|
Managing Customer Relationships - "TLi8"! |
To keep track of customers and maximise sales, you need a Customer Relationship management
system.
CRM as a technology is however only PART of the PICTURE. Remember People, Processes and Technology!
|
|
So what does a CRM system do?
A CRM helps manage contacts, opportunites and accounts.
It also helps track correspondence, alerts users to tasks that need
doing, and gives some management reporting on the sales pipeline.
CRM
is really cool stuff! It's the kind of product Steve helped put in for
Suncorp in 2001, but that cost several million! CRM is now becomming
affordable for the masses. Steve has worked briefly with Microsoft CRM,
with Onyx CRM and Sugar CRM and vTiger CRM.
|
How CRM Fits in Your Organisation
A CRM fits into your organisation as a supportive application for your SALES and SERVICE operations. This means you need a genuine picture of the people (organisation and roles) and processes in your organisation to properly benefit from your CRM. Without this picture, you cannot integrate the CRM correctly, and will miss real business advantage. This is a common mistake, don't get caught! if you engage a technology company, not a process improvement consultancy, you will likely get a point solution!
People and Processes
For more information on this topic, please refer to the business improvement area of our site.
Back to Technology!
Some months ago, Steve adopted SugarCRM for our
own CRM platform. It has a great feature set and is very usable. Since
then, we have also installed it for a client, and the staff just love
it! SugarCRM is "commercial open-source", which means we can influence the features it
develops according to feedback from our clients. It also means we can
help resolve any bugs!
If you have challenges organising your
customer information, tracking and prioritising opportunities, and
keeping track of customer interactions, Steve can help you get a
company wide view of your customers by providing good a CRM solution as a
hosted service or on your own server. These solutions are great
value, and start at just $3,500, which includes a day of Steve's time
to adapt the CRM slightly to your needs and train up to four staff.
Contact
Steve now on 0423 311 839 for more information. This call is obligation
free, and may be the key to getting control of your customer
relationships!
|
|
|
Barnes-Open and Insightful partner on SugarCRM |
|
5th September 2008
  After a year of developing a working relationship, Steve Barnes of Barnes-Open and Marc Englaro of Insightful are pleased to annouce our organisations will be partnering in Queensland.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
I (Steve) have implemented SugarCRM 5 repeatedly, and have sufficient liking and confidence in SugarCRM5 that we use it internally at Barnes-Open. It is a stable and sound product, with a good web interface. Importantly, it can be customised as well through the Studio and other means. There are also add-ons available through the Sugar Forge (although quality is variable).
One of the important things about successfully implementing Sugar is to understand how it fits in your business. Yes, it's powerful, but how will you use it? That's why we work both on your sales process and your Sugar implementation to give you a complete recipie for success!
A recent assignment I have undertaken at a consultancy used SugarCRM 5, and we used the Studio to help optimise the product for their purposes:
- added some third party components to extend functionality
- added fields and drop-down lists to extend existing components
- removed unnecessary fields to unclutter the interface and optimise it for the sales process
- in addition to altering the display and edit views, we alteredthe list/search views as well to better serve the sales process.
The result was a significantly changed product. It was faster to use and more intuitive for the staff as they attended to their specific sales processes.Why? It was optimised for their business!
Formalising documentation for new employees so they can readily understand the overall marketting and sales process, how their CRM serves the process, and the role they play in making the process effective and productive is an important task. This task shoulod be wrapped into the CRM consultancy so you get full benefit instead of that fly-by-night consultancy feeling!
Call me today on 0423 311 839 if you would like to see how to put a bit of Sugar in your day!
|
|
|
Benefits of SugarCRM Professional |
|
SugarCRM is a great CRM package, and it's free! Why go for SugarCRM Profressional?
SugarCRM Pro has got some great features, and it's more stable than the community version. SugarPro involves licensing, which we do through Insightful as part of a hosted solution. This means you get all the benefits of Pro without any of the concerns of licenses and servers, and at a reasonable cost too!
SugarPro provides reports . These can be used not only for management reporting, but also as a round-trip for pulling existing Contacts, Leads and targets into a new Target List. No more exporting and importing! In addition, SugarPro also has the Product Catalog and Quotes, enabling a wider range of business functionality.
SugarCRM Professional lifts a good CRM to a new level; and with 5.1, it's kind of hard to resist!
|
|
|
SugarCRM Upgrades To 5.1 With Reporting, Analytics, Tracking |
|
The new Tracker feature tells an employer
which salespeople are making use of SugarCRM's capabilities, which
features are most frequently used, and which are being ignored.
SugarCRM is offering its major upgrade of 2008 to its open source
customer relationship management system in a release that includes
improved analytics, reporting and a new Tracker feature.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Steve is available to help your business select the best CRM for your needs. If you are Brisbane based, that's our prime service area. We also service the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.
Before you choose a CRM, make sure you understand your sales process properly, and the requirements it places on a CRM. If you don't you may miss the best option and land yourself with re-work within a year!
Ask Barnes-Open to assist you. We can give you:
- a documented sales process that you can match to your CRM
- a CRM selection criteria
- a CRM evaluation and recommendation
This puts you in the drivers seat! Having an independent consultant on board ensures you get a clear business focus, not a product focus. It also means the CRM implementation is optimised to fit your processes instead of a product being jammed in and roughly tailored to work.
Don't be mistaken, this is important stuff! Get value from your CRM project; call Steve today on 0423 311 839.
|
|
|
Short for customer relationship management.
CRM entails all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer,
whether it be sales or service related. Computerization has changed the
way companies are approaching their CRM strategies because it has also
changed consumer buying behavior. With each new advance in technology,
especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the WEB and
WAP phones, more of the relationship is being managed electronically.
Organizations are therefore looking for ways to personalize online
experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through
tools such as help-desk software, e-mail organizers and Web
development apps.
thanks to isp.webopedia.com
Web based CRMs are a significant step closer to access of important customer data ANYWHERE at ANY TIME...
Siebel, Onyx and Peoplesoft are all large scale CRMs. These can take
a team of people many months to implement. Steve was the "Solution
Architect" for Suncorp's web-based CRM solution. It took a team of over
twenty people a year or so to implement this, as it was customised and
had to be integrated with diverse business processes and customer
details from many banking systems.
Small as it my be, ACT is
an PC based example of a CRM. What's limiting about this class of
CRM is its PC nature. One person at a time can access it, and it is
locked in a single PC unless you upgrade to a network version. Even
then, you are limited to sepcific PCs.
|
|
|
If you are a Brisbane based business or other organisation, and are looking for a CRM, then give Steve a call on 0423 311 839, and he'll talk you through the flavors and benefits of CRM.
In general, the things to watch for with a CRM are:
- maturity
- stability
- project activity
- project roadmap
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
