We have been discussing how to best manage new features and custom development on clients systems. Following our internal QA procedures means that any custom development, or a client system upgraded past the current production release is classed as 'in Beta'.

Now obviously this does not mean that the whole system is in Beta just the new features and arguably some areas of code that might have been affected by this development effort.

What does this mean and how can we be true to our procedures whilst being realistic to what our customers need? The last thing that our customers want to lose is this agile approach to delivery of what is important to their business.

We feel the best way to manage this process is to introduce an official Beta phase for a clients system. Most of our subscribers use the production version and are upgraded every 3 - 6 months with a new QA tested release so this only concerns those customers and prospects that are looking for something specific that we have already written and is working its way into the next release OR if they require a feature developed for them.

If a customer needs a new feature developing there are two things for us to consider, firstly adding a new feature will itself introduce a level of ambiguity which needs to go through the QA stage which is compounded because we will generally add core features to the latest development version and as a by product will mean that there are other development considerations.

Note : We are not 'doing a Google' here and adding the words Beta to every version of OpenCRM for the next 18 months - Honest!

We, like other professional software developers, run a sophisticated version control system which includes multiple versions of the application as it rolls through the Development / Alpha / QA / Beta / Production phases, along with a strict set of policies that dictate when a version is ready for public consumption.

In the past we would never release a Beta version unless it was to a client who had expressed an interest in joining our Beta program, however with the dramatic increase in new systems and the greater than normal percentage of systems requiring custom development we are looking to make some minor changes.

We have introduced a method of adding new features in a very structured way, not just as an ad-hoc amendment to the code, this new process will allow us to flag a custom developed feature or new core feature (that is being introduced early), as a Beta feature - this is clearly visible with the admin settings. This includes a process for making the client and their users aware of what to expect and a process for them to report any unexpected behaviour. Our support desk also has a process to fasttrack any comments on Beta features into the development team to minimise any frustration.

For those users that just cant wait, perhaps they are technoheads or need to be as close to the head of our feature branch as they can, then we still have the Beta program. Obviously we don't make available any new release as an Alpha before the QA stage all of this has to pass our own internal QA process before anyone gets their hands on new stuff - just in case! I remember being told many years ago when Apple was in partnership with Claris Software "we don't have bugs here we just have unpublished features" well I guess that's what we are trying to avoid.

I read an article this week about a bank that accidentally revealed customer email addresses by sending a mass email and using the “to” field instead of “bcc”. Of course accidents happen and human error needs to be factored in. The fact that this has happened to a financial institution where stability and security are core values is somewhat worrying but I guess that’s not the point here.

Had they been using OpenCRM this would not have happened.  Using the Email Module in OpenCRM all addresses in the “to” field receive a separate email. You can put all the addresses required into the “to” field, and clicking on send will send the emails separately. Using our Pop2OpenCRM mail service you can archive all your email communication within your OpenCRM system. For details of how Pop2OpenCRM works please find more information here or contact us.

Using the cloud for your data storage is like putting your money in the bank. Of course you can keep your money under the mattress at home. It’s right there under you as you sleep. Using a bank you are entrusting someone else with your money. As time goes on, the bank works for you, they make you all kinds of offers, from loans to interest, to advice.  And your money is stored virtually – the branch you normally deal with doesn’t have a pile of banknotes (or IOU’s) in an envelope with your name on them.  You can access that money from any branch, ATM or location where your card is accepted. And your finances are safe from natural disaster.

With your data it’s pretty much the same story, except that of course you can duplicate data, you can store as many copies as you like. But the mechanics of cloud storage can be likened to how your money works in the bank. Using the cloud you can access your data from anywhere.  Using PIN numbers you prevent others from accessing your data. Your web host is also working for you. Taking measures to improve data security, and working on increasing your storage space – your virtual bank account.

Just as a bank can be robbed, online data storage is susceptible to attack. Recent cases involving Sony data goes to show that high-profile security breaches are an everyday risk. Fortunately most data centres use high levels of encryption to ensure that sensitive data has additional layers of security.

Sales Pitch: OpenCRM subscriptions come with a huge storage space for your data and we take your information security seriously. For further reading: http://opencrm.co.uk/why-host-your-crm-solution.html

Everyone wants to attract new business. A new customer brings a breath of fresh air, creates impetus for development and is something different and exciting. But only concentrating on attracting these customers comes at the risk of neglecting your existing customers and ignoring the hard work you have already put in. These established customer records are the fruits of your market research and sales efforts of the past. It makes sense then for you to use this great resource to your advantage by maintaining it as live data rather than simply as a library documenting past events.

Filtering your customer accounts into different categories means you can launch marketing campaigns aimed at the various different levels of customers you have, for example those that have used your services once, or frequent and loyal customers, or perhaps customers that you may be on the verge of losing. You have captured enough information to use this customer data to your advantage - by making special offers, by providing “insider” advice, conducting consumer surveys or even sending thank you messages if appropriate. These small touches help build your brand identity and ties to your customer as well as being great ways of driving repeat business.

Sales Pitch: There are numerous ways of filtering your Customer data in OpenCRM to return the results you need to launch the Campaign you need.

Isn’t it frustrating, when the birthday present you ordered for your mother was shipped to the wrong address.  Two days too late. With her name spelt incorrectly on the gift.

This is bad news for both the business and the customer. The customer is obviously not satisfiedwill not be using your services again. And the business incurs the additional posts of putting the order right in order to satisfy a customer that is already lost.

Using a CRM solution you have the tools needed to keep minimize the chance of such mistakes happening. Here are a couple of potential problem spots that an ondemand CRM solution can prevent.

A hands-off approach to data.

