Tag Archive for: CRM integration

Transform Your Field Service Team with Salesforce Field Service

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Introduction

As a leader in the field service industry, you know that there are many moving parts that need to be considered in order to run a successful field service organization. Day-to-day operations can be complex and streamlined communication is often lacking for both on-site and in-office teams. Ultimately, you need a tool that can support all the needs of your organization; and that tool is Salesforce Field Service.

“Salesforce Field Service is a feature and add-on that assists dispatchers and technicians with dispatching, directions, work orders, parts used, repair times, and more. This helps to streamline those operations and minimize paperwork,” Said Richard Jenkins, Co-Founder of Commercient. 

Essentially, Salesforce Field Service makes your team more aligned, operational management easier, and team efficiency skyrocket. 

How Salesforce Field Service Can Streamline Your Organization

How are teams operating without a strong field service management solution like Salesforce Field Service? 

Without the proper tools in place for field service teams, organizations oftentimes track projects through spreadsheets. They will manually dispatch technicians through email and phone, and don’t have a centralized clear way to see where their teams are at any given time. 

Without Salesforce Field Service, how do you properly track hours, parts used, etc.? How can you ensure that the technician’s route saves on gas, or that he or she isn’t spending unneeded time traveling between service calls? The other question to consider is, are you efficiently dispatching technicians? 

Commercient will be able to provide an ID through the SYNC, which will help to identify the correct building for a job and match that to the needed parts and labor.

What is Salesforce Field Service?

Salesforce Field Service essentially is designed to help teams fully manage every aspect of their field service operation in the most streamlined way possible. It also helps keep information updated for mobile-workers and customers. On-site technicians and contractors in HVAC, healthcare, construction, financial services, transportation, utilities, manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services will find Salesforce Field Service particularly helpful. This is shown in the top features below.

Top Features of Salesforce Field Service:

Dispatching Console: 

Eliminate calls and emails, and dispatch technicians intelligently with regards to their location, schedule, and skillset.

Smart Scheduling: 

Take the guesswork out of scheduling for your team by creating an ideal schedule based upon current priorities or limitations.

Workflow Automation: 

Automate case creation for technicians and workflows.

Field Service Mobile App: 

Provide recommended articles, get directions, capture photos and sign work orders. What’s more, the Mobile App comes with offline capabilities so teams can work wherever they need to, regardless of connectivity.

Einstein Vision: 

Get image recognition with your photos and identify critical assets.

Field Service Analytics: 

Oversee safety protocols and your team’s current performance with the metrics that matter most to you.

Salesforce Appointment Assistant: 

Give your customers more visibility into your team and their whereabouts with your technician’s name, photo, ETA, and location. All of which are supported through email, WhatsApp, and SMS notifications.

With Salesforce Field Service, you can spend less time trying to find the best technician for a job, and more time on delivering the best in customer service. 

If you are looking for additional resources on field service operations, check out Abelian’s ebook intended to help teams avoid serious mistakes with field service operations.

Field Service Resource Button

Click Below to Download Your Free Ebook.

EbookCover.FieldService

Commercient and Salesforce Field Service 

For Salesforce Field Service and ERP integration, Commercient SYNC is your leading company. SYNC is utilized to ensure that data integration between Salesforce Field Service and your ERP runs smoothly. Your ERP data is automatically integrated into your Salesforce Field Service without the need to program, code, map, or use servers.

In Salesforce Field Service, there are four key players where Commercient is involved to assist customers with a smooth data integration process. The four key players are:

Administrator: 

An administrator configures field service features based on a company’s requirements. Commercient will collaborate with the administrator to sync relevant data into and out of Salesforce Field Service objects.

Service Agent: 

A service agent will take customer calls and log work orders via service appointments, which will be linked to the calendar of the mobile worker or technician. Work orders will be detailed and will include the skills and parts required to complete the job at hand. Then, Commercient can sync the work orders to the ERP system as a work order, sales order, invoice, or jobs.

Dispatchers: 

Manage service appointments that are assigned to mobile workers or technicians.

Mobile Worker or Technicians: 

Field Technicians will be provided with service appointments that will direct them to the specific location to conduct the service. They must then manage their work order and submit a report detailing the parts utilized and the service performed that day. The mobile worker or technician can then manage this by using timesheets on their mobile device. The parts and labor will be added to the work order, which will then be uploaded to the ERP system in the form of a work order, job, invoice, or sales order, depending on the customer’s needs. Salesforce Field Service empowers the technician to track hours by location and which parts were used; while Commercient will also SYNC timesheets to an import file that will be used by the ERP to generate payrolls and billing.

If your team is concerned about customer details changing and not reflecting in their ERP and Salesforce Field Service systems, SYNC has you covered. New customers can be created in the ERP through the SYNC and their personal information can be updated if anything changes.

