So you want to move to a new CRM solution. This might be your first time using CRM with this organisation, or you could be migrating from one CRM solution to another. Perhaps you feel your existing solution has become too expensive; there are countless reasons that might prompt a move.

On top of getting the new system up and running and educating your Users, one of the main challenges is getting your data imported.

There are a number of things which can make this task either quick and simple, or long and painful. Having been in involved in the data migration process for numerous systems, here are a few pointers which might help.

• Have you mapped all the fields you need in the information you are exporting? One field that is often not present in data we see is the “assigned to” field. It is easy to add this field to a csv file by copying and pasting the relevant users prior to import, and this means that ownership is assigned to your data right from the start.

• Have you looked at the format in which the data is presented in the system you will be using? Look at the fields that contain details such as name and address – are they separated into first and last name? Is the street address all contained in one field? And is the data in the correct field? Looking at data on a csv file it is easy to see where email addresses have erroneously slipped into the phone number field.

• Have you looked at the related entities and how the data needs to interact within your new system? If you are importing companies and contacts, do you have the right company name on the contact record and are those names consistent? If you have a “Jones Limited” in one spreadsheet and a “Jones Ltd” in the next, this will create two unrelated records, which brings you quickly into those murky waters known as duplication.

• If you are importing other data such as Activities, do you have a means of identifying the related contacts and companies in the import data?

• Remember, all of your information is easy to merge, delete, re-arrange and tidy up at this early stage, when your data is contained in a spreadsheet format such as csv.

Of course in a CRM solution such as OpenCRM you can filter your data and should you need to bulk update records, this is easily done. But the earlier you start to tidy up your records and data, the easier it will be to manage when on your CRM solution, not to mention starting with a clean slate like this will help encourage a solid practise for future data management.

For more advice and tips have a look here: http://opencrm.co.uk/crm-knowledgebase/kb1401086/Things-to-consider-when-importing-data-into-OpenCRM--Troubleshooting-imports-that-are-not-working.html

Different businesses and organisations all have one thing in common regardless of size or level of success – they are all facing the prospect of managing ever increasing volumes of data. This can be anything including growing numbers of historic records, email and other addresses, sales documents, marketing data, quotes and all kinds of information that you gather about your leads and customers. The quantity of data is increasing, and this needs to be processed with the same or possibly fewer resources that have traditionally been used.

A great step forward in terms of data management is the ability to store it in a centralised database. This enables the post-sales team to access data that was collected and managed before and during the sale by marketing and sales teams. The logical way to store this is in a cloud-based solution, which can be accessed real-time at any time and any place. Managing all your customer data in one location offers the marketing team the chance to push new product and company information, special offers and customer advice, based on the sales and account history of each client.

The more this data grows, the more challenging it becomes to manage. This challenge can be met by using a standardised practise, such one CRM solution to house this data and manage the relations between the different fields of knowledge. As your data grows, you are able to keep the historic data on your virtual workplace, without having to file it away into boxes of paperwork or discs down in the basement. Maintaining your data on your CRM solution also means you do not have to worry about any additional safety or security implications should you be storing data in a secondary location.

Whereas traditional forms of data grew and became more complicated to manage, filtering and reporting tools within CRM mean more information brings additional value as you are able to build up more complete and accurate images of your customers and potential clients.

What’s more, instead of piling more and more files on top of each other, cloud-based CRM stores these records in a manner that is easy to access and manage. If knowledge is power, being able to store all of this intelligence at your fingertips in a CRM solution is surely the most effective means of harnessing and benefitting from what could be your greatest asset – your customer data.

Sales Pitch: OpenCRM offers you a huge storage facility, allowing you to keep all your important data together, in one CRM solution. This provides many benefits, amongst others the ease of access of data in the cloud and the peace of mind of a secure storage solution for your day-to-day and historic business records.