In a CRM system your customer address details only need to be entered once. This reduces the scope for losing details as a customer account does not need to be passed from one department to another

Using OpenCRM helps you minimise errors at the sales order or invoice stage. With the Opportunity completed and sealed, the Sales Order can be automatically generated. This can again be used to generate the invoice. You have effectively cut out the human error factor as there is no need to manually edit the details on the paperwork.

Using the details from your support staff, you have a log of any previous incidents with any given customer. You can turn any errors of the past around by raising your level of service to put a smile back on the customer. You can use your OpenCRM to turn this into a loyalty-building opportunity.

AKA Custom Views Part Two - to read part one please click this link

In your lead management, you will have leads at the various stages your organisation uses. Some will be cold or lost, others might be warm or even hot, near to being a done deal. Instead of simply aiming for the closing sell, you can use OpenCRM to create documents to manage your leads at each stage of the customer journey. If a typical lead to sell involves 8-10 points of contact with the lead, it makes sense to use contact material relevant to where the lead is at a particular point in time. You can focus your efforts according to which stage the lead is at. A lot of customers are not ready to buy when they first encounter you. They may be doing some preliminary research. Treating them to the hard sell at this point is not likely to result in a sale, as the pushy approach probably won’t work.

Using the ability to create different views in OpenCRM, you can view a list of your leads at each sales stage with a click of a button. You can then apply the appropriate action to that group – another click and you can send the records listed in a particular view an email - this interaction with your leads as appropriate to their stage in the sales cycle is likely to have far more positive results than the hard sell.

Remember, within OpenCRM you can prepare all the necessary views and email templates beforehand. The correspondence with your potential customers can be run from the Campaigns module. This gives you the added benefit of having tracking tools in place that can tell you amongst other things how many emails have resulted in click-throughs to your site, and how much business you have generated from each Campaign.

Our aim is to help you save time and energy by offering tools which can do the hard work for you.

Part of the project package that we offer with OpenCRM is a very high level of customer support.

We get told time and time again that its expensive to find new customers and this is of course true and that’s why we invest in our existing ones by providing this exceptionally high level of service to our subscribers.

I know that what we do is well received because our clients tell me so, but it is easy to become blasé about what we do…. Not because we allow our standards to drop, but by assuming that others offer a similarly high level of support also. Well I am here to tell you that in many circumstances this is just not the case, or at least that’s my personal experience.

Due to the consultancy side of our business and a fast pace in developing concepts within OpenCRM I have had cause over the last few weeks to purchase a number of products and services.

Just to qualify what I mean, these products and services have all been from technology related companies and/or include software products.

These products and services have all been chargeable. I mean these have not been trails or freebies, but have had commercially agreed terms with money exchanging hands.

I appreciate why some trail periods are not going be as supported as paying customers, this is a decision made by the supplier but in all of these recent cases I WAS a paying customer.

I had reason to contact a VoIP software vendor to ask a ‘conceptual’ question about how I could use their product. In fairness it was a question I raised during the pre-sales period and was clarifying because I was finding it difficult to achieve the desired configuration that I had been promised, so although I was raising it with the support team it should have been an easy answer.

The response I got was brilliant, creative to the point of frustration. My question was answered by referring me to the manual. The manual was not available on the web site where I had been told I could get hold of an electronic copy. When I followed up I was sent a link to the manual which did not work, subsequently I received (after another exchange) the right URL link. I turned to page 54 to see how the paragraph suggested would help me, only to find that it said (and I quote verbatim)…

“This feature is available for certain firmware version please contact support for more information”

At this point you start to consider what you said in the first email exchange that upset the support technician so much that he felt I was worthy of such a prank? But trust me, having gone over that ground there was nothing that could have been misunderstood.

If this was the only episode of poor support, or answers that lack any substance, I might have let it go, but over 3 weeks, 5 support cases raised and 5 support cases still open (well lets come to that in a minute) all have no resolution.

I have actually solved 4 of the configuration problems I was having myself and am loathed to share this information with the support teams, but that’s just me being peevish. On the point of Open cases – I fully understand that tickets have to be closed once they are dealt with, but on more than one occasion I received the close ticket email without any response from a support technician!

So you see I know what we do is great and believe me we want to do even better. You can rest assured we will be doing everything possible to support you properly because we fully appreciate how frustrating problems can be and how damaging to the long term relationship, you see I (or our business and any professional contacts which I might influence) won’t be buying from any of these poorly performing companies again.

AKA Custom Views Part One

Custom Views are an essential component of OpenCRM. This is a flexible tool which has multiple uses, so I have split the subject into two blog posts. Here is Part One, please watch out for Part Two coming later in the week.

A great way to encourage all-round adoption of CRM is when members of your organisation realise how much time and effort it can save. One of these great time-savers is the creation of custom views. A custom view is a pre-saved display of a particular set of records in your CRM solution. For example you could select to see all new Leads that have come into your system in the past week. Or you could want a view to show all outstanding Sales Orders. Or perhaps you want your Helpdesk module to show all tickets which are set as Urgent.

This tool is perfect for the sales person on the road as it a quick way of displaying relevant information. Instead of having to search through data, that sales person can access their list of jobs to do, or open opportunities etc. with a couple of clicks rather than a search procedure. This easy shortcut of the system is one aspect which customers love. Other examples of views which you could set up are overdue invoices, or at-risk relationships – accounts that you have had no interaction with for a certain period of time.

There are some other cool features to further personalise your system such as adding your company logo, or the ability to rearrange the tabs on your system to show your data the way you like it. We have some really exciting news from our developers coming soon that will allow customers to further customise their systems – watch this space. The aim is to create a system that can be adapted to work the way that suits you.