Integration with Commercient SYNC for Salesforce Field Service

Phase 1:

  • Jobs
  • Work Order
  • User
  • Building
  • Account
  • Service Invoice
  • Service Invoice Line
  • Contact

Phase 2:

  • Customer
  • Contact
  • Building
  • Work Order
  • Daily Payroll

Conclusion

Salesforce Field Service is designed for your team to thrive in field service management. Abelian has guided a number of teams to a more streamlined and successful field service operation with countless implementations of Salesforce Field Service. If you are ready to partner with teams that truly understand field service business processes coupled with the skillset to deliver the best in configurations, reach out to us. Contact Abelian, a certified Salesforce Consulting partner, or Commercient, your Salesforce integration expert, and we will provide a free Salesforce Field Service consultation to kickstart your journey in conquering field service management. 

Field Service Management Resource

Integration: Key to Increase CRM User Adoption

CRMs are designed to manage the most valuable asset of a company—the customers. As a customer management tool with customization options, pipeline tracking, and reporting and dashboard features it makes sense why company executives would want to maximize the user adoption of their CRM. Not to mention, a CRM can be a significant financial investment, so naturally, companies want to be sure that employees are using a CRM to its fullest potential. 

But all too often it seems, an organization purchases a shiny, new CRM and people are hesitant to use it. It’s like a 16-year-old who is given a brand-new Ferrari on his or her birthday with all of the bells and whistles who doesn’t want to jump in the driver’s seat to take it for a spin around the block. 

So, why are employees so hesitant to climb in the driver’s seat of this beautiful Ferrari and push the pedal to the metal? Often, this is because the CRM focus is Executive-driven instead of Sales Team driven. The Executive team provided a Ferrari with amazing executive-focused reports and dashboards, but the Sales Team’s focus is very different, and to keep going with the analogy, they wanted a Lamborghini. They need the bells and whistles that are directly related to their daily responsibilities, which are quite different from the information Executives are looking for.

Now the question becomes, what bells and whistles do the Sales Team need? While a CRM provides amazing pipeline features, something that is missing is the historical data of a customer’s past purchasing habits. Before a Sales Team representative gets ready to reach out to a client about their next order, they may want to ask themselves these questions: what did they buy last time? What price did they buy it for? How many did they buy? Do we have that in stock? Did they pay for it yet? In an Executive focused CRM, a lot of this data is siloed away in other systems, like the ERP. Therefore, Sales Team members need to look in multiple systems for the information they want, or they have the additional step of reaching out to the accounting team for more information. But what if there was a better way?

There is! Tailor your CRM to the Sales Team’s needs with integration between the ERP and CRM. Give the Sales Team the Lamborghini they deserve with increased visibility of the information they need at their fingertips to quickly and independently drive their sales. 

It’s really a very simple solution to this common problem… If you want to increase user adoption, you need to provide access to the information the users need, and that is made possible through data integration.

For a robust and reliable ERP and CRM data integration solution contact Commercient today!

6 Decisions Most Companies Overlook When Implementing A New CRM

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Introduction

Making use of a CRM could be one of the most important decisions your company can make. With that being said, it can be quite a daunting task to do, and decisions can be overlooked when a company implements a CRM. That is why Commercient and Roycon have teamed up to make their customers aware of what can be overlooked when implementing a CRM and to ensure a successful implementation.

Here are the top 5 decisions that are overlooked when implementing a CRM.

1. A CRM Team

When implementing a CRM, companies may overlook the fact that when implementing a CRM you need a team to do so. This is to ensure that the CRM is used correctly. To avoid this happening, make sure you put together a team that includes the following:

  • An Executive Sponsor: The executive sponsor is someone who strongly believes in the power of the platform, and knows the value it will bring to the organization. They should be influential and be able to champion and support the project from conception through go-live, and beyond.
  • System Administrators: Your system administrators will be at the heart of your implementation. Not only will they need to have enough knowledge and understanding about Salesforce, but they’ll also need to have an in-depth understanding of your business processes, as well as the requirements from your managers and users.
  • Project Manager: A project manager will be a helpful resource to make sure that your project stays on track.
  • Power Users: Your power users will be helpful because they’re thinking about the end-user. They’ll make sure that the needs of the end-user, as well as management, will be met. Power users can also help with troubleshooting issues, and testing out solutions. Their feedback is very valuable in the process.
  • Trainers: Whether it’s a team or a singular trainer, they’ll be responsible for documenting processes and gathering and creating the appropriate materials to distribute to end-users. They’ll want to be thinking about adoption, how they will support your users, measure adoption, and encourage adoption.

2. Ongoing Maintenance 

You will want to have a plan to handle the ongoing maintenance  of the CRM after the project has been completed. (Salesforce post-implementation plan) Who will be the internal Product Owner responsible for training new hires and existing employees, regularly answering questions, building reports, and handling ongoing administrative tasks? Business processes change, strategies evolve and companies evolve, it’s important that you and your business have the resources to ensure your CRM can evolve with them.

