CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be complex, but I wanted to break it down into what any software package can do. Watch this brief (2:45 min.) video for a quick overview.

I took a vacation recently…like a real, true vacation…not something that I have really done since my days before entering in the ACT!, SalesLogix, Wired Contact and MAS consultant profession, 14 years ago.

As usual when planning to take time off from work, I contacted my clients via phone and emails, letting them know of the dates that I would be unavailable. I made arrangements with The CRM Alliance to cover any client emergencies…nothing different as in past years…

Everything was in order: passports, travel itinerary, bags packed, sunscreen purchased, making sure my carry-on bag did not violate any of the liquids, flammables, sharp-object regulations…but something kept nagging at me on the ride to the Harrisburg International Airport…

Thankfully, we got through security, experienced two uneventful flights and an enlightening bus ride through Jamaica…so what was nagging me all this time?

It was not until we got settled in our hotel that I realized what the problem was…

Simple, I took off for the week and did not bring my laptop. I kinda sorta experienced a moment of panic, not true panic, after all I had purposely left my trusty laptop at home. But it did not ‘hit’ me until I looked around the room and there was no means to access the internet. I felt disconnected, out of touch and ultimately, outside my comfort zone..

I knew this fact when we made the reservations. I disabled my Work and Personal email, as well as, gasp, my Facebook notifications on my beloved Blackberry before we left for vacation. The only reason I brought my Blackberry was in case there was an emergency back home and my grown kids needed to contact me, and I stressed the word ‘emergency’ to them…needing money transferred to their bank account does not constitute an emergency.

I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed relaxing in the sun, eating way too much and taking long walks for an entire week…I even played volleyball in the pool and got spiked in the nose by some overzealous sport-dude.

You may ask why is this such a big deal that I felt I needed to write about this? Surely, professionals take vacations all the time without their computers and other means of ‘outside’ communication.

The reason is that I felt completely energized upon my return. I had a fresh new attitude, bold, if you will. I realized that even though I love my job as a consultant, I can actually take some time for myself and not think like a consultant 24/7. I returned from my vacation, well, a new person.

I entered my office Monday morning, booted up my 3 computers and went to work, with a smile on my face and in my heart.

Many business people now own iPads.  Having recently purchased a new laptop, I now have doubts about whether I should I have purchased an iPad instead.  Based on recent testing conducted by The CRM Connection, we have concluded iPads are now ready for prime time mobile computing.

Here are results of our testing:

Our testing began with using a free Remote Desktop Connection app (downloaded to the iPad) to connect to our Terminal Server. The performance was too slow for our testers.

At the suggestion of our client, MiamiPhotoShop, we began testing Logmein.com. A free Logmein.com account was created on a computer in South Florida. We used our client’s iPad which had the Logmein.com iApp installed to connect to the computer. The performance was fast. Taking it a step further, we then used a Remote Desktop connection on the computer in South Florida to connect to our Terminal Server back in Denver. Again the performance was fast. The Logmein iApp has a button that brings up a keyboard that is usable, but we found the external keyboard for the iPad makes using ACT!, Outlook and other applications much easier.

Our conclusion is Logmein.com offers a fast, reasonably easy way to access applications in your office remotely, as long as the iPad has a cellular or Wireless network connection. At $30 for the Logmein.com iApp, this solution is definitely a viable mobile business solution.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen an increasing number of customer calls and problems stemming from trying to save ACT! templates on the network. The error message indicates that the template is in use.  This error occurs whether you are trying to create a new template, save changes to an existing template or saving an existing template with a new name. Unfortunately, the error message is misleading in the fact that rarely, if ever, is the document in use by someone else.

In doing research, we found this issue is actually a common problem with saving Microsoft Word documents to a network.  The error occurs when trying to save a file to a server using uniform naming convention (UNC) as opposed to using a mapped network drive. In layman’s terms, when saving the file with a format similar to \\actserver\act -database files\templates\template.doc, the UNC format is being used. When saving a file using a mapped network drive, the location may look something like this M:\act-database files\templates\template.doc where the M drive replaces the \\actserver.  The frustrating part of the error is that it does not occur all the time and can result in the document throwing the error not to be saved. 

The best way to prevent the error from is to launch the ACT! template folder through a mapped drive as opposed to using ACT!’s default opening method which is UNC. One simply way to do this is to create a shortcut on the computer desktop to where the ACT! templates folder exists out on the network. The key is to make sure that the shortcut is using a mapped network drive as opposed to using the UNC location. Whenever opening or savings these templates, always browse out to the desktop shortcut as opposed to using the default location ACT! provides. This will ensure that the mapped drive is used and avoid the untimely “template is in use” error message. 