A CRM solution can not only save money and time, but it is also a great way of economising on resources.  This is both within your office environment, and outwards with your client interactions.

Much of the traditional internal paperwork can be virtualised within CRM. Instead of folders and cupboards bulging with files, you can neatly attach documents to records in your CRM solution. There is an added benefit here that you can attach a file to more than one place e.g. to a company and to a specific contact within that company, as well as to a particular Helpdesk ticket, Project or Contract. Not only are you saving paper and space, but you are establishing a filing system far more sophisticated than a traditional cabinet.

You can also add material to your Knowledge collateral as PDF documents. These can be stored within your system, and be made available to your staff, contacts and customers. Doing so helps you save on postage, despatch time and the materials and resources you would need to print all the documents – ensuring that your material is only printed out as and when necessary by the end user. And if someone in another time zone decides they want to read your documentation there and then, there is no waiting involved for someone to send them a link or a package out, they can simply go onto their CRM system and download the document required. This means that your leaflets, brochures, manuals and other materials are always published, available and - as long as you make sure of it - up to date.

Sales Pitch: Using OpenCRM you can use eSign to sign Sales Orders online. This is a fast and secure method of signing Sales Orders. For more information please watch this video tutorial

Increase Information, Education and Experience – Use Your KnowledgeBase.

Everyone likes tools that make work easier. With a good CRM solution, one of those comes in form of the Knowledge base – just like the one on this site.

The OpenCRM Knowledge Base is of benefit to you and your customers on two different levels.

Firstly, you can consult our KnowledgeBase to search for replies to any questions you have about your OpenCRM system, for example “How do I add a logo to my system?”

Secondly, you can also build up a Q and A section for your OpenCRM system and build up a FAQ library for your organisation and your clients to benefit from.

Creating an FAQ hierarchy will save you money and time in the long run. As well as creating “how to” posts of your own, you can document and record solutions to any customer issues that arise. This can help you prevent similar situations from arising in the future as well as providing an instant reply to a query instead of having to carry out the problem-solving again.

It is impossible to store the answers to all the problems in your head – even issues you have come up with time and time again. Why even try when you have a KnowledgeBase that exists precisely to relieve you of this burden.  With the resources available on your CRM system, this means the information is available across your organisation, giving everyone access to solutions at any time – no need to hunt down the colleague that has come across the same problem before.

Using some classification you can retrieve the answer you are looking for quickly and easily; linking solutions to Helpdesk tickets is a great way of dealing with issues that crop up frequently.

By publishing certain FAQs and making them available to clients, you can save time for both you and your clients by providing solutions to problems without the need for your support desk to become involved.

In an ideal world this will also highlight the existence of your Knowledgebase and perhaps encourage your customers to further explore some of the great features you have to offer.
Your FAQ can be presented in all manner of formats – test, image or videos, as shown in the link above or this one here.

And when you have built up a good collection of information, you have a powerful self-service module for customers to interact with you 24/7. Let the OpenCRM KnowledgeBase take the weight off your shoulders.

Is it a coincidence that we work in an open-plan office here at OpenCRM? Like our office set-up, a CRM solution helps break down walls and silos that are found in a traditional business model. Divisions between sales and delivery are a cause of higher cost both financially, and in terms of human resources.  And not only that, but these divisions are just old fashioned and that won't do now, will it?!

With the global market both growing and shrinking at the same time, the ties between sales and service delivery have never been more essential. Yep, you read correct – getting bigger and smaller at the same time. The business market is spreading across the world.  Areas such as Services and IT education not to mention manufacture have become a truly global phenomenon. As a result people are doing business, consuming and communicating on an increasingly worldwide level. But the popularity of social networking has taken this international arena and brought it right back down to a local level. It has empowered people across the board - consumers are savvier than they ever have been. This means that poor delivery of a product at any stage from pre-sale right through to customer support is highly likely to have serious consequences if any dissatisfied customers feel like voicing themselves using the means they have available - Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, you name it.

Sales Pitch: Your hosted OpenCRM solution is the perfect tool to help dodge these pitfalls. Your delivery and service teams are on the ball right from day one, benefitting from a direct line to what the sales and marketing guys are doing.  You can harness the information that is coming in from across the world and use it to service your customers both near and far. It puts everyone in your organisation wherever they are based into one common location – your virtual open plan office.

It happens in the best of businesses and services – an unsatisfied customer turns up.  Yet given the current climate you can’t really afford to ignore the unhappy customer. The reason for their dissatisfaction is irrelevant – if you don’t do something you are going to lose business.

Here’s the good news – your CRM solution provides you with a multitude of tools to identify and analyse the problem areas and then to help you provide long-term solutions. What’s more this applies not only to vocal dissatisfaction – those calling your helpdesk and service line – but also the silent customers who may be scaling back their business with you.

Using reports you can analyse sales patterns, and identify when regular customers are buying your products or services less frequently. When you have established this you can then set the mechanisms in place to put a smile back on the customer’s face – a promotional offer or even a greetings card – working on regaining that regular business.

Your Helpdesk is the vital key to general problems. Firstly the fact that it is there and is implemented correctly gives the customer the reassurance that care continues beyond the sales stage. That way even if a problem arises, the client knows the issue will be dealt with in a professional and friendly way.

Using Helpdesk reporting you are also able to identify any recurring issues. This gives you the means to take corrective measures before a problem becomes widespread and has a negative effect on your customer loyalty. As your CRM system gives your entire organisation a 360 degree view of records, your sales personnel can also be made aware of resolved issues, and can take necessary steps to regain customer faith and business.