3. Determine Expectations 

Before implementing a CRM, you have to ask yourself and your team, what are the expectations for using a CRM? Take the time to research and discover what you want to achieve and what your end goals are. It’s also worth considering the amount of work that needs to be put into the CRM implementation to ensure all of the processes are defined. In addition to that, requirements need to be clearly and concisely outlined, and all internal team members need to be aligned on the overall goals and scope of the project.

Your goals to achieve with a CRM can also include:

– Understanding your customer’s journey, to make better decisions.

– Improve your sales process.

– Making use of analytics to help gain insights

– To improve lead management

4. Importance of Data Quality

The data quality within a CRM is underestimated by many companies because of the work it’s going to take to transform the data.  This means it is going to require time and work to import old data into the new CRM as well as, how the new data will relate to other applications (if integration is included). If you need to clean your data, take a look at this article on best practices for cleansing Salesforce data.

5. Success Criteria

Without clear success criteria, it is hard to determine the primary areas to focus on during the build phase, in the event that requirements change or budgets shift. Therefore, when you are implementing Salesforce or any CRM you will want to have a clear way to measure the impact and ROI the project will have on your business.

6. Budget

This is to ensure that there is a proper budget for both licensing and implementation costs for a proper build-out. While allocating a budget can seem like you are putting in guardrails, it is meant to keep service implementations in line for expectation setting, and for validations to meet deadlines.

If you’re ready to start your Salesforce implementation be sure to download this Salesforce implementation checklist to make sure you’re set up for success.

Commercient is a leading data integration specialist, SYNCing ERP and Salesforce data with ease, giving companies a complete picture of sales, customers, and marketing. Roycon, a Salesforce implementation, and consulting partner has teamed up with Commercient to help educate businesses on decisions that can be overlooked when implementing their CRM. 

Contact Commercient or Roycon for a consultation today!

Closing More Deals With Effective Lead and Opportunity Tracking With a CRM

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In today’s world, with more employees working remotely — including sales, marketing, and customer service teams — keeping track of leads, opportunities, and sales can be a challenge. CRMs are designed to assist employees to keep track. There are numerous CRMs a business can choose from such as Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, and more.

With a CRM up and running, leads and customer data are available for anyone that needs it, no matter where they may be working (from home, in the field, traveling, etc.) This is especially beneficial for companies with a remote sales workforce, such as Miller Plastic Products, that worked with Plus+ Consulting and Commercient to connect Salesforce Professional with their ERP, JobBOSS. 

“To have that JobBOSS data in Salesforce via SYNC makes a world of difference for us trying to find things and comment on jobs,” said Tim Zeliesko, COO at Miller Plastic Products.

Read the full customer success story here.

To enhance the CRM experience, Commercient SYNC connects the CRM with more than 85 ERPs (Sage, Epicor, Infor, JobBOSS, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and others). This way, the sales team has access to ERP information such as orders, invoices, customer data, and more.

That’s why Plus+ Consulting and Commercient joined forces to help more companies to increase sales and provide outstanding customer service. 

How can a CRM help your sales team to keep better track of leads and opportunities, and close more deals? Read below.

Leads and Customer Data is More Accessible

When your ERP data is integrated with your CRM, it becomes easier to track, since it is stored in one place. It can be easily accessed by your sales, marketing, and customer service teams from any place, on any device, and at any time.

This helps to avoid lost time and increases productivity, as no employee will spend hours digging through redundant files to look up opportunities and close deals. The sales teams will be able to find information quickly, helping to build better customer relationships.

With the partnership between Commercient and Plus+, their mutual customer Miller Plastic Products benefitted from having access to their JobBOSS data directly in Salesforce. They can spend more time growing their sales.

Quoting Process Made Easier

Once your ERP data is integrated into your CRM, all the necessary information is there to effectively create a quote. A CRM can help your sales teams by creating quotes directly from opportunities, and can automatically be added in as a document that assists in streamlining your sales process.

In your CRM, each quote can be modified according to the opportunity, and once completed, it is then sent to the prospect or customer via email. Quotation management can also assist in keeping a history of quotes made, to keep a record of that data, in case needed in the future. Once the quote is completed, it can then be converted into an invoice to close a deal.

“It really helps when it gets down to the quoting aspect to quickly be able to pull up information from previous jobs and similar jobs,” explained Zeliesko. “Or if a customer ordered something a few years ago, and we want to see that historical data, we can get that pretty fast, as well.”


Communication

Good communication is important, in order for your business to grow, and having a CRM to track interactions between customers and employees will help achieve that. Allowing your CRM to track tasks can help with communication, linking departments, and helping everyone stay on the right path. It can result in improved sales, customer relationships, customer satisfaction, and efficiency.

But how does communication work in a CRM? First, it can track conversations that have attachments and messages in an accurate way, preventing mistakes. You will be able to discover any errors and/or adjustments that need to be made within your sales process. 

Second, employees are able to access the data in the CRM at any time or anywhere. This allows communication to take place over projects instantaneously.

And finally, communication in a CRM can improve customer experiences by seeing historical data, and finding leads to close deals.

