Focus Research Insight: Ideas for new CRM features?

I think the key is to ensure you are entering customer details correctly, accurately and in a standardized format. This ranges from addresses through to phone numbers and email addresses.

I use Dynamics CRM and used a company called Data8 to integrate validation tools. They had all the coding available and with the tutorial and free trial I had the address capture part up and running in 15 mins. They have a video you can check out: http://www.data-8.co.uk/crm/video.aspx

Please log on to www.deskera.com and have a look at live demo of Deskera CRM. This is an On Demand product of Krawler Info.

Sincere regards,

Hi Jessica,

A good question. Rather than suggesting a specific feature I think it's important to consider the method with which a CRM system is deployed. Sales people have to use so many tools these days to be effective that INTEGRATION has to be a key point for any CRM system.

It has to be able to integrate with existing systems, other contact management programs (Outlook, LinkedIn etc) and new, emerging tools if it's to truly enable customer-facing operations within a business. Doing this will fit the tool to the sales team, rather than fitting the sales team to the tool.

With regard to Peter's response above, we have built virtualCONTACT in the same way. We have designed the tool with the ability to integrate to any 3rd party system, because we recognise that in today's world of 'apps' (to coin the iPhone terminology) people are increasingly selecting specific vendors for specific requirements, rather than a single vendor for everything.

If anyone has an interest in seeing virtualCONTACT in action please take a look at www.virtualcontact.biz/video_demos.shtml

Regards,
Adam

Jessica,

It might depend on who you're primary users will be. If your focusing on a tool to increase productivity of a field sales team then I suggest www.telenotes.net.

CRM has many definitions so it really depends on your specific needs. All CRM systems are evolving, and most will adapt to what you are looking for if you look long enough. I suggest you try to narrow down what drives your business and then look for a tool to aid in that process.

Last thought, think bottom up! Management can parade around all day long trying to get people to use the "new" CRM, but if it brings the end user, the person who has to do the data entry, little or no value, or if it makes their life miserable, they won't use it. User adoption is key to successful CRM or SFA implementation.

Best of Success,
Tom

If a system can be fully customized to your needs, it will also be easy to use and productive, so here is a brief checklist for whether or not the system can be fully customized:

Ask the vendor to create, in response to your live input, the following:

A custom table (not just a field, but a separate table)
A report and graphical chart based on field in the new table
A business rule on the new table
Import a set of fields from that custom table into an existing table
A workflow using the new table

Watch what they are doing in the WebEx session and ask yourself how difficult it was to perform such administration.

Most vendors will fail the test or attempt to BS you about why you will never need to make such changes. However, all of the following vendors allow such administration and some of them make it fairly easy:

SalesForce
RightNow
EnterpriseWizard
MS Dynamics
NetSuite

Please see http://www.focus.com/ugr/research/crm/how-pick-right-crm-helpdesk-bpm-vendor for a detailed guide to choosing the right CRM vendor for your company.

Hi Jessica,

In our case, we do listen to our users' feature request. When we consider the feature benefits other users, we implement the features as part of our CRM offering. We recently launched Blog because some users need to publish article from time to time.

Our Blog engine is equipped with RSS where customers can subscribe and can get update from our users' blog.

Check out: http://www.borneosoft.com

You can check our CRM features:

Blog (NEW): http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/blogfeatures
Contact: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/contactfeatures
Calendar: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/calendarfeatures
Sales: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/salesfeatures
Product Management: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/productfeatures
Chart/Reporting: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/chartfeatures
Mail, Notes and Document: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/mailfeatures
Auto Creation of Quotation: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/quotationfeatures
Team Management: http://www.borneosoft.com/docs/teamfeatures

Regards,
Luke