Rescue trapped knowledge in your CRM

Avoid the Risks of Lost Knowledge

Is there years of information in your CRM that seems hidden?

Does it take an person in IT to generate reports?

Need to translate those digital 1's and 0's into accessible knowledge?

Have you ever felt that you CRM has years of knowledge built up and you need easy ways to get at the information?

You need a way to perform a rescue?

With an adaptable, well-designed CRM system there is light at the end of the tunnel.

A CRM system allows the transfer of data into useful information

A CRM system will use a database to capture those zeros and ones and provide a information processing system so the processed data is visible in a meaningful form.

Relationships Matter in more ways than one...

We know that a CRM is useful to identify and capture knowledge about your prospects, your customers, your vendors and their interactions with your employees. Relationships are the most important differentiator in CRM. You link an email to the buyer contact at your client's business account. It may relate to an existing sale opportunity or relate to a customer service issue.

Communication records of phone calls, meetings and notes are related to the business activity captured in your CRM. With today's smart mobile devices you can use the microphone icon to translate voice to text notes in CRM.

Like the relationships among people and companies there are links between the types of data when it is stored in a relational database like Microsoft SQL and used by Infor CRM. Compared to a flat-file system like a spreadsheet, a well-used CRM system presents the user with various views of related information. The CRM system does the information processing and presentation.

A business account view of the company and its related information about contacts, scheduled activities, historical notes/emails, sales opportunities and so forth. Quickly accessible 360-degree view of a customer account and linked knowledge for stronger and more valuable conversations.

Rescue information that turns into knowledge

Let's assume that the mode of access to your CRM information is not the issue - you can use a mobile device or a web browser on your computer to get to your CRM system.

We find that our CRM clients enjoy having a welcome screen which provides visual clues to what is going on in their world. This can be a personalized view of their daily activities, the top open opportunities near a closing stage, their customers with open service issues and for sales professionals how they rate in generating sales revenue.

For a business unit manager it will be a management dashboard of the results their team is generating such as forecasted sales revenue for next quarter, the average time of open, unresolved support tickets or the results from a recent marketing campaign.

Easily group and filter CRM information

An adaptable CRM system will have the ability to group records of company accounts, people, opportunities, service tickets. The group 'engine' will have the ability to link in related information from the relational database such as contacts names and their related account information like type, industry, SIC, web site etc.

Read more on grouping capability and filtering within groups from Infor CRM.

Show associations between people and between company accounts

Knowing people and company associations will improve your productivity in the use of CRM and accelerate business relationship development. An overall goal our clients will mention is the need to identify relationships among the people and company accounts they do business with. They need to manage the entire relationship with customers and strategic partners. They need to track this relationship information and have it handy for conversation planning. More about associations...

Use a powerful but accessible reporting engine

Your CRM system will have a method to generate good fashion reports. They may be simple listings of information to a complex sales forecasting report complete with graphs for each sales team.

Bring Your CRM data to Life with Business Intelligence

Gartner’s definition of Business intelligence is:

“… BI is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.”

Business intelligence is becoming increasingly popular, evidenced by continued worldwide growth, as organizations strive to create and maintain a competitive advantage. Business Intelligence can facilitate easy identification of a business’ strengths and weaknesses, which can be used to inform a wider business strategy.

Advanced Analytics is a powerful, yet easy to learn and use interactive analytics solution that enables you to increase organizational and customer intelligence, shape strategic priorities and make informed business decisions. Bring your CRM data to life and maximize your investment in Saleslogix CRM by analyzing data and key performance indicators from across your organization for a deeper understanding of business and team performance and to identify the drivers of and barriers to success

More examples of advanced visualizations

Living in Microsoft Outlook - easily access Infor CRM there

Most business professionals will be using an email system such as Microsoft Outlook. This may have been their first source of knowledge stored in email communications. It is also rudimentary contact management system for a starting business. When a full CRM system comes on board it must be integrated with Outlook - to increase CRM user adoption and remain productive.

The highly recognized industry Infor Xbar resides inside your Outlook - linking the Inbox email address with the contact record in CRM. As a relational system additional CRM information is shown - activities, history notes, opportunities, etc.

Eliminate user frustrations with CRM inside Microsoft Outlook