“It’s definitely going to increase the efficiency of our sales, and increase communication and contact with potential customers and current customers,” said Zeliesko. “I see a lot less things slipping through the cracks with Salesforce.”

Projections and Forecasting

Having a CRM like Salesforce is especially important in order to have accurate forecasting and projections, since it can pick up on opportunities in order to close deals faster. In addition, forecasting can help a company or a sales team determine what is going to be sold in a week, month, or year, as it helps with identifying risks that can be handled before it is too late.

But how does a CRM do this? By using historical data within your CRM, it can help build trends to provide an accurate picture of what your business looks like. From there, sales strategies can be created with the given reports and a salesperson can provide quotas to their managers based on the projections from the forecasting.

In addition, historical sales data SYNC’d from JobBOSS to Salesforce helps the sales team at Miller Plastic Products to quote customers better. It also assists the company with projections and forecasting.

Conclusion

Commercient can close the gap in your CRM to assist your sales team by using the SYNC ERP and CRM data integration platform. Leads and opportunities will be easier to track and clients will get the most out of their data.


If you found these guidelines helpful, please contact us today to find out how we can help streamline your business.

2020 Top ERP and CRM Integrations

Technology has advanced and has made day-to-day operations for businesses more efficient and seamless. CRM and ERP data integration can be done without changing any coding in your existing software. Commercient’s integrations are quick and easy to implement and do not require ETL, mapping, or coding, which reduces implementation costs by up to 80%. Your businesses can integrate and make use of their data within 24 hours without interrupting any of your daily operations.

More industries have started harnessing the great benefits of Commercient SYNC ERP and CRM data integration solution, after implementing the Commercient SYNC solution some of the greatest benefits quoted from our customers are:

  • With Commercient SYNC, SealRyt has a 360-degree view of customers. “Just allowing salespeople to be able to see the ERP data that they call or email us for every day, right in Salesforce, is going to be a game-changer,” Chilton said
  • “Our team has access to ERP data at their fingertips,” explained Gary Paul, Regional Sales Manager, at Protectowire. “Prior to SYNC and Salesforce, we didn’t have any visibility on what was happening with the company.”
  • “Commercient’s pricing and support were the main keys, and the support has been pretty amazing so far,” said Kaushik Loke of Abelian “The entire setup of the SYNC was handled by Commercient, who was able to coordinate with the client to ensure al; the requirements were in place for their ERP and CRM integration.”

Take a look at how Commercient SYNC works

Here’s Commercient’s 2020 top ERP and CRM integrations:

Hubspot CRM & Sage Integration: Sage CRM and HubSpot each serve important functions for teams within an organization. The two systems are impressive by themselves, but combine their compatible attributes and you have an unstoppable sales, marketing, and services powerhouse. Pull lists directly into HubSpot from Sage CRM and never worry about the upkeep. Updates happen automatically as you make changes in Sage CRM, so your HubSpot list is always accurate. Want to know if a prospect signed up for a webinar? Have they visited a webpage? View your HubSpot customer activity within your Sage CRM platform for deeper marketing insights and more relevant sales calls.

Sugar CRM & Quickbooks Integration: Integrating Sugar CRM & Quickbooks helps businesses eliminate the timely and sometimes costly procedure of hopping between systems to gather all the data you require. Commercient SYNC closes the gap between your QuickBooks and Sugar CRM. SYNC data integration is simple, quick, and efficient. Your data is synced to both systems in real-time without the need for manual data entry, or the risk of human errors. SYNC harnesses the power of the cloud to provide more security, productivity, efficiency, and revenue. Having all of the information that’s important to your accounting team and sales department in one easy-to-access place will help your business become more efficient by simplifying everyone’s jobs, speed up the sales process, and provide you with – one truly powerful collaborative system.

Zoho CRM & Xero Integration: Integrating your Xero data with Zoho enables you to keep your business running on track while offering essential visibility to your sales and customer service teams. Through SYNC, your front-office teams can see everything happening behind the scenes including accounting data, contracts, business financial performance, and customer records. They can also feedback vital intelligence via Zoho to your back-office teams. Additionally, when you win a new business, SYNC automatically converts it to Xero in the form of a Sales Order, a Job, or a new product with a BOM. Use Commercient SYNC automation to align departments, maximize sales and marketing collaboration, and nurture better customer relationships.

Salesforce & Epicor 10 Integration: Epicor 10 is an ERP software that can be integrated into your CRM known as Salesforce. These systems are used to ensure that data integration runs smoothly. However, data within your Epicor 10 and Salesforce CRM systems can remain separated, which means your teams may miss crucial information needed to make important decisions. Therefore, SYNC can provide a cost-effective and practical way in order to make sure your operations run smoothly while enhancing visibility between your customer services, sales, front and back-office teams.

