What comes ready to use 

There is no shortage of customer relationship management (CRM) software available out there. A CRM’s out-of-the-box capabilities are often where you can begin to draw differences in determining which one best meets your business needs. Some are free and others of course are not.

In this post we are going to take a look at the out-the-box capabilities of a relatively popular and free CRM, HubSpot CRM along with the Infor CRM system. Previously we wrote about Comparing Infor CRM to HubSpot CRM + Sales Pro.  

Before having to worry about add-ons and upgrades, it’s important to not only know what you’re going to get from the start but also where you can get the most for your investment. It also helps you to determine what you don’t need because there’s no need to add unnecessary complexity.

#8 of our 18 requirements for business success with CRM states "First, Use as Much Out-of-Box Functionality as You Can"

Each Infor CRM user can enhance their use of Microsoft Outlook Address book contacts when linking to the Infor CRM contacts.  This article covers using the Address book, scheduling an appointment and some recent enhancements.  For more visit, What's new with Infor CRM, mobile and Xbar in 2017.

Using Infor CRM Address Book in Outlook

One of the capabilities of the Infor Xbar implementation is the use of the Infor CRM address book.  This is configured by clicking on Options gear icon under the Infor CRM Connector options panel from the Outlook menu bar.

Then from the Address tab the user can determine how to show contact names- either by first name or last name order.  Next select what do you want to show when the Address book is accessed in Outlook.  In the following example, it is set to show the Infor CRM Groups as separate folders and Show Accounts as Distribution lists.  

For a salesperson, you'd  want to show Leads and maybe show opportunities as distribution lists.  For a CSR in customer support the "Show Tickets" would be helpful.  Optionally you can have the address book also display the CRM users.

What is Event Marketing

Event marketing describes the process of developing a themed exhibit, display, or presentation to promote a product, service, cause, or organization leveraging in-person engagement.  Events can occur online or offline, and can be participated in, hosted, or sponsored.  The promotion of these activities can occur through various inbound and outbound marketing techniques.

In today’s buyer-empowered world, marketers need to seize every opportunity to build relationships, generate goodwill, and earn the trust of prospective buyers and customers. The modern consumer wants more than a pitch when evaluating solutions or making purchasing decisions. Events offer a unique opportunity for them to interact with brands to get a firsthand sense of a company’s focus, perspective, and personality. Event marketing needs to be an integral part of the demand generation mix, and a strategic combination of offline and online events are essential to any company’s bottom line.

One of the helpful capabilities of Inbox Guru is that the results of campaigns and web page visits becomes part of a contact's record in Infor CRM as a history record.  Therefore, you can use history records for analysis and decision making. Use this data to get instant feedback on who is reading your emails and web site content. Because of the flexibility of Infor CRM you can create a 'main view' of historical records, have various history groups and apply filters.  

Here we show the history group "Latest InboxGuru" created records.  The view shows the date of the activity, company account name, contact information, campaign name and so forth.

With the flexibility of Infor CRM web architecture, filters can be created to easily show less and less records for various conditions. In the group above of Inbox Guru history records we can filter to only show a specific category such as email campaign versus web site activity.

The main Infor CRM software product has new updates every two months and here are the latest updates for 2017 as of March with Update 06. Also released where updates to the Infor mobile client and the Microsoft Outlook Integration and Infor Xbar panel.

View "What's new and useful in version 8.3" here

View "What has changes in version 8.2"

Highlights include performance improvements such as the new Favorites for groups and in exporting lists of records. There are updates to Xbar with Outlook Integration, including drag and drop functionality for all browsers and not just Microsoft IE. Finally, with every release Infor corrects open issues and defects from prior versions.

Using CRM to Extend Existing Key Business Strategy

A recent client is well known for their great customer experience in obtaining accurate pricing, product
availability and ease of placing orders. Their Picas Greenhouse Production software capabilities handle financial, inventory, shipping, logistics planning, production, and wireless warehouse management.  

The production software did a good job with taking their product and getting it to the customer. However, the relationship communications with their customers were lacking. There is a need to have a systematic approach to consistently attract, retain and grow profitable customers. There was a need for the core capabilities of CRM - customer relationship management system.  An integrated systems approach is required in today's connected world.

Who would not want to have a much easier way to:

• Drive productivity
• Eliminate informational silos
• Improved exception management and
• Achieve unparalled end-to-end effectiveness?

It can be done with Infor ION...

Purpose-built middleware. 

If your business is like most, the organizational systems you use have evolved over time, creating a complicated technology landscape. Disconnected systems and information silos result in inefficiencies, costly maintenance requirements, and ultimately—missed opportunities.

Selling could be more Effective

While visiting with a growing small business founder and CEO recently, Robert mentioned that one of the key challenges in the business was to have a more integrated system and not so many parts and pieces that are not talking with each other. There were segmented groups of people (silos) that were not working as a fully functioning team.  Information with one group was not easily shared with another group.  Robert wanted help in designing and creating an "integrated CRM system".  He had read the Aberdeen Group report that "businesses integrating disparate systems enjoy an 88% greater year-over-year increase annual revenue compared to others".

This article is inspired by and is compliment of Nicole Laurier, VP of Sales & Marketing at Fisher Technology, read more. The author, Morgan Nimmons is a Marketing Intern at Fisher Technology, read more.

Businesses typically follow procedures to manage and respond to certain activities. These procedures are often fulfilled by the combination of manual processes and management software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Though, these methods have their own forms of functionality they are often missing key components that would make certain processes more automated and less manual.

Adding a software tool as a utility belt to improve your business process may be the answer.

So you want faster performance?

This latest version became available April 2016 and can be obtained from your account on the Infor CRM Xtreme portal. Also contact your Infor CRM partner before installing.  Review the Client Guides and Installation Guide PDFs shown in the right middle panel.

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