CRM Overview

See your own CRM modules by either selecting “CRM” box from coversheet or by closing the coversheet and selecting CRM from the left-hand menu.

Note that sales teams and targets and product lists and sales process items and dictionaries need to be already entered into the administration area in order to best use some of these modules.  See the web help for “CRM / Administration” to see detailed set-up information.  Admin of CRM is unavoidable if you want to use your CRM with real information.  It’s a matter of the GIGO principle.  (Garbage in – Garbage out)!

Zway CRM is made up of 14 modules.  Each module works hand in hand with others to produce an easy to use PROCESS.  However, the whole solution has also been designed to allow any user to use any process they wish.  To this end, multiple links have been made between each module to enable information entered to be viewed and actioned from anywhere.  For instance:  If you want to create leads but do not want to detailed sales opportunities, you may use the system without even using the Opportunities module.  You may even just add orders if you wish without even creating a lead or an opportunity first.  It’s up to you.

You can (if you wish) follow the “best practice” process built in to Zway CRM.  This process is as follows:

Contacts:  Enter names and addresses of people you know. They do not have to be customers.  They can be anyone that your company or you will deal with.  (The only type of person not suitable for contacts is somebody that your company employs.  There is a Zway Module ready-made to manage employees called e-HR). A contact can work for a company (you can link them) but they don’t have to.

Companies: These are other businesses that your company will do business with.  Zway CRM can manage relations hips with Suppliers, Partners and Customers, prospects and even suspects.  A company can have people linked to it.  But if you don’t know any names in that company, its OK too.  A company can have hundreds (if you want) of people (contacts) linked to it if you wish.

Clients:  Zway CRM lets you see a list of either companies or contacts that you tag as “Customer” or “Client” in its’ own module.  This is because clients often have special information added to their files that normal contacts and companies would not need.  Note that this is not a separate or additional list. These are just contacts or companies that you have tagged as clients or customers.

Suppliers: Zway CRM lets you see a separate list of contacts or companies that you tag as “Suppliers”.  This is because suppliers have processes that are different to normal contacts or customers.  For one thing, you send purchase orders to suppliers.  You also may want to add due diligence to their accounts and even some compliance processes.  Note, you do not need to add these contacts or companies any differently.  Just enter them as normal and tag them if they are suppliers.  Note that a single contact or a single company can be suppliers and clients if you want!

Leads: The difference between a Lead and a plain old Contact is that you now need to know a few more pieces of information.  The lead form is created to store that information, such as What products or services is the person or company interested in?  Who in your company will work on the lead?  Did you assign it to them yet?  Where did the lead come from?  However, a Lead can be created directly from a Contact or a Company, so no need to re-type all of that information again.  See the actions on the Wiki entry on Contacts and Leads to see how easy it is to upgrade a contact to a lead.  You can even add a new lead, even if the Contact is not yet in your CRM.  No need to follow any particular process, do it as you want!

Opportunities: Some businesses that specialise in sales that take longer and require solid business planning will want to use “Opportunities” to plan the whole sale over several weeks or months, see progression as their own sales process matures and start to forecast the revenue and product / service information.  If your company works this way, then the opportunities module allows you to take a simple Lead and upgrade all of the information you already know into an opportunity.  The one major benefit of using opportunities module is that you may define your own sales processes.  You can have different processes for different types of sales (new business Vs upgrades for example).  You can also start to use the forecasting modules to plan when the revenue will come and put prices and quotes together here.  Opportunities also offer the ability to plan accounts in detail and to analyse which contacts you have make which decisions and how influential they are etc etc.

Campaigns:  This is a basic module designed to plan advertising and mailshot types campaigns.  Zway CRM is integrated tightly to 3rd party specialist email lists such as Mailchimp and you can see which email campaigns are bringing in which leads.

Quotes: If you need to provide sales prospects or clients with quotes, prior to receiving orders as part of your sales campaigns, then this module will do that.  CRM Quotes are integral to leads, contacts, companies and opportunities, so you can see at a glance wherever you are who has been given which quote.  Quotes allows you to follow a strict numbering schema to easily find older quotes and to link these to opportunities or orders. This quotes module actually prepares a template quote for you. All you need to do is top and tail it with extra content if you wish.  You can print or send directly to the prospect from within the CRM solution as you wish.

Orders:  These are SALES ORDERS. As you would expect, this is also tightly integral to contacts, Companies, quotes and opportunities.  Follow a best practice order fulfilment process or just create your own.  This orders module starts to allow you to follow the sales process to the money.  Orders are tightly linked to the products and services and stock catalogues inside your Zway CRM.

Invoices: As part of the CRM, these are SALES INVOICES.  Tightly linked to orders and visible from any logical position in contacts, companies and opportunities.  This module provides you with a template to create your own invoices, to say where to pay and when and to print or send directly from within the CRM Invoices solution to clients.

Communications History:  If you want to track who said what to who in your accounts, this module does all of this automatically as your sales accounts grow.  Attach letters or notes from phone calls, even link to your own voice recording if you wish. This module forms an indelible record of what has happened and can form part of any tight compliance process.

Accounts Information:  As you produce orders and invoices and timesheets etc.  You may wish to see an interactive record of where your revenue is coming from and when you can expect it to arrive.  However, this module does a lot more.  It has built in process intelligence to allow you to take the “next logical step” in any process with a single click of a button.  For instance:  If you use a process whereby a timesheet, once approved needs to be collated with others for the same account and invoiced together, you can just select the timesheets by ticking on a list and click one button to produce the detailed invoice.  Seeing your “Accounts Information” this way will dramatically improve the speed of money into your business.  This module has a link from the coversheet called “Pending Billable Items”.

Requested Information:  If you have a business sales process that requires your staff to acquire multiple pieces of information from your clients as quickly and painlessly as possible, then this module is going to help enormously.  Each Contact and Company has a link to “Requested Information”.  You can pre-define the standard info you need and even pre-define an automated email reminder system to collect the information.  Your staff are notified when information arrives. All you need to do, is click a single link to check the information.  This module is also tightly linked to “My Account in My World” – A SELF SERVICE method for clients, suppliers and even employees to see their own account details and interact with your company even after normal open hours.

Reports:  An ever-growing report module showing detailed and self-adjusting real-time reports on CRM issues such as sales pipelines and revenue projections for individuals and teams.  Note all of these reports are linked to the real-time report widgets seen on each module cover sheet.

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