Steal My Deal

There are compelling reasons for you to consider an online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution: You can access your business 24×7 from anywhere with an internet connection; the price sounds right and online applications are quick to deploy and maintain.
The growing popularity of online software applications is not abatting, and online CRM solutions are leading this trend.

But online software applications, sometimes referred to as hosted, OnDemand, SaaS (software as a service), web based applications, are not suitable for everybody.

Firstly you need bandwidth - lots of it. If you don’t have access to broadband internet, hit the ‘back’ button now, don’t bother reading any further and remove any online CRM applications from your wishlist. Bandwidth constraints are sure to frustrate and deter your users, setting back your CRM initiative considerably.

CRM applications are often used real-time with your client on the other end of the phone, waiting as you navigate your way around the system. It defeats its purpose if this is unbearably slow. Simulate a few typical real-world situations when evaluating the software

As many businesses look to reduce their overheads, the one obvious area for cutting costs is the real estate that accomodates the sales department. These guys should be on the road selling, not sitting behind a PC or hanging around the water cooler.

There are a few questions you need to ask yourself, and of your potential vendor, before you even get to looking at feature specifics:

*Can you import your data easily? Your existing records that currently reside in Excel; your imminently redundant contact manager, accounting system or other database - can they be imported/converted to the online CRM solution?

*How customizable is this software? Can you create your own user-defined fields and reports?

*Do you to need to synchronize your data with other software or devices, like MS Outlook, or your Palm? If so, does this online CRM support this?

*As the amount of data your database needs on their server will affect your monthly premiums, get some indication of projected costs. How much disk space does each record typically take up and how many records do you think your database will grow to in 2 or 4 years?

*How comprehensively can you retrieve your data from their server?

*Can you work their online CRM in offline mode as well, or is your business expected to grind to a halt every time the net is down? Do they offer an in-house version that you can run on your own server and PC’s?

*What is the minimum duration of their contracts? Will you be locked into a one year agreement whether you like it or not?

*How is your data backed up, and how often?

*Can you maintain your own copies of your database?

*How reliable are their servers? Are they housed in a datacenter? What sort of uptime can you expect?

*What are their security policies? How secure is your data from prying eyes and hackers, and can you prevent your own users from downloading/exporting the data from the system?

*How, and how frequently, do you back up the data?

*What are your client side system requirements? What hardware configurations, operating system and versions are required of you?

*How long has their business been in existence, and can they furnish you with reference sites?

Fortunately online CRM solutions are relatively quick and easy to deploy and test so you can arrive at a decision fairly painlessly.

Once you have satisified yourself that the proposed online CRM solution meets these basic requirements, you can start matching their feature sets to yours.

Perry Norgarb has specialized in Small Business CRM and Sales Automation solutions for the last 15 years.

Contact him or find out more about CRM, Contact Management and other Sales Tracking software tips and solutions for small businesses at: http://www.smallbizcrm.com

You are free to re-publish this article as long as this bio box and copyright remain intact and links live. © 09 February, 2006.

Let’s say that you have a software project that’s under severe time pressure. Let’s say that this deadline is so tight that you already know it will involve many late nights of black coffee and frenetic programming. What can you do to make this process go faster?

I honestly don’t know, since the correct answer will depend on one’s individual circumstances. However, I can tell you how many programmers do respond under such circumstances. They decide to save time by skipping over the software planning and design phase, and immediately start coding away.

To an inexperienced or otherwise undisciplined programmer, this seems to make sense. After all, the finished product is what truly matters, right? The customer doesn’t care about flowcharts, class diagrams or software architectures. All they want is something that works.

It seems to make sense, but it’s a foolhardy approach. That way lies madness. We’ve all heard that an ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure, but in the world of software development, this adage is often forgotten.

If a real estate developer needs to get a house built quickly, does he save time by skipping over the architectural design phase? Does he decide to dispense with blueprints, and just start laying down concrete? Of course not. He knows that the results would be chaotic, and that work will progress more slowly without careful forethought and a concrete plan.

Yet that’s the approach that many people take when it comes to software. They decide to just start coding away, thinking that this makes the software development process more efficient. On fairly simple projects, this might work. On anything of moderate complexity though, such an approach is doomed to fail. Sure, you may save time at first. However, without a concrete software plan and a carefully considered design, problems are bound to catch up with you before long. Many of these problems won’t become clear until the testing phase comes around, and by then, it may be too late.

Sadly, such reckless thinking is often encouraged in the corporate world. Due to time constraints, a misguided manager may instruct his team to skip over the design work and just start hacking away. This makes the team seem focused and productive, but this strategy can wreak havoc on the project timeline. What’s more, the resultant code is often a tangled, poorly documented, chaotic mess. If this software must be maintained for years to come, then you have a recipe for disaster.

Mind you, I’m not saying that an elaborate design is always necessary. If time is short, then one might not have the luxury of an intricate software plan with exhaustive design documentation. However, one should at least have a general software architecture laid outone which is detailed enough to make the software development process smoother and easier. Programmers rarely err on the side of over-planning, but they frequently fall into the trap of insufficient design detail. Don’t make this mistake, if you really want to save time.

About the author:

V. Berba Velasco Jr. is proud to work as a senior electrical and software engineer at Cellular Technology Ltd (http://www.immunospot.com, http://www.elispot-analyzers.de, http://www.elispot.cn) a biotechnology company that prides itself on its standards of excellence.

Logistics automation is often considered as barcoding extension to Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing, Inventory Control modules. Software extensions makers may disagree with this simplification, but budget solution works exactly like barcoding extension and is usually done via Great Plains Dexterity, Modifier with VBA and SQL stored procedures. If your company is looking for implementing automated inventory bin/item pickup and conveyer - then you need specialized software. However if you just envision your warehouse workers with barcode scanners - then read this article to understand your options with Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains.

• Warehouse Automation. When you are looking for warehouse management automation - you should research supply chain management applications available on the market. Usually they are expensive and targeted to large logistics clients. You can use Microsoft Great Plains inventory module features, such as locations or sites, serial/lot number tracking, inventory count, inventory transfers and combine these with simple VB-based barcoding to feed documents from your barcode scanners to Great Plains directly.

• Random Weight. Food distribution - you might be purchasing food in cases or other variable weight units and resell them in pounds or kilograms to end customer. So - you need parallel quantities tracking with probably serial numbering for each case. This is typical customization for Inventory, Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing (POP) modules in Great Plains. It should be done in Great Plains Dexterity to provide seamless interface for GP users. In addition to parallel weight measures (cases and pounds) you may also need average weight control to prevent issues with your warehouse workers

• Recurring Customer Orders. You may figure out that majority of your customers order the same items each time with regular intervals. In this case you can have customer typical order screen to automate order taking. Plus - you may have associated and replacement items logic incorporated in this screen.

• Automated Shipments. If you sell on consignment - you may simply send trucks to your customers every day with recommended combination of items, based on historical data - day of the week, holidays, seasonal variations, etc. And barcode could help you in automatic picking ticket printing and allocation

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK