Where Do You Want To Go Today?
25 Apr 2013It doesn’t matter how good your sense of direction is, to get from A to B you are going to need some kind of guidance. Whether it’s your inherent sense of knowing where to go if you are familiar with the roads, looking up and plotting a route, or switching on the satnav and getting guided all the way navigation is something we all need to do.
Additionally some places are easier to get around than others – a beautiful old city such as York or Paris is a joy to walk around, but driving is quite a different experience! On the other hand US cities with their grid system are designed to
make navigation as straightforward as possible; even if you get lost then you just cruise around the block one more time rather than going all the way around a soul-destroying one way system.
Finding your way around the web can be a similar experience. Some sites and resources are easy to find with a quick search whereas others require you to dig a little deeper. One of the principles behind CRM is that it is a time-saving measure. You have a wealth of information contained within which you want to access quickly and easily. When you’ve found the data you want to be able to do something with it without jumping through hoops – whether it’s an email to a group of contacts, a list you are creating of businesses of a certain type, a report you need to send to a client or a series of meetings you want to set up. In order to achieve all of this, your CRM solution comes loaded with a variety of search methods to enable you to search whether on a global, local or granular level. Using views and tabs you can create shortcuts to these searches to help you get to where you want to be quickly and easily. Once you are there, action buttons allow you to set up calls, tasks, meetings or emails smoothly.
When you would set out on a journey, you work out in advance where you are going and how you plan on getting there and the same can be said for getting the most of your CRM data, forward planning and a clearly defined roadmap means you will be able to extract the very best from the data you have invested your time and money in collecting.
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.