Shopping for CRM software can get overwhelming with the amount of different Customer relationship management solutions available today. It’s a challenge to identify the right one from so many options, especially when most of them offer similar functions, resolve similar business problems, and are competitively priced. It’s also difficult to foresee how well your CRM solution will fit into your business environment. We tend to make the decision easy by selecting cost as the most important factor in our decision-making process. While this seems logical in our current economy, it unfortunately may turn out to be a disaster.

You don’t have to be a CRM Guru to choose the right solution and feel confident that it will suit your business. Follow these eight simple tips when shopping for your perfect Customer relationship management solution and you’ll find the best fit for your business:

1. Have a clear understanding of your business needs. This is often the hardest part of finding the right CRM solution. Document the business problems that must be resolved by your CRM, and verify that the system you’ve chosen will actually address these issues.
2. Keep in mind that your business strategy may change over time. This requires flexibility in the CRM, allowing for it to be fine-tuned easily with built-in tools and without external consultants.
3. Consider the fact that no solution will be able to cater to all of your requirements right out of the box. Figure out the gap and figure out the cost of bridging that gap.
4. Consider the user friendliness of the CRM solution. It’s easy to confuse colorful, attractive User Interface with friendliness. Don’t be fooled—true user friendliness is about how convenient and efficient the solution is to use. This can be easily evaluated by counting the number of clicks, steps, or drilldowns are needed to accomplish simple tasks which could otherwise be performed using spreadsheets or other office automation software. This is critical, since a business solution should never become an operating problem for users.
5. Understand the scalability and reliability of the CRM software to accommodate your growing business.
6. Check for availability of services like customer support and professional services, in case you need help in the future.
7. If you are using “implementation partners” to implement your CRM, make sure your CRM vendor is also responsible for successful implementation.
8. Understand the pricing and evaluate benefits versus cost. The best solution may not always be the most costly.

The short answer: it depends on what CRM you’re using.  

A couple of months ago I attended a sales training. When the trainer asked this question, Brian, one of the trainees, said “I used to make 60-80 calls per day until I started using Salesforce.com. Since then I can only make about 30-40 calls per day, even though I work the same number of hours, if not more.” He finished by saying, “Salesfore.com actually slows me down.” Most CRM software is good for pipeline management and reporting, but not so good to complete your daily activities such as making follow-up calls or prospecting. Why? Because you spend too much time clicking to get to the information before you can make a call and then to document the call. 

The ideal CRM software lets your sales team follow up with leads and prospects quickly without jumping across different screens. When working through your activities(activity history) in Salesforce.com, you bring up an activity to review and update it. But guess what? The Activity does not show complete details of all the communications! To review complete history you must change your screen and go to the associated record and its history. Looking up contact history also requires this action. Looking up the opportunity history also requires a visit to the opportunity record. Imagine, how much time you spent already just reviewing the history! See the flow below to see what I mean.

This is what it takes to work with a list of activities on Salesforce in order to make your prospecting calls for the day: 

You click on an activity to view it.

To view the account history in complete detail, you have to click the “Related To” fieldand jump to the account or opportunity record.

After viewing the account/opportunity notes and history, you must click back to return to the activity! All these clikcing cuts your sales team’s efficiency by a significant amount.  

But there’s an alternative!

Soffront CRM offers a unique perspective among vendors. With Soffront, you work with activities from one screen—you review your daily activities, make calls, send email, look at the account/opportunity history, and contact notes right from your daily task list. Soffront makes this possible by collecting all related notes and history from all places and making them available with the activity. Your sales team will be able to work with one list and one screen while keeping all the information you need readily available.  This is a typical daily activity list in Soffront CRM.

Those of us in Sales know the benefits of systematic prospecting. We also realize the difficulty of establishing and following the process manually. The familiar saying “out of sight, out of mind” rings true when it comes to closing deals. Systematic follow-ups with phone calls and emails help us keep in touch with prospects. This in turn creates relationships with the key players in sales deals, increasing the probability for closure.  

Excel offers the convenience of going through a list of contacts to call or email every day, however, it also has some issues. It’s very difficult to refer to an earlier communication using Excel before making the next follow-up. You must switch back and forth between spread sheets (keeping one for each day), which is a major hassle.    

CRM software provides tools to schedule and reschedule activities for following up with prospects and documenting communication. Using the 360 degree view CRM functionality, it’s easy to see the Prospect History in one location. The downside of this is that most CRM solutions require several clicks to reach and view the relevant account/contact record.