Want some help doing this?   If so, please email me at tmm@stewarttechnologies.com and I’d be happy to provide you with screen shots to follow the steps listed above.  

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So one of the challenges in CRM, whether it’s ACT!, SageCRM or SalesLogix,  is data entry.   Let’s face it. Sales people do not want to be data entry clerks.

One of the great features of a CRM system is its ability to inspect for trends and act (ACT!) upon them.  With ACT!, you can use CTRL-H and get the “record history” dialogue.

A hidden challenge lies here.  It may be easy or second nature for IT professionals or those fluent with PCs to quickly whip through drop-down menus to make the right choices; however, some people believe that’s too much work.  Why bother with the details ? After all, the quota remains more important that data entry.

Now, the sales person puts in a quick history in ACT!, Result: Call Completed. Details: LM.  Now, ACT doesn’t know LM means “Left message”.  So, reporting will be skewed.  Now, the sales person has to go through another dialogue to schedule a follow up in two weeks with an alarm.  That may not happen as the sales person rushes to the next task.  Now, there is a chance for a sale to slip through the cracks.

This could also apply to field changes and managing opportunities.  CRM systems like ACT need to have clean data to  in order measure trends coming out.

So, why not make a single button like this in ACT! ?  Well, since there are many potential combination’s of macros including: History Result (Call Completed, Call Left Message, Meeting Held etc.), Regarding (Custom entry Here), Duration and the follow up activity can have a wide variety of answers, Sage didn’t make a “macro maker” or the ability to make “one button” replace “10+ clicks”.  The list of combination’s becomes quite large.

My solution around data entry for ACT was to use KPI (Key Performance Indicator) by Effective Solutions.

In about 30 minutes, I was able to create 10 macros which help my client measure outbound sales call performance.  My client does not want his rep to waste time detailing “A Cold Call” versus “Customer Service Call”. So, we made several buttons reflecting the different possible outcomes.

Then, I integrated Top Line Dash by TopLine Results to create effective dashboards whereby the company owner can see multiple reps’ performance with one click as well.

With an investment of $50 per User for KPI and $150 for each manager that uses Top Line Dash, my client spends less time on data entry while allowing management to instantly inspect for trends and act (ACT) upon them.

Mark R. Mondo
ACT! Certified Consultant
MondoCRM
v: 312-527-3133
e: mark@mondocrm.com

There are virtually hundreds of add-on products that work with ACT!.  Need calculations between two fields?  Got it.  Need to link ACT! to QuickBooks?  Done.  One of my favorite add-ons is the Call On CRM solutions that allows you to dial your phone directly from ACT!.

“What happened to the ACT! phone dialer?” is a question I’m often asked.  Some of you ACT! “Old Timers” remember back in the day how easy it was to call from ACT!; there was a dialer icon right up there on the icon bar.  The setup was also easy:  plug a phone cord into your computer and you were good to go.  But hold the phone (pun intended); that was back in the days when computers came equipped with a phone jack so that we used to connect to the Internet via a dial-up connection.  If you’re using a computer that’s ready for the Smithsonian you might still have one of those but the rest of us have moved on to faster connections and therefore can’t just hook our phones to our computers.

Ironically, what was so simple a few years ago has now become a complicated mess.  If you work in an office with a phone system you might be lucky enough to have a “TAPI compliant” system which is computer-speak for “connect my computer to a dial tone.” However, I find that once a company sells you a phone system the chances of getting them back in to your office to connect you to TAPI are slim to non-existent.  Enter VOIP (voice over IP).

Many people think of Vonage or Skype when they think of VOIP.  Those are “public” VOIP systems.  “Private” VOIP carriers are designed for business users and are generally cheaper than your local phone service.  Business class VOIP offers lots of cool features like “Auto Attendants” who direct callers to dial 1 for Sales or 2 for Leave me Alone, and what I affectionately call the “hunt me down like a dog” feature that will try your office, home or cell phone until you’re found.  Best of all, if the VOIP solution you use is “Broadsoft” compliant it can be easily connected to your ACT! database using the Call on CRM add-on.

Here’s how Call on CRM works.  When you want to call a contact in your database you simply click their number; when you complete your call the ACT! History window pops up.  You can either add a few notes or simply click OK and a history of the call (included the actual time spent) appears on the contact’s History tab.  The same thing happens when you receive a call; the History window pops up when you disconnect, you add a note and the History appears on the History tab.  You can even have ACT! schedule an activity for any missed calls you might have received.

