Customise your CRM

Customise Navigation Order

By setting the order your modules appear in your sidebar menu, you can place those commonly used at the top to make your users more efficient. It sounds like a small change, but it shaves off seconds every time your users want to change screen.

No more searching for the module they need, they know right where it is—at the top of the list!  

Use your own Terminology

The next step in speeding up navigation is changing the names of the modules to fit your business terminology. If you refer to your customers as “Accounts”, why not rename the Companies module to reflect that?

That way your uses have instant recognition the first time they login to the system. AND your CRM system will be in line with all the other discussions you have within your business.

Set Module Visibility by User Profile

Similarly, if your users don’t need to access a particular module, it’s easy to restrict access to it. This streamlines their navigation, but it also gives you added security around sensitive information.

Building and Filtering Lists

With Open CRM, you can build as many custom lists (or views) as your business needs. These are created by you selecting which fields are visible and then setting the criteria for records to appear.

For example, you might want to see all the Contacts who have subscribed to your Newsletter…but you only need to see their name and address. This simple list will take you just a few clicks to put together and can be saved to use over and over again.

Views can be restricted by user or profile, depending on who needs to see the list.

Searching only the Fields you need

Sometimes you don’t need to build a whole new list, you just need to quickly search for one particular piece of information.

By customising which fields appear in the Basic and Advanced Search blocks (again by user role), you can search your CRM system for the information you need with any details you have.

For example, maybe your finance team usually searches your Contacts by email address, but your sales team uses their postcode. Providing these two teams with the field they use to search most often will again make them more efficient and eager to use the system.

Unlimited Custom Fields

In Open CRM, you can create as many custom fields as your business needs. This means any and all information you need to store can be stored within your CRM.

We currently have 33 different field types, from text to numbers, dates to picklists, checkboxes, calculation fields, currency, passwords, basically any format you need.

These can be made to appear only when other criteria are met (for example, there may be data you only record when someone becomes a customer). You can also merge them into an email or other template, search and report on them just like standard system fields.

Layouts and Screen Editing

Now you’ve got all the fields you need, you want to have them laid out in a way that fits your process. You can build as many custom layouts as you need, setting them to be readily available or the default for certain users or profiles.

In the modules where Custom Layouts haven’t been set up yet (don’t worry, we’re working on it), you can still re-order your fields using our screen design tool.

Changing the labels and options on system fields

When it comes to the system fields (Company name, business email, etc.), we can change the labels to fit better with your business terminology. Just like with the module names.

Any picklists, dropdowns, or multi-selects, can be edited as and when you need to. For example, when you need to add a new Lead Source to track all the people you met at a conference.

Permissions around individual fields

Just like with module permissions, you can decide whether a group of users should be able to just ‘see’ a field or be able to ‘edit’ it as well. You can also decide whether it should appear on our mobile app.

These permission options give you the ability to provide your users with the information they need, but only edit the things they should be editing.

Action Plan – Automatic Activity Creation

As the title implies, an Action Plan is a group of tasks or other activities that you do regularly. Maybe when someone first becomes a customer you give them a quick  phone call to confirm accounting details, search for and follow them on social media, and then post out a welcome pack.

Instead of having to remember all of these things, Open CRM can schedule Activities for you so they are never forgotten.

Action Plans can be triggered manually or you can set up what we call “Conditional” Action Plans that run automatically when set criteria are met.

Email Plans – Automated Email Sending

Email Plans work the same as an Action Plan…except instead of creating Activities, it will create, schedule, and send Emails.

Using the example of a new customer again, you might want to send out a welcome email instead of posting a brochure. And then, after 3 months, you could send a follow up to make sure everything is still going ok.

As with Action Plans, these can be either manually or automatically triggered.

Workflow – Automated…well, everything else

There will be processes you have that require the creation of more than just an Activity or Email. You may need to update or create a record, add a warning, notify someone on your team, or much more.

Workflow is one of those tools that, once you start using it, you’ll wonder what you did without it!

Data Retention Rules and Right to be Forgotten – Automate GDPR

Along the same lines as Workflow are our Data Retention and Right to be Forgotten tools. These operate in much the same way, but give you additional tools like deleting records or clearing fields.

Both are part of our suite of GDPR features.