Most Important Feature in CRM
28 Jan 2014The trickiest thing in developing a CRM system is to produce something that can be used by and is useful to everyone. It sounds like it should be the easiest thing in the world, after all, don’t all businesses have basically the same needs?
You know and I know that isn’t true.
While being able to keep track of prospects and customers, to-do lists and communications are all important to most companies, the information that they actually want to see and record in relation to those records will vary as much as the companies themselves.
Let’s use an example of a cooking school and an IT support company. Both companies want to be able to keep track of their current customers, using to-do lists for their users, and sending out marketing emails. The IT support company, however, wants to be able to keep track of their support requests and our cookery school needs to see registration and attendance for their courses.
The configuration and use of those shared modules, let’s use Contacts as an example, will differ considerably, even though both companies want to accomplish similar things, as both would be interested in keeping a list of their current customers.
This is where the most important feature in CRM systems comes into its own. When the IT company looks at a Contact’s record in their system, they want to see at a glance what type of computer, printer, mobile phone, etc. each customer has. The cookery skull, on the other hand, wants to know what types of food their customers are interested in cooking, what their skill level is, any food allergies they might have, and if they’ve attended any courses in the past.
This information, while important to the companies, isn’t something that can be included as standard in a CRM system. However, being able to add as many new fields as needed in order to record and hold this information allows a CRM system the flexibility to be used by any company, in any industry.
In OpenCRM, it is possible to add as many custom fields as you need and place them anywhere on the screen. You have 26 different types of field to choose from so you can record and display the right information in the right way. This customisability of the system makes it possible for OpenCRM to meet the needs of your business.
Although I originally hail from northern California, as soon as I arrived in Yorkshire I knew it was the place for me! At OpenCRM, I started out in the Business Development team, and then moved into compliance and Q&A because I love telling people what to do…ok, that’s not the real reason, but it makes for a good bio one-liner. When I’m not in the office, you can usually find me tramping through the dales, crafting, gardening, or with my nose in a book.