Sales Pitch: With OpenCRM you can deal with all manner of customer queries and issues as well as pre-empt future problems, with your whole organisation from marketing to sales to helpdesk aware of issues and equipped to deal with them. Turn those complaints into compliments by resolving potential trouble-spots before your clients even notice them.

"A CRM solution (Customer Relationship Management) gives businesses the framework to build a rich and valuable picture of its customer base and in return this can provide the foundations for solid repeat business."

To continue reading please click the following link:: http://EzineArticles.com/6217378

This is the latest article we have had published on Ezine. We are glad to be establishing a series of articles which we hope are building up a useful resource for you. For any questions on all matters CRM and of course what OpenCRM can do for you, just give us a call or drop us a line.

Accounts, Finances and Cashflow are never far from a business mind these days, especially soon after the budget announcement. Depending on who or what you read, the economy has hit the bottom and is gradually on the turn. Turn the page or read another opinion, and you’ll learn that we are still on the downward spiral. One thing’s for sure, the heady days are over, and regardless of the state of our present economy, the recession has taught some valuable lessons. Businesses are being far more careful with spending and are tending to play it safe, rather than going out on a limb.

Here are five ways in which a CRM solution can help you pro-actively take on the recession and step ahead of competition:

1. Streamlining your workflow can put your entire organisation on the same page. This will help align company policy and motivation – helping your organisation and staff achieve more with less waste.

2. Use reports to analyse information and find who your best customers are. If you work on a tight budget (and who doesn't?!) this means you can invest in the products which guarantee a return; in an ideal world your best products and customers will go hand in hand allowing you to maintain both to the highest standard.

3. Collecting and Collating Customer information gives your sales team the mechanism to offer a better service – reducing time wasted on sales opportunities that were never there in the first place.
   

4. This Customer data is also available to your support staff who can use the information to pre-empt trouble areas as well as offer a premier post-sale support.

5. The benefits of a cloud-based CRM solution are growing day by day – increased speed in customer services, company interactions across the globe and vastly reduced IT costs.

With efficient implementation of a CRM system you could not only survive a weak economic period but benefit from a time when your competitors are digging their heels in hoping to ride out the storm.

Sales Pitch: OpenCRM is a low cost, high delivery salesforce alternative for your cloud-based business needs. Please have a look at our plans and pricing for some concrete figures, and try out a demo version of OpenCRM. You might be surprised at how economical an on-demand software solution can be compared with traditional software.

Here is a link and an excerpt to a new article we have published on Ezinearticles.

"CRM really has unlimited ways in which it can streamline your organisation, so if you haven't already taken your business to the next level then it's high time you took this step, you'll soon wonder how you ever managed without it!"

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6112951

Technologists just love their buzz words and the CRM market is no different to any other technology sector. I guess CRM has become more mainstream but at one point this was itself a buzz word that few understood and was used to cover a multitude of software solutions.

Software as a Service - 'SaaS' or 'Cloud Computing' have been bandied about for a while now, but what do they mean?

Most people are familiar with the idea of their emails being held and accessed through the web. Services such as Hotmail or Yahoo are used by millions of people. And that's exactly how OpenCRM works.

You sign up to a monthly subscription and we deliver access to OpenCRM from any internet connected computer or device. Your data is backed up each night in a way that most mid market clients would find difficult to manage and potentially expensive, all of this is part of your subscription and managed by our dedicated team of CRM professionals.

By utilising our resources in this way you get to implement big business software at a fraction of the cost.

Let us do the heavy lifting & manage the backups and all aspects of your CRM system management, lets face it a nightly backup between two secure data centres has to be more secure than holding your information on a laptop or PC which is inevitably where a lot of data ends up, in spreadsheets and address books. If your computer is lost then no problem, just login from another PC - remember all the information is stored in the cloud.

Coupled with the estimate that 71% of all small businesses don't have an in house IT person, so using OpenCRM means you get easy access to the latest technology and our experienced personnel. Because the software and hardware are all upgraded as part of your subscription you get all the benefits in a fast moving and costly marketplace without any of the pain.

So buzz word or not - OpenCRM is a great way to help move your business to the cloud.

Sales Pitch : In a recent straw poll we were shocked to see how little File Storage our real competitors offered and given that the one thing we can all be sure of is that your data needs will always increase, OpenCRM are once again pioneering a change in expectations. ALL OpenCRM subscriptions now come with a minimum of 500GB of File Storage as standard. If you want to read more about what this means click here or if you would like to see how cost effective cloud computing can be why not take a look at our Plans and Pricing.

I recently read about an online survey* carried out by Forrester Research about attitudes towards email marketing, and it’s pretty good news really. Consumers are actually reading promotional mails! The trend reveals that more people are likely to forward promotional mail than they would have done in the past. Also more people are likely to use their personal mail address to receive promotional materials than they had done in the past. A word of warning though, as the percentage of consumers likely to buy goods or services advertised has not risen, hovering at around 5% for the past four years.

I think this can only be a consequence of marketing mails being of a better quality than in the past. Blanket mails have been replaced by targeted mail campaigns. From personal experience I tend to only receive promotional mails from companies and campaigns that actually interest me. As a result, I read them and take the information on board. The fact that the sender has analysed and tailored the recipients list to pinpoint potential interest and ultimately sales makes such a mail campaign so much more valuable than a blanket mailout. It pays the reader a compliment by sending them information that is of value to them. As a result, in the bigger picture this increases the value of email marketing campaigns.

Sales Pitch: OpenCRM comes with a Campaigns module, giving you the optimal tools to start launch and run the Campaigns that you need.  From a campaign you are able to track click-throughs and enquiries, as well as the total Opportunities, Quotes, Orders and Invoices that are generated. Please contact us if you want more details of how this can be of benefit to your business.