When your sales team is in the middle of a very crucial touchpoint throughout the customer’s journey, having mobile access to customer inventory, invoices, orders, products, and pricing information will assist in closing deals quicker. Your sales team must have up-to-date data during the interaction, not afterward. With effective integration, employees from various departments within your company will also find it easier to collaborate, because streamlined information keeps everyone in your business on the same page.

Talk to us and get started with seamless integration with SYNC!

Technology Trends Driving CRM Software

Technology Trends Driving CRM Software

In a world of fast pace moving technology, we might often wonder if there are faster and more secure ways of keeping your customers information in one place. There is a variety of software designed to keep up with customer relationships and their data, and this is when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) comes in handy.

You might be wondering what a CRM is – it is software designed to assist in improving business relationships by overseeing the interactions between potential customers and customers. CRM is there to accommodate processes within an organization, that can lead to increased sales and profitability, building strong relationships with customers and improving customer services. By having a CRM, all customer data is stored in one place in which you can see all their personal information, history, orders, or any obstacles they are experiencing.

CRM’s include many benefits such as:

  • Reliable reporting
  • Improved contact management
  • Teams across departments can collaborate more efficiently 
  • Improves customer loyalty
  • Optimizes marketing 

Since CRM and technology have been growing, there are certain trends that are driving the software to expedite daily business operations and make customer’s journeys flawless. What are the technology trends driving CRM software?

1. Using data strategically

When a company gains potential customers, numerous data is produced in the sales or marketing department, by having CRM the data is unified and stored in one place making it easier for employees to access the data to satisfy the customer’s needs.

2. Artificial intelligence 

Artificial intelligence with CRM is a necessity as manual tasks can become automated which will free up a sales department time. Chatbots are also implemented through artificial intelligence and are equipped to handle service requests by capturing the customer’s important information needed to handle those requests. Not even that, usage patterns of marketers can be identified and data can be collected, then analyzed for leads and to predict customer trends.

3. Making CRM Mobile

Salespeople are always on the go and by having a CRM, they can access the information anywhere and at any time they need to. They can access any leads or opportunities that can result in customer interactions being dealt with faster. This can assist in boosting productivity since all the data is organized and in one place, which means a salesperson can respond to requests straight away. It will also increase sales since a salesperson won’t have to spend time searching for information.

4. CRM Becoming Social

CRM allows interaction in real-time and having CRM that is social, customers can be engaged with on any social media platform. Since social CRM operates on social media platforms, there are techniques and technologies that allow businesses to supply real-time feedback and programs to support customers. In addition, brands can use social CRM to identify customers buying patterns and behavior.

5. Workflow automation

CRM’s are useful in helping businesses automate their workflow as it helps determine whether certain tasks should be done by a machine or a person to provide the best customer service. In a CRM there is task automation that provides guidelines on what actions to take for an employee to assist the customer. The task automation functions are based on information received from the profile of the customer, and the circumstances surrounding the business. Not only that but, by having task automation it assists in distributing work amongst employees or machines. It, therefore, assists salespeople in reducing their time on tasks,  duplications of work is avoided and each stage of the sales process is looked at to make sure the correct steps are taken.

6. Data integration – Third-party systems and IoT

CRM’s are designed to deal with large amounts of data from different platforms, the data is able to integrate more easily through third-party systems and the Internet of Things (IoT). Third-party systems operate through web services as it delivers, for example, cellular services, subscription services, or GPS’s. Since CRM operates in the cloud, there are protocols in which data can be retrieved through the web services. This type of cooperation provides seamless communication with other sources of information in order to provide efficient customer services. IoT also plays a role in the trend for CRM as there are devices that will be able to detect and send issues about products, maintenance issues, or inappropriate usage. 

7. Technology – ease of use

Since data can be stored in one place with CRM, it will be easier to find and analyze, as well as, it can connect with other technologies making the process of interacting with customers easier and more efficient with no data duplication.

Commercient provides an app called SYNC that can integrate your data between your ERP to your CRM or your CRM to ERP in real-time with no mapping, coding, or ETL. Since there are technology trends driving CRM software, Commericent can provide a 360-degree view of all your data within sales and marketing to satisfy your customer’s needs in an efficient manner. Using SYNC to integrate your data, it will all be stored in one place which prevents salespeople or employees from searching for data in numerous places in order to perform tasks according to the customer’s request, and duplication of work is prevented.

Contact us to start reaping the benefits of digital technology!

How to Save Customer Relationships in COVID-19 and Beyond

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced businesses to maintain and build relationships with consumers from a distance. With “the new normal”, businesses are now facing a challenge of generating sales during a period of extreme economic hardship while keeping the threats to life and livelihood that have altered consumer priorities and preferences in mind.

Businesses that cannot supply the demand of their stakeholders are struggling, some might even be closing their doors, while some are learning how to adapt and pushing past this crisis. The rapidly spreading of businesses shutting down has proven the advantage of digital technology and readiness also shown how software platforms enable work to be done remotely. Whether for telecommuting, product fulfillment, or service delivery, modern technology systems have helped optimized operations in the face of limited person-to-person contact to comply with social distancing.