Call on CRM includes a number of other cool features including the ability to send a text message to multiple contacts, transfer a call to a remote staff member and keep phone call logs.  Personally, I’m happy not to have to dial the phone or look up contact records. If you’d like more information you can find it at the Call on CRM website.

Karen Fredricks
www.techbenders.com
blog@techbenders.com

Denver, Colorado — SugarCRM, the world’s fastest growing customer relationship management (CRM) company, today announced a new partnership with The CRM Connection, a leading provider of Customer Relationship Management software systems for small and medium-sized businesses and a Top U.S. ACT! Reseller award recipient in 2008 and 2009. The CRM Connection has added SugarCRM’s commercial solutions to its existing portfolio of solutions, resulting in a full complement of cloud-based CRM solutions ranging from $30-$65 per user per month.

“After a careful evaluation of a number of Cloud-based CRM software packages from industry-leading software vendors, we concluded SugarCRM was the ideal company to partner with,” says John Kaufman, managing partner of The CRM Connection. “SugarCRM complements our existing CRM offerings by providing an affordable hosted and/or on-premise solution to the markets we serve.”

The latest release of Sugar 6 set the bar for ease of use, flexibility and openness for CRM. Sugar 6 was developed with the idea that CRM does not have to be complex to deploy or use, nor too expensive for growing companies. Sugar 6 delivers a clean, bold look and empowers users with the ability to view and consume data from nearly any source. Sugar 6 is designed to run on any cloud service platform or on-premise operating system.

SugarCRM’s award winning commercial products are now delivering proven results for thousands of customers in over 80 languages. The CRM Connection clients can now gain all of the competitive advantages of Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise, including:

• Visibility into their sales pipelines, with deep reporting and forecasting features
• A closed loop between sales and marketing teams with strong, yet simple to use marketing automation tools
• The ability to increase customer satisfaction through industry-leading customer service and support tools

“We are looking forward to partnering with The CRM Connection,” said Jeff Campbell, vice president of channel sales at SugarCRM. “Our partnership makes it possible for even more customers to experience the open, flexible solutions SugarCRM has to offer.”

It was a dark and rainy night – literally – in August of 2002.

Let me digress.  I was one of the 12 consultants nationwide that had been chosen to run an ACT 6 launch event.  I was given 6 weeks to secure a location, make audio/visual arrangements and run a trade show of ACT addon vendors.  Attendees were invited based on a circle of Fort Lauderdale; the “powers that be” didn’t realize that the only attendees coming from the east, west or south would be sporting fins so I scrambled to create my own invitation list.  August is probably the worst month to hold an event in Florida as almost everyone is on vacation somewhere escaping the blistering heat.

I had told the caterers to expect 500 people.  After a few lightening strikes literally rattled the windows of the Westin where the event was being held I figured my kids would be eating finger foods for the next week!

The doors to the trade show were scheduled to open at 5 PM.  At 3 PM as I was scrambling around the room in jeans literally running wires when a member of the hotel staff sought me out; he didn’t look happy.  Apparently folks started arriving early for the event.  So many people in fact that a line had begun to snake around the entire lobby.

By 5 o’clock when we opened the doors the place was packed.  We ended up having over a 90% attendance rate; the few “no-shows” were quickly replaced by the dozens of people who showed up without a reservation.  Needless to say, the event was a success!

I have to admit that the event was truly one of the highlights of my life.  It was amazing to see so many ACT “FanACTics”  clamoring for a sneak peak of the new ACT product. After all, it had been nearly 4 years since the last ACT release and users were clamoring to see the new changes.

I’ve often wondered if I could have pulled off an event of that magnitude for any other product launch.  QuickBooks?  Excel?  Outlook? I think not.

I am thrilled to announce that after 8 years I am once again holding an ACT event.  This time it’s part of Sage Software’s “ACT Road Show” initiative.  Sage is sending down a number of their executives to show ACT FanACTics some of the new ACT 2011  features as well as to answer their questions on anything from usability to future product enhancements.

I know I won’t have 500 attendees this time; I’m limiting the event to a mere 200.  But I’m really looking forward to once again seeing the loyal ACT followers “raising a glass” to the latest ACT version!

If you’d like to attend please go to http://actroadshow.eventbrite.com to register.

Karen Fredricks
blog@techbenders.com
www.techbenders.com