CRM - In Depth

de Facto S5 incorporates an event-based list for managing customers, prospects and supplier-related activities. It can either be for recording events that have taken place, or for 'diarising' future events. Each event can be given a user-defined type, date, time, reminder request, subject, details, and, if required, can even be stored or linked to other data such as office documents, artwork or database. Events can also be related to prospective customers and suppliers as well as jobs, complaints and products.

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CRM Events

S5 CRM Events can be either manually generated, or generated by transactions within other modules, such as a reminder event to chase a sales quotation. Events can be configured for many uses, from tele-sales using recurring events, through marketing recording using group events, to support logging, which is especially easy when combined with the CTI telephony interface.

Special group events are available for groups of customers or suppliers, for instance, to record the sending of a new price list to a group of customers. Recurring events can be used to define things such as regular tele-sales calls and the frequency with which they occur and the number of repeats.

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CRM ToDo List

The S5 CRM ToDo list is the control centre for the CRM module and provides both a list and diary view of events. It also provides direct access to logging events, making telephone calls, emails, fax or any other type of communication. Toolbar options enable direct access to historical and analysis data for the selected organisation.

The Contacts Browser is configurable by the user to display their choice of contact types etc. from the browser window. Direct access is available to all contact numbers and fax, email, telephone and web links can all be activated from here.

Direct access is available to related data such as account status, product history, market profile, diary etc. Direct jumps are available from the Contacts Browser to the related data such as customer or supplier records.

Each customer or supplier can be divided into multiple addresses or departments; each of these can then have multiple contacts at each address. At each level telephone, fax, Email and web addresses can be stored and at the contact level home and mobile numbers can also be recorded. Direct access is available to email, fax, telephone or browse using any of these numbers or addresses.

As well as working with actual customer and suppliers, de Facto S5 allows prospective customers and suppliers to be recorded, each of which can have multiple contacts etc.

Contact data can also be held for both internal staff, and miscellaneous contacts, and for each users own private contacts.

de Facto S5 allows market profiles to be defined for both prospective and actual customers or suppliers. The market profile can hold multi-choice lists for type, product interest, competitor and other, as well as single choice lists for source, value, status and other.

The contacts browser contains a sophisticated yet easy-to-use Filtering and Searching ability, to allow the user to quickly locate the individual or group of contacts they wish to work with. The filtering options include multi-choice facilities to ensure that otherwise complex queries are kept simple.

The contacts browser can be used to create a simple merge list for use by any other office applications. If the use of this list needs to be recorded, then a group event can be recorded based on the mail list content.

The de Facto S5 CRM event records now provide the ability to add additional tables and fields specific to the event type. This latest option dramatically extends the power and flexibility of the CRM module.

Event priorities can now be set using user definable descriptions, and colour coding to highlight urgent events.

The ease with which CRM can be used for routine calls by tele-sales staff has been further enhanced through the incorporation of a number of additional options for Recurring Events. Event types now allow the specifying of a default style of recurring event, with three choices. 'Unassigned Events' creates a single event linked to multiple occurrences, with individual events only being created if an occurrence is modified by the user. 'Multiple Events, creates individual events linked as a series. Finally, 'Single Event' creates a single event whose date simply moves forward to the next date in the series each time the event is completed.

The Embedded Documents facility allows the user to record documents relating to a customer or supplier, etc. and have them easily accessible from the customer window.

Actions can be linked to events, if required. This can be used, for instance, to link an action of 'new sales order' to a recurring tele-sales type of event. The action button will then automatically create a new sales order for that customer.

Events themselves can be used to compile, record and transmit direct Faxes and Emails including their attachments.

de Facto S5 contains the powerful facility of transaction event logging. This can be used to automatically log events relating to any type of transaction, for instance a progress chasing phone conversation with a supplier could be logged as an event against a purchase order. It can also be automated, for instance, to record an event when a sales quote is sent and set up a future event for someone to call the customer regarding the quotation.

de Facto S5 provides an integration tool to allow all incoming and outgoing Email to be copied to and logged by an automation server against the relevant customers, suppliers and projects.

Events can be displayed in the ToDo list window as either simple event lists covering the selected period or, alternatively, in a traditional business week diary view. The diary or ToDo list can be opened globally or opened from another window such as customer, supplier or a project, in which case it will only display related events.

CRM Time Recording provides the ability to record time against an event or task, and to compare this with the estimated time. A full history is maintained over the time booked. Users can simply log onto and off of tasks as they wish throughout the day. Multiple users can book time against the same task, if required. Future releases will see integration between the time recording and the job costing time sheets.

CRM Threading provides the ability to manage threaded events to any number of levels. It further allows the user to quickly explore both the origin and result of any threaded conversation that has been recorded through events.

The Call Log window has been enhanced to provide 'Go To' functions for the customer, supplier, prospect, etc lists.

In previous versions the 'Go To' buttons, 'Open To Do List', 'Open To Do list with predefined filter', 'Add a new event, 'Go to the account details' and 'Go to the selected customer ....' were only available for customers, suppliers etc displayed in the upper call details section. These can now be used for any account in the lower section as selected from the customer, supplier, prospect etc menu.

Each of the categories listed below will have multiple versions exploiting the many options that the standard reports provide.

In addition to CRM specific reports, de Facto S5 provides a comprehensive series of Standard Reports, many of which can be easily parameter driven by the user. S5 further provides the Vistas feature, which are a powerful and easy way of selecting, sorting, displaying and working with data from either single or multiple tables.