The Ultimate CRM Checklist
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This document outlines critical features for selecting a comprehensive CRM system, emphasizing that a simplistic checklist is inadequate. It highlights the importance of detailed functionalities such as project management, time tracking, email integration, and customer portals, which enhance user collaboration and data management. The content serves as a guide for businesses to understand the depth of customization and integration necessary for effective CRM implementation.
The Ultimate CRM Checklist
- 2. CREATING YOUR ULTIMATE CRM CHECKLIST A checklist with only ten or so items on it isn’t going to help you find the perfect CRM for your needs. It’s too basic, too vague, and doesn’t really give you a good overview of critical system features like navigation and customizability. What businesses don’t realize until it is too late is that it is the teeny, tiny details that will make or break your CRM implementation. As you’ll see, the devil really is in the detail.
- 3. ALL-IN-ONE SYSTEM • Find, sell to, implement projects for, support, and hopefully sell more products and services to your customers using a single system • Consolidate business-critical data instead of leaving them strewn across different apps • Easily access and manage almost all aspects of your business
- 4. FAST, INTUITIVE NAVIGATION • Bookmarks lists let you immediately access the information you feel is important • Breadcrumb trail lets you jump to higher page levels without having to keep pressing the back button on your browser • Recent pages and activity list lets you get back quickly to whatever page you were on before
- 5. COLLABORATE & DISCUSS • Start an online, threaded discussion using any project, sales lead, support case, or even a tricky customer • Upvote comments and suggestions that you like • Use Requests to ensure the person you need answers from is immediately notified of your post
- 6. EMAIL INTEGRATION • Create a new sales lead • Update a project or task • Assign a support ticket • Log a timesheet • Attach new notes and details to your customer’s record – all without leaving your email inbox
- 7. WEB FORMS ON STEROIDS • Build your contact database automatically from web form submissions • Turn web form data instantly into contacts and support cases • Customizable web forms can be as simple or as detailed as you want
- 8. SELF-SERVICE CUSTOMER PORTAL • Customers can view projects, tasks, and support tickets as well as paid and unpaid invoices • Clients can pay invoices using the customer portal • Customize the portal and make it look more in line with your company’s overall branding • Increase collaboration between you and the client
- 9. GRANULAR PERMISSIONS • Set user permissions individually, by workgroup, or by role • Control access to any project, activity, module, or information within the system • Restrict who can view and/or modify private sales leads, specific projects, etc.
- 10. TIME TRACKING • Attach timesheets to projects to make sure everyone is putting in the hours • Automatically calculate project budgets by linking them to timesheets • Enter timesheet data using a mobile app when out on the field and a desktop widget when at the office
- 11. CUSTOM FIELDS • Add any kind of info no matter how niche or esoteric • Extend usability of built-in modules • Ensure standardization of data entered • Customize modules to handle future expansion / service & product offerings
- 12. CUSTOM SALES PROCESSES • Create and associate different sales processes tailored to specific products and services • Set specific processes for different teams in your company or even those in different regions • Easily make necessary changes to evolving sales processes
- 13. PROJECT TEMPLATES • Manage and deploy projects faster • Cuts down on time spent creating new projects
- 14. CUSTOM PROJECTS • Control every aspect of any given project • Add sub-projects, tasks, timesheets, and completion stages • Add a near-infinite number of sub-projects and tasks
- 15. MULTIPLE PROJECT VIEWS • Switch between different views quickly and easily • Use in conjunction with filters to find info faster • Sort activity according to priority, progress, budget, etc.
- 16. REAL-TIME PROGRESS TRACKING • Get a bird's eye view of the status of the company’s projects • Drill down deep into sub-projects and sub-tasks and check their status • Cut down the need for progress report meetings
- 17. AUTOMATIC REPORTS • Any and all of the data you enter into the system will be used to generate a range of reports • Reports include financials, timesheets, projects progress, and more • Bookmark important reports for quick and easy access.
- 18. WORKGROUPS & ROLES • Assign tasks or projects to a team rather than selecting the same set of individual employees. • Share contacts with a workgroup • Set access privileges according to workgroups and roles
- 19. SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION • Get updated contact info by linking to their social media profiles • Filter contacts according to social media profiles
- 20. CONTACT SYNC • Two-way syncing of person-type contacts ensure that you can access all of them through either app • Sync acts as a backup system; accidentally deleting a contact in one system doesn’t delete it in the other • Contact updates made in one system carry over to the other • Fix incorrect contact detail updates easily by reverting to a previous version of the contact • Access contact information in the CRM through your iOS or Android device
- 21. DEPENDENCIES & TRIGGERS • Set requirements for specific project stages like obtaining permits, finishing reports, etc. • A task that has dependencies on an earlier task won’t start until the task before it is completed • Keep your to do list uncluttered by making sure it contains only the tasks you need to work on right now
- 22. SAVED FILTERS • Remove unneeded items and entries from view and focus only on what currently need. • Save filtering parameters to access the results you need most often with a single click • Use search filters on any module — contacts, leads, activity history, projects, communication logs, and even files and attachments. • Break down project data and see what’s relevant to you at that time. • See active tasks assigned only to you and filter them further into tasks that fall within a certain date range
- 23. SMARTVIEWS • Use and save customized searches through all of your data and access them with a single click • Quickly see a list of items that fit a certain criteria (location, current tasks, etc.) • Mark items with custom tags (a “good customer” tag for a preferred client, perhaps) to facilitate quicker searches • Filter for any employee’s tasks to check how many tasks he or she has • Build complex marketing lists by filtering contacts through granular variables
- 24. ACTIVITY HISTORY • Attach new leads, projects, invoices, support cases, and other activities to a contact • View every activity associated with any and all of your contacts in an easy-to-digest format • Filter and sort activity history according to employee, activity, or time period • Search for specific data — be it an amendment to a recent project or an email from three months ago
- 25. www.worketc.com