Online CRM Part 3 - Saving Web Leads Into Your Online CRM

Before we implemented Workbooks Online CRM, one of the prerequisites that we had for a new CRM system both for our own use as well as a system to install for our customers was to have the ability to capture details of enquiries submitted via our web site directly into the CRM system. Before installing Workbooks, we were using a Formmail system hosted by our ISP that simply sent an email containing details submitted from the web form to a specified email address. As a system it worked, but it meant that we had to manually copy and paste details submitted into our old CRM system.

Automatically Web Leads Into Your CRM

Installing Workbooks Online has allowed us to automate that process. We simply use the Workbooks form scripts to capture enquiry details as part of our web pages. We specify the information to be collected, and the lead information is automatically collected by the Workbooks system and allocated to the appropriate person.

You can see one of the forms that we use below:

Enquiry Form Screenshot

You can also see a brief overview on the Workbooks.com Web-To-Lead capability in the video below:

Automate Your Sales and Support Processes

Apart from sales leads, we are in the process of deploying the Web Lead Capture capability to capture support / customer service requests. For customer service / support applications, Workbooks will automatically generate a support reference that can be used by our customers to track progress on support cases raised.

Deliver Better Customer Service

If your company runs both sales and support operations, one of the resulting benefits of installing Workbooks is that it will provide your sales and support staff with visibility of all contact that your sales, support and customer service staff have with your clients and customers. Everyone is therefore fully informed of everybody else’s discussions, which can result in the ability to provide a better level of service to your customers.

Is your company’s productivity suffering from the need to re-key information between one business process and another? If so please let us know. We would welcome the opportunity to find out more about how your business works so that we can establish whether we can help your company to work more productively by implementing Workbooks.

Online CRM Part 2 - Turning Leads Into Profits More Efficiently

Sales people are hungry for success, not paperwork! They want to turn sales enquiries into orders with the minimum of effort. By automating your business processes using Workbooks.com’s online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, you can maximise the amount of time that your sales staff have to devote to serving your customers, helping them to work as efficiently as possible.

Before and After Workbooks.com!

Let me give you an example of how Workbooks Online CRM changed the way that Clearview Data Systems works. Before switching to Workbooks.com, we used Act! For Windows as a sales contact management system alongside a "home grown" order processing system. Customer support was a fairly manual affair which used Microsoft Exchange Public Folders to store customer emails and licence keys. There was no integration between any of these systems or with our web site, so web leads arrived via email and needed to be re-keyed into the system. As there was no integration with our order processing system, quotes were individually created as Excel spreadsheets by poring through our supplier price lists for current pricing and manually entering this information into the spreadsheet.

How Workbooks.com Has Made Us More Efficient

Today things work very differently. Web leads no longer need to be entered manually since they are captured directly into our Workbooks system from our web forms. There is no need to search for product pricing and descriptions since our product book is integrated into Workbooks for sales and order processing. We can also see details of all of our customer’s equipment that we are supporting as well as any contact that our engineers have had with our customers by way of support. In addition, Workbooks can automatically produce all of the sales pipeline reports that we need to monitor and predict revenue streams as well as plan expenditure and resourcing requirements.

You can see an overview of how you would manage your sales process using Workbooks.com in the video below:

Workbooks.com has cut out a huge amount of inefficiency in the way that our sales process works. Do you feel that your sales processes could be improved but don't know who to turn to for advice? If so, let me know what the issue is that you need to address and I would be happy to let you know if we can help.

Please come back next week when you will learn more about how Workbooks can help you to automate further areas of your company operations.

Grow Your Profits With Online CRM - Part 1

Even when times are tough it makes sense to spend money where it will help your employees to work more efficiently. The right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is an essential tool to streamline your business processes. It will help you to “sweat your assets” and extract every last pound of profit from your employees and customers. A good CRM system also helps to answer a number of key questions:

• How can we generate more business from our customer base through better customer communications
• How can we efficiently track leads that are generated to maximise revenue.
• Can we simplify the processes to turn quotes into orders and invoices
• How do we provide better customer service to improve engagement and encourage customer loyalty.

With the right implementation partner to manage the implementation, you will also get the right training and support to help you manage the transition to your new system.

The Benefits Of Installing A "Joined-Up" CRM System

A properly implemented CRM system will:

• Join up sales, marketing and support information with customer transaction data to measure your return on marketing expenditure and track every customer interaction.
• Provide you with better sales pipeline management and forecasting information.
• Automate your cash management processes to reduce payment cycles.
• Provide management ready reports that allow you to measure key performance indicators .(KPI’s) across your entire business.
• Make your business more profitable.

Why We Chose Workbooks.com

Eighteen months ago, when we went looking for a new CRM system to support both the needs of our company as well as those of our SMB customers, we settled on Workbooks.com. You can see an overview of Workbooks in the video below:

Our needs will I’m sure be similar to the majority of small and medium sized businesses. We had a very specific “hit list”:

• A system to help us to track and plan interactions with prospects and customers.
• A joined up process to produce quotes, order and invoicing documentation.
• A way of capturing leads from our web site straight into the CRM database.
• Integration with Google Apps for Business for email and transaction documentation.
• Customer Service management for support cases raised by our clients.

More than Just Customer Management

Workbooks has proven itself to be more than capable for our needs, and provides a number of additional features that are very valuable including integration with Mailchimp for customer newsletters as well as well as Google Analytics integration to help measure the returns from Google Adwords campaigns.

Come back next week when we will begin to look into how Workbooks.com can help you to join up your business processes in a little more detail.

Cut Your IT Costs By Moving Your Business Applications To The Cloud

What do you do if you need to run Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server but you don’t have the expertise to hand to manage the system on a day to day basis? With the arrival of cloud computing, you can simply migrate your existing business applications to the cloud and access them using a web browser. Once you have logged in to your cloud computing service, all of your usual business applications are accessible from a Windows 7 style desktop.

It’s called a “Hosted Desktop” service, and it’s increasingly proving to be a smart decision for small businesses. You get your own server managed by the hosting provider. What you lose is the need to maintain Windows servers and having to make sure that all of the latest security patches are installed. 

If you would like to know how a hosted desktop service looks when you use it, take a look at the video below by ThinkGrid who we use for our client installations:

Thinkgrid Hosted Desktop Video

Since hosted desktop services are accessed via a web browser, you don’t need a high spec computer to run your business applications, so it may allow you to defer an upgrade to your company’s PC’s. What’s more, your IT systems can be accessed by any device that has a connection to the Internet, allowing your staff to use both tablets such as iPads and Android tablets, as well as home PC’s if you have home workers.

Data Security is an important concern when it comes to cloud computing, and rightly so, but there are plenty of measures that can be taken to protect your data. Where personal data needs to be protected, you can quite easily encrypt all data saved in specific folders and still allow it to be shared between members of your project teams. Even so, hosting companies that their responsibilities to protect your data very seriously, and employ rigorous procedures to protect customer data.

By moving your company applications and data to the cloud, you will be able to eliminate server support and management costs. Data backup, business continuity planning and archiving also come as part of the deal. What’s more, you only ever pay for what you need, when you need it. One day, I am convinced that all companies will run their IT systems from the cloud. You just need to decide when to begin your journey. 

What is stopping you from moving your business applications to the cloud? Please let me know using the contact form below. We will either reply to your points via a future blog post, or as a private email as appropriate.