Here are four ways to manage your customer relationships during and post a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic:

  1. Help Your Customers by Guiding Them Through the Changes: Stay ahead of the information curve. Set up robust media monitoring systems to stay educated on the outbreak. Offer your customers online learning opportunities. To keep your customer relationships strong during COVID-19, provide your customers with intelligence, guidance, and direction that makes your value delivery a seamless interaction. Stay on top of and ahead of all shifts, and provide regular updates on closings, delays, product changes, and promotions to keep your clientele informed and appeased. Learn what your audience needs and help them discover how your service will best help in these trying times.
  • Run webinars
  • Use media monitoring software
  1. Empathize and Communicate Like a Human: Provide employees with messaging to share with customers and partners. Be truthful about what you don’t know and avoid statements that may prove to be false in the coming weeks, whatever you say to your customers right now has to come from an honest place while still respecting their boundaries. Be mindful of how your service affects your clients, and how COVID-19 is affecting their lives and their own business.
  • Create a landing page dedicated to your clients during these trying times with FAQ’s, You can easily take a news plugin for this function.
  • I recommend enabling external comment functionality for improved feedback from customers.
  • Allow your customer service and sales teams to offer reduced prices or increased services during this time to customers.
  1. Keep What Works But Adapt Quickly: Some companies may have advanced their digitalization capabilities in the past few years. These companies are likely experiencing, only a moderate impact due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Shifting your operations to remote work via online conferencing and communication tools like Zoom and Slack, most projects can continue. 

During the disruption, operational challenges need solutions, cash management and liquidity need to be adjusted for the changes in demand. Communications and leadership must also be expanded into the digital space. If your company was not online before, it’s likely online now. In a fast-paced marketplace, shopping for new technology solutions may help some companies. Most companies’ issues resulting from the disruption due to worldwide efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 will need quick fixes and solutions, but for some, it might be the beginning of new problems.

  1. Leverage Technology to Generate Value for Your Customers:  In collaboration with marketing automation tools, you need to ensure they are integrated with channels where data can be pulled from. Once you have your data, it needs to be analyzed and segmented to an individual level and then utilized for personalized customer communication via marketing automation. Every part of this process should be talking to all the other parts for maximum efficiency, information, and results. Depending on your business your data collection channels can be CRM, Website, Email marketing platform, Mobile app, Event management tool, Social media, Online Store, or an ERP system.

Conclusion

During the pandemic having accurate data is key, it helps in making decisions based on your business’s day to day operations. Your goal as a business leader during this time should be to increase customer engagement and position yourself as a reliable, value-add partner who goes above and beyond during difficult times.

With an app like Commercient SYNCyou can grow your business from anywhere in the world using cloud software, automate sales, and become a fully digital business. Commercient’s SYNC’s application makes it possible to see your ERP data in your CRM and vice-versa since it can be used on any device. In addition to this, you will need a way to ensure that you have access to accurate, complete, and up to date data in your ERP and CRM.

Talk to us now to get on the digital business train!

Five Factors to Consider When Choosing a Small Business CRM

There comes a time when managing your client’s databases via thousands of spreadsheets, hopping from one system to another to find leads or customer data, or navigating amongst sales opportunities by checking scribbles on Post-it notes is no longer an option.

In order to effectively handle business operations and to improve the efficiency of your business, you need a robust customer solution where you can capture customer data, track incoming leads, segment customers into meaningful groups and create a structured workflow. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems work best for small businesses to maintain strong relationships across the board. In a CRM, all employees can record customer interactions with the company, create personalized messages for a targeted audience group, implement lead nurturing and lead scoring techniques, automate work processes, and much more.

Let’s take a look at factors to consider when picking a CRM software:

  • Define your business needs
  • Do I need to increase lead generation? Look for a CRM that delivers strong and agile lead generation software.
  • Are deals getting stuck in my pipeline? You’ll want a CRM with strong sales reporting, so you can identify the bottleneck.
  • Do I need to better access my contact data? Purchase a CRM that provides easy access to a 360-degree contact view.
  • Do I need to increase efficiency across my teams? Look for a CRM that can automate as many manual processes as possible.
  • Do I want easier access to insight around my results? Your best bet is a CRM that provides customizable dashboards.
  • Is my sales team unable to convert leads? A CRM that provides lead scoring so that you can qualify leads and identify the most sales-ready prospects will help.
  • Price of CRM for small business

Most CRM software providers offer a free trial and offer per-user pricing. Before making the final selection, it is advisable to take advantage of the free trial and consider the price your organization can afford on such a plan.

  • Ease of use/learning curve

Will your team be able to easily use the system? User-friendly CRM software is what your small business needs, so having to spend money on training might not be a great idea. Research reviews and find out if the CRM is easy to use and novice-friendly. 

  • Availability of customer support

You might have technical questions that only the software provider can answer-finding one that offers customer support without any delay is the key to success for any business. Your business needs complete and unhindered access to support that doesn’t allow geographical boundaries or time zones to come between you and support.