CRM software features such as these help the Sales Team save time and keep in touch with more contacts. The bottom line in business is often about relationships—we need to stay “in sight, in mind” with our prospects in order to close deals. Soffront CRM ensures that we can do just that.   

How many steps does it take to create an ad hoc report in your CRM software?

Four?

Six?

How about nine?

That’s how many steps it takes to create an ad hoc report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 

Don’t believe it? Let me show you. Grab a cup of coffee; this is going to take a while. 

(Stick around to see how you can do it 3 steps!)

Step 1: Start the Dynamics Report Wizard.

Step 2: Choose an option

Step 3: Define the report properties.

Step 4: Set up the filters.

Step 5: Time to set up report grouping and add the columns you need.

Step 6: Now you review the report summary. 

Step 7: Confirmation. 

Step 8: Run the Report 

To run the report, go to Workplace > Reports, then select and double-click on the Report or Select More Actions > Run report.

Step 9: Clean up

Since our original intent was to run an ad hoc report (that we did not want to save), we now need to clean up by deleting the report after we have seen the results. This is an added step in an already lengthy process. 

What a workout! In this case, getting there isn’t half the fun—instead, it’s 100% frustrating and time-consuming.  

Is there such a thing as express Ad Hoc reporting? There is with Soffront CRM software! Check out the amount of time and energy you can save: 

Step 1:  Pick the report type

Step 2: Define the parameters. 

Step 3: Run the report for desired output.

Just three easy clicks and you’re done!  

Reporting and Analytics are obviously critical to any CRM software. Being able to complete these tasks quickly and easily is no less important—there’s no reason to waste your time trying to access your data when you could be analyzing the data itself.

Mobile phones, especially smart phones, have become ubiquitous in business. The ever-increasing Saas possibilities for CRM software make mobile phones an important accessory to your business strategy. Mobile phones literally put your CRM solution at your fingertips, but what are the tangible benefits? 

There’s no doubt that wireless internet speeds have dramatically improved over the years. This has dramatically changed mobile phone capabilities, allowing users to go beyond checking email and sending text messages. Built-in browsers have evolved to the point where you can securely and reliably access or change data while on the go. 

The ability to access data in real time while you’re in the field is a boon to both sales and support staff. For example, you’ll always have the information you need when meeting with a prospect. In addition, Mobile CRM allows you to log in a Status Update while on a service call.  

Other features include data capture capabilities that maintain a history of activities while you make phone calls and send emails and an offline feature that lets you access to your data even when wireless access is unavailable (such as on an airplane).  

You should consider your Mobile CRM strategy early in your CRM software selection process, especially if your sales and support departments are always on the go. A usable system that everyone actually adopts will make your business incredibly agile, giving your business an excellent advantage over the competition.  

We all know how difficult it is to grow your business beyond its current status—and managing a growing business can feel like an insurmountable task. Large companies may have the manpower and financial resources to overcome this hurdle without an organized and efficient CRM, but this isn’t always possible for SMBs (small to mid-size businesses). Because of this, a lack of communication becomes a major problem for SMBs (and it’s arguably a major problem for large corporations as well). A study conducted by SIS International Research states that 60% of SMBs don’t have unified software to ease their communication and automation processes. These issues can lead to low productivity that in turn results in lower revenue.  

Our clients have revealed many of the challenges and inconveniences of running a business without an effective CRM Software in place. This is Soffront’s definitive list of the Top Ten Challenges SMBs Face:  

1.  An inability to manage client intelligence and convert it to revenue.

2.  Little or no traceable data on client dissatisfaction and repetition of similar mistakes over and over again.

3.  Managing customer relationships through dated methods like Excel and frustratingly still sticky notes and notepads.

4.  Wasting time and money on a static home-grown solution that is unable to adapt as your company grows.

5.  Managing multiple databases or solutions on different platforms that don’t integrate, resulting in confusion and incompatibility.

6.  Sales people following up on the same leads, reflecting a company’s disorganization.

7.  A CRM solution that is just a glorified contact management system with saddlebags.

8.  An incomplete CRM system that requires you to buy third party applications because it doesn’t perform your entire core functions.

9.  Expensive, inflexible CRM solutions that require you to bring in consultants in order to make upgrades or changes.

10.  “Thick Client” software that must be installed on a computer; a lack of mobility that hinders your sales staff.

Do you have challenges? What are they? We love to hear your questions and comments.

Everyone needs CRM software that works in sync with the company regardless of what type of business they’re in. Soffront understands that, and this is why we designed our sales force automation, marketing automation, and helpdesk software with our clients’ requirements in mind. Your CRM is created to work with your business, not the other way around. Soffront customers are provided with the tools and training they need to control their own CRM destiny. They aren’t dependent on expensive outside consultants because they are able to do most of the work involved in managing their CRM.

