into what salesforce have to offer.
What makes Force.com so cool is also what makes the partnering with a Force Partner potentially limiting. Yes the platform offers flexibility but just take a look at the myriad of ways that your partner can tie up their customisations. Of course the idea is open so you can (in theory) move to a new partner if your relationship fails OR someone else can do a better job, but honestly, do you think that Force.com partners dont know that!
They are always a bit tongue in cheek ad campaigns like this from Microsoft - in some ways all they actually achieve is is to validate that Salesforce.com are the number one for Cloud CRM. What it does for us is highlight how careful you need to be when deciding on your CRM strategy.
Sales Pitch : If you need customisations on your OpenCRM system our team of clever professionals will be on hand to help you get the best from what we have to offer.
Location, Location, Location .... EUDPD
What is the European Union's Data Protection Directive (EUDPD) and does my OpenCRM system meet these guidelines?
The European Union has a data protection Directive which in essence protects users data from being stored outside of European Union countries.
One of the core elements of this directive is to create a set of guidelines that protect personal data and to achieve the adherence to these guidelines data needs to be stored within the judicial boundaries of the European Union and its members.
The essence of the directive is that data should only be held on systems within a Union country.
OpenCRM hold ALL European data within Approved member country Data Centres.
This is important for OpenCRM subscribers because you will likely be holding personal information within your OpenCRM systems and you need to be assured that you are holding data in compliance with the guidelines.
Data held outside of the EU has similar regulatory guidelines in terms of protection. At OpenCRM we adhere to guidelines and regulations that apply in the country where the physical data is held - the Data Centre, if you would like to limit your data to being held within a specific location please advise us and we will make the necessary arrangements.
UK and European subscribers do not need to do anything if they are happy that their data is held within the European Union ONLY. We follow the guidelines set out within the EUDPD.