  • Marketing features

All-in-one CRMs include marketing automation software. The capabilities coming out of such software will let you do things such as:

  • Email marketing
  • Build landing pages and web forms
  • Score and qualify leads
  • Run multichannel marketing campaigns
  • Track the results of your efforts
  • And much more

An all-in-one CRM eliminates the need to spend more money on a stand-alone marketing automation solution, making it a great choice for small businesses.

It’s more than likely that you’re already using other software systems in various departments of your small business. Commercient SYNC, the #1 data integration platform can help you integrate your existing systems, such as your ERP and CRM solutions. A systems integration will ensure the right information is available to your organization.

Your sales team will have access to ERP data directly in CRM, such as customer information, sales history, invoicing, serial numbers, inventory, multi-ship to addresses, and much more. With two-way sync, new accounts and orders are integrated from CRM to ERP. This gives you a 360-degree view of sales and marketing.

Revolutionize the way your organization does business and expedite all processes by getting an advanced CRM system.

Revolutionizing Email Marketing Campaigns With CRM And ERP Data

The technology behind creating content based on your target market has drastically evolved, making the process efficient and easier. According to research conducted by Evergage, many marketers agree that personalization is the most effective strategy for retaining the customer.

Happy Customer

To successfully implement personalization strategies, you’ll need sufficient data and insights. Bringing data from different systems remains a challenge for about 55% of marketers – you can create unique content on websites or social media, but personalized content is most effective in email marketing campaigns.

Sending individualized emails is not rocket science; however, using personalized emails to enhance conversion rates requires more than adding “First_Name” to your introduction.

So, how can companies gather the needed data? For starters:

  • Doing business with them
  • Tracking visitors on your website
  • Sign-up forms on your website
  • Sales networks
  • Third-party apps

All this data is usually gathered inside your CRM system. Collecting basic information such as name and address can make your email marketing communication simple, but not as effective. Make a list of data fields you want to acquire from your customers – name, address, and contact numbers are a given, but you also want to be able to track their purchase history, product interest, contact history, etc.

How integrating your CRM and ERP system enhances your campaign.

The 55% of marketers that struggle to bring all the data from their ERP system into their CRM system can utilize third-party integration apps to gather all the data collected from marketing automation systems or accounting tools into their CRM system. The integration between the two systems allows you to create custom fields where necessary and capture all the information.

It is crucial to make sure this information is up to date and accurate. Addressing a contact with the wrong name won’t do your marketing and sales efforts any good. Make sure you provide a personalized link in each email where the recipient can alter their own contact information; this will help to keep your database error-free.

Finally, always remember to send yourself and your team members a test email to see if everything works before you set wheels on your email marketing campaign. With a test mail, you can confirm whether all conditional content or personalization tags are in proper working order. Good luck!

Ultimate Guide To Managing a Sales Team Remotely

Remote work is on the rise. As a manager, how can you track the performance of your sales team, in order to establish trends and predict business growth as more companies embrace working with remote teams? 

Besides sales metrics, managers and business owners need to keep in mind aspects such as sales processes, efficiency, communication, and especially the creation of a remote work culture that employees have embraced and are committed to do everything they can to make it work for everyone: bosses, coworkers, stakeholders and customers.

This is the time to leverage the capabilities and advantages of cloud-based technology. Data doesn’t have to be siloed, or resting in desktop computers that only a few employees have access to. Data is here to be used, to optimize everyone’s work and, most importantly, to make decisions that help your company grow. 

Commercient SYNC has helped inside and outside sales teams to have access to key customer data in different devices, manage leads and opportunities, optimize their time in the field, be more productive, close deals, and provide an enhanced customer service. 

The technology is there, and in order to get the most out of those investments and truly make a difference in the company, a new culture needs to emerge. This is a process, it’s true, but just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, no change can come unless managers and employees take the first step towards a culture that embraces innovation and seizes new opportunities and trends.

As a company, Commercient walked the talk using Zoom for its global team communication, and to provide embedded live support in its unique training environment. Besides the security of the system and the frictionless video conferencing for staff and client meetings, Commercient chose Zoom to connect clients to a support technician via video in real time, in its VR environment to provide customers with an interactive guidance to implement its integration technology.

“Everything in this [virtual training environment] runs within a web browser, so one of the requirements was that the solution had to be able to run in a web browser,” said Richard Jenkins, co-founder of Commercient.

This change has made a positive impact not only in client onboarding and interaction, but in how the whole organization, sales, customer service and support interact with each other as well.

As a manager, you may have some concerns about how to successfully manage your sales staff and projects remotely. Here are some of the most common concerns and tips to tackle each of them to ensure goals are met and your team is as engaged as in the office (if not more):

Tracking People’s Time

This is especially important if your employees are hired per hour. How can you make sure that they’re working the corresponding hours each day/week? There are time tracking softwares such as Screenshot Monitor, that will allow you to see how many hours your employees are working on projects, and compare it with the invoices they send or the contract terms. 