The obvious benefit of being in control of your CRM is that your business saves money and time. There’s no hassle involved—everything is done in house and by you. There’s no delay in waiting for approval processes to go through. This translates into opportunity cost, something all companies understand and strive for. However, there are less obvious but, in many ways, more important benefits to being in control of your CRM. When you design your company’s processes, you are able to monitor and derive information from your system. As you gather intelligence from your KPI (Key Performance Indicators) you become more knowledgeable about your business. A company that knows and understands exactly what drives their business has a competitive edge.  

But knowledge isn’t enough. Once the information is obtained, action is required. If you have implemented a CRM solution and learned that your needs have changed, Soffront can be tweaked or changed as needed by you. You’re not obliged to hire costly, time-consuming consultants to reconfigure your system. You know your business best—it makes sense that you should be the one in charge of your CRM. Soffront ensures that you have the knowledge and tools you need to be in control of your CRM system.

Let’s say that you awoke one morning realizing that you could eliminate one process and make it more efficient. With Soffront, you can make the change that very day—there’s no waiting for approvals, vendors, or consultants. You have the benefit of creating changes instantaneously and without budgetary constraints.  

These benefits are extended to all Soffront customers, be they SaaS or on-premises. We believe that all of our clients have the right to be empowered and in control of their CRM solution.

Email plays a vital role in professional communication, especially for salespeople. It’s a fast and cost effective medium that allows us to maintain relationships with our clients and prospects. This is why so many of us have become dependent on email applications such as Microsoft Outlook. But how efficient is it? With Outlook we spend the majority of our time communicating with and managing contacts or scheduling meetings and follow-ups. Since Outlook is an email client, not CRM software, these communication activities aren’t organized in a concise manner. We often waste time searching and clicking through “Sent Items” and “Inbox Folders” for email history or to locate specific communication with a contact.

Soffront’s CRM solution addresses this concern by automatically organizing all communications with the corresponding contacts, accounts, opportunities and service requests. CRM software allows us to locate a specific communication using a convenient search and see up-to-date communications history.

Although Outlook has a friendly User Interface for composing emails, it’s a “thick client” and must be installed on a computer. This means that we must always carry a computer with us in order to use it. Soffront’s web-based CRM software has an intuitive User Interface that lets us compose full HTML email messages. With a CRM solution we can schedule appointments and reschedule as needed by simply dragging and dropping it into a different time slot.

For a majority of us however, Outlook has been ingrained in our daily activities. For them, Soffront has a seamless Outlook Integration. In fact Outlook Integration has become standard with most CRM providers. Salesforce.com also offers an outlook integration plug-in which lets you save your email and synchronize. However, not all integrations with Outlook are similar. Though the outlook integration plug-in offered by Salesforce.com is good it is not seamless hence you will find a lot of challenges working with it. Soffront on the other hand attempted to make this integration seamless.

Following are the a few examples of how Soffront’s integration varies with Salesforce.com’s for the better:

1.       Soffront Outlook integration allows saving and linking an email with multiple contacts on the CRM.

In Salesforce.com there is no option to save and link an email to multiple contacts.

2.       In Soffront it is easy to save a part of the email by simply highlighting the section and hitting “save”. This saves up a lot of space and you don’t have to weed through unnecessary email messages or banal formalities.

In Salesforce.com, you cannot highlight the section that you want to save, you will have to manually edit and delete the section that you do not want.

3.       Soffront saves an email communication as a “note”. You can also save the complete email with embedded images if you want.   This creates a history for the account or contact which is easy to understand.

4.       An email is saved as a task In Salesforce.com with status “Complete”. This Completed task appears in the “Activity History” of that account.  This becomes confusing since it becomes difficult to differentiate between an actual task and an email.

5.       While saving an email Soffront allows you to update activities or even create a new follow-up activity from a single interface. This saves you navigation to the calendar, to create an activity and later syncing it.

Salesforce.com does not allow modification or creation of activity from the email saving window. You will have to do it from the Calendar and then later synchronize.   

6.       Soffront allows you selective synchronizations, where you can “select a query to sync”. Ex. Sync only Contacts type “Main” from all the contacts that are assigned to a user

Salesforce.com can only synchronize “All” contacts which are accessible to a user or contacts which the user has manually marked for Syncing.

Salesforce.com can sync either “all activities” or “all future activities” from current date.