(Republished from an earlier article)
Time Is Money — we all know the old saying; it’s probably been used in a million business meetings as shorthand for improved time management. First thing in the morning you know you have ten things that NEED to be done today. You put your head down, and before you know it, it’s 5.30 in the afternoon and time has slipped through your fingers like sand.
- A fully flexible Calendar is your rendezvous point for organising the day — to-do list, meeting scheduler and planning prompt in one.
- OpenCRM sets the Calendar as your Home module by default, so the first thing you see each morning is your plan for the day.
- The Notifications Centre lets you weigh a new request against today’s plan before dropping everything for it.
- The Projects module links directly from Calendar activities, showing time used and time paid for at a glance.
- OpenCRM syncs with Google Calendar and MS Teams Planner, so nothing lives out of sync with your other tools.
In this article we’re taking a look at time management, and how it connects to the wonderful world of CRM solutions. Gone are the days of relying on your own, often overworked brain to make sure you finish the day with everything on your to-do list ticked off.
Time Management Starts at Home
One of the first things you’re told when joining a new office is a rendezvous point for any emergency. You need to know where to go to stay out of trouble. The same is true of time management — you need a rendezvous point to organise your day.
We think the perfect rendezvous point is a Calendar. But not just any old list of dates — a fully flexible, customisable and dynamic Calendar that also acts as a to-do list and meeting scheduler, ideally linked to all the other important information about your day’s tasks and calls.
Do we have what it takes?
We don’t restrict which features you have access to based on how many users you have — you get everything right out of the box.
Find out more →A modern CRM solution is now an all-encompassing business tool, not just something for the sales team. With OpenCRM you can have the whole workforce singing from the same hymn sheet — so it makes sense to include an interconnected Calendar module. As standard, we assign the Calendar to appear as the Home module — the little house icon in the top toolbar — though this can be customised to show whatever you like.
Planning is Everything
What’s the first thing you do when you sit at your desk? Jump straight into email, or dip into your outstanding support tickets? But how do you know how much time you have available to respond to that complicated billing question? This is where your Home button comes in.
Logging in to the Home module first thing helps organise and plan your day by:
- Giving you a snapshot overview of the coming day, week or month
- Providing today’s to-do list
- Letting you easily shuffle things around to make room for that half hour you need
- Showing not only your own day, but other team members’ — so you can plan a meeting without a wasted email exchange
You can personally colour-code your Calendar to easily see group meetings, tasks and other info, and choose how you view it — 5-day, single day, or full month. You can also flip between your own Calendar and any team member’s, saving time when planning meetings.
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Try it out →At the Centre of Your Notifications is the Notifications Centre
What happens when something crops up that you hadn’t planned for? You have a nicely laid out day in front of you, then out of nowhere a really important task or callback lands on your desk. Without a time management system in place, you might drop everything to deal with it — but have you got your priorities right?
You could end up bumping a much more important task — say, prep for a presentation — only to find the new task wasn’t nearly as time-sensitive. Nightmare.
This is where the Notifications Centre comes in — the little bell icon showing on every page, in every module. It gives you a small prompt with a number of current notifications, letting you open your Home module, look at today’s plan, and work out the best time to deal with the new one.
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Find out more →The Projects Module
Say you’re a project manager. Your day is planned out, you finish the morning’s tasks, jump back to Home for a glance at the afternoon, and see you have work to do on an open project. You need to know how much time to spend on it, how much the project recipient has paid for, and how much time you’ve already used.
Open up the activity, read your notes, then click through to the linked Project. You’ll see exactly how much time has been used, how much has been paid for, and a detailed overview of what needs to happen next. You can also jump from a project straight to its own Project Calendar, showing every linked activity performed and still to do.
The bottom line
A simple per-user monthly fee gives you access to the whole of OpenCRM. No restrictions, no hidden fees.
Find out more →Manage Those Time Management Tools
Already all over your time management? Good news — OpenCRM integrates with the market leaders, so any task, activity, call or meeting added in OpenCRM is also pushed to your Google Calendar or MS Teams Planner. If you already check a Calendar app every morning, you’re covered — we keep your day organised in your CRM and your third-party app alike.
Speak to anyone who runs a company worth its weight, and they’ll tell you about time management — without it, the foundations of a business can start to crumble. Whether it’s a general need for better time management, or a way to bring separate Teams Planners together, OpenCRM has you covered.
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