*Source: http://www.marketingprofs.com

Here's an excerpt from an article we have recently published on Ezinearticles. To read the whole article please click on the link below

"It makes a lot of sense therefore for the small business model to look seriously at implementing an online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software solution. Without having to invest in new technology the small business has access to these powerful business management tools."

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6072039

Size might DOES count after all!

There are lots of CRM solutions on the market. Some offer hosted only, others are on premise and of course there are alternatives for solutions that offer a combination of both.

We have long argued the benefits of Hosted CRM Software and judging by our own levels of enquiries & business along with the published figures of the largest providers, hosted CRM is increasingly popular.

All of this is great, however, as time goes by with more customers wanting to adopt CRM for the long run, consideration of Data and File storage requirements become a key factor.

I recently took a straw poll of clients and prospects to see what competitive products people are looking at when they evaluate OpenCRM. For the most part this list contained the usual suspects, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, ZohoCRM and (of course the new boy on the block) Microsoft CRM Online, so I took a look at what information is available about storage limits from these suppliers to try and gauge costs and availability.

All of the players in the mix offer different features and have a differing emphasis with their feature set, some are easier to use than others with some noticeable surprises when you look at products in depth, however, my focus during this investigation was the amount of data that you are able to store in the database and what limits are applied to file storage. I also wanted to consider the (sometimes hidden) costs.

One of the things that we are always surprised about when we review our genuine competitors are the basic features that you only get when you upgrade your edition. OpenCRM is a “one product for all” solution. You get everything we do whichever subscription you take. There is only one OpenCRM product and it is always the same! You decide how much you want to use with access to turn off elements that are not required straight away.

The majority of these competitive providers take the same upgrade approach to storage, offering you a base level that you can upgrade from as your system requirement inevitably grows. One thing you can be sure of is that your storage requirements will ONLY ever grow, so these additional storage costs need to be considered and factored into your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Salesforce Professional and Enterprise editions offer 20MB per user for data storage and 600MB per user for files. What this means, if you have a 10 user solution, is that you will be able to store 200MB of data and 6GB of files before extra costs kick in. In practice there is a minimum allowance regardless of the number of users set at 1GB for Data and 11 GB File storage - so in this scenario you would get a minimum of 11GB with your subscription. What are the costs if you need more (I hear you ask?) Well Salesforce charge approx. £185 per GB per annum – yes that’s right, that’s what they charge for additional storage, so it’s a big number no matter how well you negotiate with the guys in Ireland or the US of A !

SugarCRM are not far behind. They ask for £125 for a GB of storage per year. They do offer different ways to reduce this cost even if some of them go against the whole concept and reasoning of having a hosted solution and not having any of the infrastructure headaches (who wants to manage data storage arrays and be responsible for the backups and restoration policies?).

Microsoft are an interesting player in the market especially since the most recent release (February 2011) of their online hosted CRM solution. They give you a 5GB organisation storage limit, data and files, and this appears to be (as there is a surprising lack of information on their website or forums) fixed and without easy published upgrade options. Because your Microsoft SkyDrive account gives each person a 25GB limit there is obviously some opportunity here for Microsoft to tie this in with the CRM accounts, however they have not done this and given that the Microsoft forums have a multitude of posts, going back over 12 months with this specific request, it would appear there is no desire to immediately deliver this option. So how much is extra storage currently? Well I don’t really know. I tried to get this information from the various sign up sites and information pages to no avail. Perhaps I did not look hard enough, maybe, but if I can’t get to the information easily pre sign up then I would doubt that other less motivated browsers would be able to find it either, maybe that’s the point, profit by obfuscation!

ZohoCRM have a much better and clearer policy, you get unlimited storage within the database (so that’s records only) and then the Professional edition offers 250MB file storage for the whole organisation. Again there is a charge for an additional 1GB of file storage albeit more modest at around £3 per month. Given the size of some of those files regardless of any data compression, you are going to need a whole load of extras GB’s! Just adding an extra 25GB of storage is going to be close to £800 a year. [Here is an illuminating Zoho forum post in respect of this subject and more interestingly the response from the developers].

I guess that leads us neatly onto what we do here at OpenCRM

All new OpenCRM subscriptions include 2TB [updated May 2011] of file store (yes that’s right I will just type that again, so you know there is not a typo - 2TB file storage) as part of your monthly subscription plan, no extras or add-ons and no hidden charges.

If you need to increase your data storage allocation (at anytime) that's fine too, another cool feature is that we can add an additional 500GB for only £15 per month with an additional 1TB and 1.5TB option at £25.00 & 32.00 respectively. So if you are wanting to stick with the same provider for a long period of time, let’s face it once you have gone through the challenges of implementation and user adoption, which is inevitable when making this type of change, who wants to be forced from the solution of their choice because of expensive storage charges. With OpenCRM you won’t have this to consider.

Click here to take a look at how OpenCRM Stacks up against the competition.

Tracking bounced emails has always been tricky, not least because different email mailservers don't play fair!

When you send an email, your recipients (that's the guy or gal you are sending to) mail server either accepts the email or rejects it, these rejections fall into two categories - Hard and Soft bounces. As a general rule of thumb Hard bounces are the emails that don't get delivered due to permanent failure such as a wrong address or domain and soft bounces are the ones that might be temporary, perhaps the mailbox quota is full or the service is temporarily unavailable

There are a series of rules that are supposed to be followed, these include how the Header of the email is structured. Not all mail servers follow these rules and therefore we sometimes have to make an educated guess at what should happen. If we were just to rely on the 'structured correct' responses then the bounce-back statistics and management would not be accurate.