I recently followed a number of news reports that revealed how a major player in the automobile industry launched a twitter campaign to coincide with the Superbowl; unfortunately for them the campaign was a thinly disguised form of spam and was quickly exposed as such (OK, as you probably know the company was Toyota, for further reading see: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/04/toyota-takes-to-spamming-twitter-for-camry-super-bowl-promotion/)

This clearly shows that even the biggest companies and multinationals around are in the same starting blocks as everyone else when it comes to social media. Of course social media is here to stay and every serious contender needs to feature it in the marketing mix, but jumping on every platform available simply “because it is there” is not going to work. Blatant sales marketing on a direct marketing platform will backfire as it breaks down the levels of trust upon which that very platform is built. Being spammed with an unsolicited sales message on a person’s private space is a sure way of getting to “unlike” or “unfollow” the product or company in question!

Implementing tools available in your CRM solution is a good way to get your social media campaigning in tune with your target audience. You can filter your customers and potential customers using the data you have collected, and are able to send intelligent direct messages that are in tune with the intended audience.

The campaigns module in your CRM solution is a great place to build lists of addresses related to a specific marketing offensive. This can be converted into the type of campaign required – whether by phone, email, a mailout or via a social network – your target group data is contained in one location with plenty of tracking tools to enable you to get the most from your marketing efforts.

Sales Pitch: Click on the hyperlinks to see how OpenCRM can help you with your Campaign Tracking and your Event Management .

A real benefit a CRM solution can bring to your organisation is one of information consistency.

Moving away from disparate siloed solutions and folders containing spreadsheets and data lists dotted all over on different machines means this data remains constant, with the added advantage of being able to track any alterations that are made.

Data conformity in CRM stems from the fact that everyone in your organisation is working on the same page. Instead of individuals or departments having their own copies of customer records, everyone remotely accesses and uses the same record. This means that as soon as one of your company clients changes their phone number for example, this alteration is apparent across the board instead of on the one person’s machine.

This centralised database of records promotes data consistency and reduces the margin of error.

A further benefit of using hosted CRM for your data storage concerns record of ownership. This means when viewing data, you can also see to whom the information is assigned, and who has been responsible for any amendments to the record. A principle beneficiary of this is the Helpdesk team. Being able to see the “assigned to” operator provides a Helpdesk ticket with an anchor point, should anyone else take a call from the same customer they are able to refer you back to the original technician or to view any notes made by that person.

This potentially cuts out any unnecessary and potentially unprofessional follow-up calls for a case that has already been dealt with.

The transfer of ownership is also a simple and error-free process. Reassigning a record keeps information intact, whilst notifying the new owner of the record in question. So if a particular issue needs to be transferred to another operator in your system there will be no loss of information, with the audit function offering the necessary mechanism for internal control.

In other formats, information passed around the office and beyond will gradually alter in shape and message as it goes from one desk to the next. However, information that is shared within a cloud-based CRM solution either remains unchanged or has all alterations accounted for. Your data is visible across the board and is accessible from anywhere, in the office, in a meeting or out in the field.

Sales Pitch: For more information on how OpenCRM can help with your data and contact management please click on this link

Something we believe in here at OpenCRM is transparency. We are confident that our product will work for you and we have great long-term relationships with our customers. A part of this confidence in our product is that we offer a monthly subscription rate. This gives our customers the chance to split payments for their hosted CRM solution over the course of the year making it an affordable and easily managed overhead. A recent study showed that two-thirds of Salesforce customers are billed annually*, making this a harder pill to swallow in today’s market place where the landscape changes more frequently than ever before.

As well as making the financing of OpenCRM more manageable, this helps keep the relationship with our customers active, as we interact on a far more frequent basis than simply an annual subscription renewal.  We work in close partnership with our clients, meaning that when you sign up with OpenCRM you are more than “just a number”, having a dedicated team working for and with you. We like getting to know our customers and us knowing their CRM needs puts us all on the same page and sets the foundations for a happy and fruitful working relationship.

*source: Zdnet: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/salesforce-competition-distractions-to-hamper-growth/65230