We have recently added a feature that is in the Beta testing phase which helps track bounce-backs and manage the data that is available in OpenCRM.

If you send an email to someone and the receiving mailserver rejects the email the reply that they send back explaining this (that's the bounce-back email) is scanned. We process the bounce-back using a number of rules, these are;

Is there a CRM ID TAG within the reply - often when a bounce-back email is received it has all or part of the original message. If this is the case the CRM ID TAG that we hide within the body can be found and processed.

Does the email contain the email address of the recipient - we use a number of methods to look for the recipient address. Again once when we find the appropriate information we process the mail.

What user defined rules have been set up within OpenCRM and does the email being returned contain any matches for these rules. If there is a match then the email is processed accordingly.

What does it mean when we 'process' the email?

We do a number of things when we process the email. Firstly we remove the email address from the main email field and place it in a bounce history field. This field holds the email address that has been bounced along with the type of bounce and date that the bounce happened. We also mark the record as having had an email bounce. We also update a specific field that shows if this record has been bounced (Yes/No) and the last bounce date.

If the recipient was linked to an Active Campaign then the bounce count on the Campaign is incremented as well.

There are a number of management tools you can use to see what is going on with your bounce management. You can run a Bounce Email report to see all of the bounce emails to take a closer look at what is being returned. You can also run a view of records that have been bounced as well as filtering these records over a date range.

One tip is that you can create a report within OpenCRM and schedule when this report should be run and also who should receive the report by email. This will allow you to create a single report that, for example, lists all of the bounced emails from the previous month and have this report sent to your administrator for them to deal with and follow up. This can be automated so that you can be reactive to what is required without going hunting for information.

or "Why You Shouldn’t Skimp On Professional Service"

Before I start let’s take a look at a couple of ideas:

• CRM software can appear to be incredibly complicated

• With an adult workforce, the chances are school days are long gone, and additional training generally gets met with a groan

Now we’ve got that out of the way, if you want that opportunity to groan please do it now! Yes, a good implementation of a CRM system is going to imply training. After all, you want to get the most from this incredibly useful piece of software don’t you?!

Here’s something to think about…

Imagine moving to a new town. At first it seems huge, and you spend the first couple of weeks getting lost – unless you have a map or guide to help you.  And as time goes by the place becomes more and more familiar. You learn where the shortcuts are and become adept at finding your way around. One morning you wake up and the town that was once like a huge city has become a village to you. Without that guide though, you still won’t learn where are the best places to have a coffee, which shops open late on a weekend, or just how you get front row tickets to events in the local arena – if you are very lucky you’ll gather this through trial and error.

Now apply that knowledge to your CRM system. As time goes by and with an expert guide to assist you – the software city becomes a digital village, even if at first it seemed all the signs were written in a foreign language!

But without training sessions and professional service, the CRM software will not be as valuable a tool to your organisation as it should be. Chances are it will just be used as an expensive Contact Management tool.  Other areas and modules will seem daunting, perhaps with terminology your organisation isn’t used to and as a result they will be ignored. Your organisation could be missing out the tools for Lead Management, running a good Campaign, or optimising Project Management. And that’s just for starters!

Sales Pitch: At OpenCRM we have a Project Management team that works hand in hand with clients in setting their system up. We also recommend our clients use the professional training services available to help them get up and running as quick as possible and to guide them through the system. Furthermore, our professional services are there whenever there is a need for a “refresher course” or to introduce new staff members to OpenCRM. A little investment in CRM education goes a long way in optimising system use.

I think right now is an exciting time to be involved in CRM software. The OpenCRM web-based solution is becoming a more flexible tool all the time. And as the capacity to track more information within OpenCRM increases, so do the potential uses. This could be great news for an organisation that operates on multiple levels:

• Sales people would use certain modules extensively and have no use for others, they can have these switched off.
  
• Those in Marketing would use the Campaigns and Projects modules to launch and track their work.
  
• Others just needing a Contact Management system would make use of the Contacts and Companies modules and have the rest not visible – no clutter.

The same organisation would be using different areas of the system, whilst all contributing to the central database and in doing so creating an ever richer and more valuable information source.

Sales Pitch: If you are looking to a CRM solution that can cope with a varied and fluid approach to suit your organisation, please get in touch with us.

Its what every CRM providers craves for - a CRM Champion - But WHY?

Before we even get into the implementation, having a CRM Champion onboard is such a good thing for the CRM project in general, for both sides. As a potential supplier we get a clear focused approach to the scope of the project and a level of buy in from other project members way ahead of the curve. In some cases without a Champion the job of getting the new users to buy into the adoption of OpenCRM falls to us and might only get a real airing during the training phase.

The client has a lot to thank the Champion for! They take the often difficult role of selecting a CRM Software application and do the donkey work, presenting a rounded potential supplier list, perhaps with a preferred solution highlighted, to fellow decision makers and in the process helping them with a much easier and cleaner set of criteria to make their decision by.

Who is the Champion?

Well this can be many different types of people at differing management levels.

Sometimes its one of the senior managers that will be a beneficiary of a successful implementation, perhaps the Sales Director or Support Manager, someone who will be able to leverage the right CRM choice and produce better results and greater efficiencies.

Sometimes its the most senior board member who 'just gets it' and can see what is required to move the business on, perhaps in spite of not being actively involved with any single part of the day to day operation. Sometimes its the guys on the ground who are under ever increasing pressure to deliver more, in a shorter timeframe, perhaps its a Business Development Manager wanting to increase revenue return or a Support Technician who needs to systemise how they operate to keep things fluid or an Administrator who has to quantify the businesses progress and needs a 360 degree overview.

Are you CRM Champion? If you are please give us a call, honestly if anyone knows the pressures that you are under to deliver and the expectations your team members will have for YOUR selected application, we do! Trust me, we work in this environment every day, of course its not always stressful and for the most part its a very enjoyable and rewarding process, but nevertheless we can really associate with what you are going through and we can help.

I had a quick heads up with the development team last week here at OpenCRM. It’s good news for users of the Products module, offering you some great new tools. These can be linked to your online shop or Ebay account and could be a great asset in helping you present your goods online.

You can set product categories as suit the needs of your organisation. On creating a new product, you will initially be asked to set the product type. Once you have selected a product category, the edit screen will be set with all the conditional fields associated with that category.  These conditional fields are the custom fields you have set up which enable you to input data specific to the product groups.

To give you a couple of examples, setting up a product category “Paint” would then give you access to custom fields you have created that are relevant e.g. Colour and Type of Paint. Selecting the category “Nails” would enable access to custom fields such as Length and Type of Nail. This not only simplifies the product creation process but creates a product list that is archived according to category.

So we now have a useful tool whereby the first step in creating of a Product record filters the fields on the next screen to display custom fields that are relevant to that product.

The second development in the Products module involves the Mini-Description of a product. Mini-Description is a field which is automatically populated with information from other fields when you save the product. This is most useful when you have a need to build a concise description of a product, using values that have been selected in other fields, especially where there are many fields and only some values are relevant to this specific product.

Using our earlier example, selecting the category “Paint” gives you access to the fields specific to Paint. You would enter the data – a red paint, emulsion, a 500ml tin, from the manufacturer “The Acme Paint Company”. On saving the mini-description according to the values you have selected would display “Manufacturer: The Acme Paint Company; Tin Size: 500ml; Colour: Red; Paint Type: Emulsion”.

The Mini-Description field is a common field meaning it can be used in searches and results, giving you the tools to list your products according to description. This can then be saved as a report, or exported to your eCommerce tools. As you can see these small but powerful tools can help save your business time as well as help structure the way your product records are kept.

Customer loyalty is considered to be a concept of a time gone by according to some. There are compelling reasons to support this theory. Nowadays customers are overwhelmed with choice. With people’s finances being at the forefront of their mind, you can see why someone will be chasing the latest bargains to be had, and let’s be honest, the more you shop around the cheaper you will no doubt find something.

But to claim that customer loyalty as all but disappeared is simply a knee jerk reaction and to operate with only this in mind is just a short-sighted instant solution to very different long term issues.  Too many cheap products available today are just that – cheap products. The cheap pair of boots will wear out so quickly, you will have bought three pairs in the time you would have worn out a pair that cost twice as much. Chances are that with the more expensive pair you would also receive a good standard of customer support – providing cheap or even free replacement and repair. Consumerism is a two-way street, just as the customer does something for the business, the business needs to work behind the scenes to keep the consumer happy. Encouraging customer service will benefit client retention and loyalty. This in return will encourage the development and innovation of better product until ultimately the loyal customer has the best possible product that is worth all of the price tag.

I think that whilst there will always be a place for the budget low end market, demand for quality will also always be present, and the innovators will eventually be rewarded with customer satisfaction and retention.

This is where CRM software comes into play. It gives the innovator the mechanics to keep customer satisfaction levels high using the ways in which you can collect and use customer data.

OpenCRM provides you with optimal tools to aid you with customer retention. It helps you track sales, enabling you to build up customer profiles. It offers you the modules to launch targeted marketing, capturing the potential you have in your growing client base. Our communication tools enable you to record consumer interaction. The fact that our communication modules are highly customizable let you add a personal touch, which is sure to affect your customer retention in a positive manner. In short we have the structure set up for you to go ahead and use – it’s up to you to take it and innovate!

There is a lot of discussion around data security issues concerning Software as a Service (SaaS). Questions are raised as to where the data is stored, how physically safe it is, who has access to it and how secure is it i.e. what happens if the host server goes down. These are all legitimate questions, as the whole field of SaaS is comparatively new. I think we need to step back a little and take a look at the bigger picture. The questions mentioned and fears raised seem to be more of an issue of the fear of something new, something unknown. The safety offered by an on-premises solution has been shown to fail on occasion, as seen by several high profile cases over the past years involving laptops stolen from the NHS, USB sticks that have gone missing in the post, and lost computer disks to mention just a few examples.

Concerning data security in cloud solutions, Graham Anderson made reference to the matter in a highly entertaining manner with this blog post on weak passwords. We all know how hard it is to remember any number of additional passwords on top of pin numbers not to mention the birthdays of your nearest and dearest, but nowadays they have simply become a part of life you can’t avoid. A point worth mentioning – birthdays you can keep in a diary, pins and passwords preferably not. But a little research into password security might make for sobering reading and will certainly help when advising colleagues and members of your organisation as to how important safe passwords are, particularly if your mum’s maiden name and your place of birth are common knowledge! An on-site database may be at risk from a break in, but information contained in your SaaS solution is just as likely to be stolen if your lock and key ie password is easily breached.

Sales pitch: Data security is one of the cornerstones of our business and we at OpenCRM are well aware of this and do our best to ensure that your hosted CRM solution is safe. To find out more about our secure data centres please refer to this article on our website http://www.opencrm.co.uk/why-host-your-crm-solution.html

Ahh if only there were such a thing. I spend several hours per day using the web. Whether professionally or in pursuit of my own interests I click onto hundreds if not thousands of sites per month. There are plenty of websites I love and admire - content, layout and navigation being obvious contributing factors. But there are many more with the potential to be great but fall way short of the mark!  Here are five ways I can think of on keeping a site interesting

1. Getting to the point. If I don’t know what the website is about within the first seconds of looking, my interest starts to wane. The next site is only a click away.

2. Simplicity. I like to find what I am looking for quickly and easily. If I am determined to find something then I will persevere and search a site from top to bottom, but it won’t make me want to visit that site again.

3. Usability. Chances are if the site launches with a video or other flash, I’ll not bother! Everyone in the cyber world knows someone savvy enough to build you some flash graphics so it is anything but impressive, and slows the whole process down. And if the site launches a media player choosing to blast out music the user may like then chances are I will be closing that window as quick as possible!

4. Speed. If the site takes too long to load, forget it.  This is often linked to my point above, if a site is loaded with intensive, interactive and often superfluous graphics it slows the process down.

5. Content and design. Oh yes there is that as well! Content comes first I suppose, if the information is interesting enough I will overlook poor design. But a fantastic colour scheme, layout and use of font and imagery will have me coming back for more. A site that engages its readers has won half the battle

And of course if I enjoy the site in question, chances are I will bookmark it, become a regular visitor and ultimately invest in the products on offer.

Sales Pitch: We hope that you find our OpenCRM site informative and easy to navigate. Our website has recently been rebranded and relaunched, with our CRM software solution just about to go live and benefitting from a new design, new features and greater usability.

I found this article that I wanted to share with our readers. It covers a topic that is quite interesting especially to those of us who want to set the right tone with potential clients and clients.

How do we start an email - Dear, Hi or Hey ?

Take a look and see what you think Click Here

Sales Pitch : in OpenCRM (premier hosted CRM software solution - yes that us) you have a Greeting field that can be set to always reflect the style of writing that you want to convey to your contacts. This is an automated field and allows you to set your defaults formally or not as you see fit.

I have recently been following a number of articles on the topic of customer service. Although it seems like a very self-evident concept it will always remain subject to discussion.

It is quite incredible during this period of economic downturn that companies aren’t investing more in customer service.  Whether this comes in shape of a friendly flight attendant, fast and efficient shop service or good post-purchase support,  the UK still seems to lag when it comes to service with a smile. Surely that smile or thank-you mail won’t break the bank and can only be beneficial in terms of customer satisfaction. Yet often enough it seems complacency is still rife and companies sit back and expect the customer to pander to them. As well as front of house help issues, there are ways in dealing with problems behind the scenes, potentially identifying and ironing out problems before they arise.

We ourselves are faced with the challenge of both selling a product which incorporates customer service, and providing assistance to clients of our own. As a result, we can apply what we learn from those needs to our product.

With OpenCRM we provide you with effective tools to manage your service issues. Using the Helpdesk module you can view, analyse and hopefully resolve any issues quickly and painlessly. The History Tab available is there for you to view the evolution of the issue from cause to resolution, and remains on your system in order to target and eliminate future repetition.

As well as providing our customers with this Help Desk feature we take Customer support seriously ourselves. We listen to our customers and we try to deal with any issues quickly and professionally. We don’t make any promises we cannot keep. And believe it or not, even though you can’t see us through the phone, we insist on service with a smile!

Sometimes real world events spark up a thought process that has its roots in what we do as a business but the emphasis is firmly "vapourware", one of these occurred today.

It’s my birthday and therefore I have been thinking about the future. Not in a morbid kinda way, more trying to rationalize what digital imprint I could leave behind after I am gone. I mean with Facebook, twitter and all the other digital baggage that we carry around and the obvious growth of our online digital presence, well it’s an interesting thought.

What really interested me though is how we could haunt people from the grave with this digital imprint - cool trick huh! I am gone but you can't forget me :-)

Then I got to thinking how much comfort our digital legacy can give to people still around!

A recent tragedy led to a young friends death so I have seen first-hand the comfort that has been gained from previous Facebook posts, online pictures, emails and other digital media such as YouTube, this has just confirmed the place that technology can play in helping friends and family come to terms with their loss.

So what's the future got in store that will help us build up and maintain our digital personality or legacy? (on the basis that we had one when we were alive).

I guess as we store more of ourselves in the Cloud with more and more systems able to track our interactions there will be a greater opportunity for technology to piece together an accurate facsimile of our earthly being. Facebook posts, Tweets, emails, blog posts. What about the pages we view online and the comments we make on articles. How about all those contributions we make to our communities, personal as well as business, or the GPS locations tracked and shared as we go. Also how cool would it be if we could link seamlessly all of our photos into this life timeline.

Some things may be less attractive or welcome, tracking our true achievements and recording those things we would like to remain as digital skeletons in our cloud closet, such as our financial position (both highs and lows) or relationship decisions.

In time systems will become so much more advanced that our basic avatar will become an animated 3d hologram of ourselves at a point in time which we think represents our true self (yes we could decide what others get to see), Audio will be available to reproduce how we sound with further advancements enabling us to apply Artificial Intelligence so you could hold a conversation with someone who has been gone for many years. Imagine that as a genealogist might, wow! what a way to research your family tree or converse with great minds. What a way to fully appreciate human actions so we don't forget how dumb we can be?

Maybe even what people hold on you in systems such as ours will have a small qualified part to play, who knows.

So My Cloud Spirit, good or bad, haunting or comforter, I guess there's a lot to regulate before it becomes reality or perhaps we will just let it happen without regulation, how scary would that be? Imagine a digital personality hacker, someone who can help you discredit a competitor or worse!

Anyway, anyone want to purchase a Terabyte of disc storage to start themselves off?