If your company doesn’t work on hourly contracts, but project based or according to specific results, project management software such as Trello, Monday or Asana can work to track how many of those goals are met: how many calls were made, how many new leads, customers served, and more.

These are some tools Kelly Michael Skelton, System Architect at Fiber Optic Center, recommends in a recent article with tips to work remotely. He also recommends setting up a clear schedule. “Blocking off certain hours of the day for different tasks / meetings can help. I also make checklists every day of what I need to accomplish and what I hope to accomplish,” he explains. According to Skelton, these tasks may spillover into the following day, but it is still helpful to visualize responsibilities.

Choose The Right People

Can you “trust” your staff to work as efficiently at home as in the office (if not more)? Research shows people tend to be and feel more productive at home, but as a manager, it can be a challenge to correctly “assess” your own employees could make it work from home.  

There are some attributes to consider, such as discipline, proactiveness, being a self starter, and efficient time and stress management. Since they’re “on their own”, it’s important they feel personally responsible for getting things done, and communicate constantly with managers and coworkers as necessary.

Creating this remote work culture requires reinforcing these attributes in your team, and making sure any new hires have experience or the potential to develop them as well. Although is not possible to accurately predict a potential new employee’s performance in the job interview, there are questions you can ask: 

-Have you ever worked alone/remotely?

-Have they worked or managed a team that is not at the same location/country?

-Do you consider yourself a self starter? Can you give an example?

-Do you have specific, consistent habits in your routine (exercising, getting up at the same time, yoga, reading, etc.)

-Have you used project management software or CRM systems? How comfortable are you with this technology?

Project Timelines, Deadlines And Communication

In order to make everything work efficiently and meet goals, setting up firm project deadlines is a must. Especially with your team working from home, leaving projects hanging or to complete “when there’s some time”, is not going to do you, your employees or your company any good.

Time is money, and projects without clear deadlines is money lost in the long -and maybe not so long- run. Time is not something people “have”, it is something people “create” according to their priorities. So make sure your team has those priorities clear, especially during stressful times.

Deadlines need to be defined according to detailed and realistic project timelines, so your team knows what needs to happen now, and next, until the whole project is successfully completed. This doesn’t only help with the logistics, but reduces uncertainty and the stress that comes with it, since everyone is clear on their role at each step.

This cannot happen without clear and constant communication. To ensure everyone is on the same page and there are no duplicate efforts, technology has made it a lot easier: email, chat apps, video conference software for meetings such as Zoom, and remote team collaboration tools such as Google Suite and Quip (Salesforce).

As they say it themselves, with Quip employees can be on the same page without being at the same place. It combines documents, spreadsheets, and chat, to help distributed teams to work together effectively. For now, until September 2020, Salesforce has made this technology available for free.

Underperforming Team Members

Is there any team member struggling to meet deadlines or achieve sales quotas? Opening communication channels is crucial to find out what’s going on, in order to make decisions that correct any mistakes or deficiencies in the systems the team is currently using.

What can an open, thoughtful conversation do in these cases? First of all, you can detect problems the team is facing that you maybe weren’t aware of: communication problems among team members, a tool not working correctly, and even non-cloud based solutions that cause double data entry, duplicate efforts, errors, and data not synced between systems. 

That’s one of the main benefits the manufacturing company Gecko Alliance, a Commercient’s customer, perceives by using Salesforce and connecting it with their ERP, Infor Visual, through SYNC. At first, the Sales team showed some resistance towards the use of a CRM and other systems, since they felt like a struggle having to dedicate time to enter data into Salesforce. 

That has changed now. “In the last sales meeting, they all said ‘we can’t live without it anymore. This is our true source of data, this is where everything we do is happening.’ It pushed Salesforce into the front end for them. They know that without SYNC they couldn’t be doing what they’re doing right now,” said Elodie Martinez, Salesforce Administrator at Gecko Alliance.

Other useful tools are help desks and online FAQs pages, that can provide answers and resolve issues for employees and customers.

Reward Your Thriving Team Members

How about your top performers, those that consistently meet deadlines and reach -or exceed- sales quotas? If they’re working remotely, an “employee of the month” card in the office might not be the best way to show recognition, but there are other ways to show them how valuable they are to the team and the company. 

Mentions in the company chat can go a long way to show someone he/she is appreciated, and there are other perks such as rewards to meeting specific goals, bonuses, training/certifications at no cost to the employee… To keep a remote sales team motivated and thriving every time, having good communication is key to help them not feel isolated. Whether they work at the office or remotely, they all need to feel they’re part of a company that is up to do something great.

With a remote sales team, watching salespeople’s interactions with leads and customers is not always a possibility. That’s why it’s important to have processes in place that provide direction and clarify what’s expected from them every step of the way.

Having systems talking to each other and data that, instead of siloed, is easily accessible from any device goes a long way in helping a team to thrive. Remote workers need tools to help them optimize their time and resources, and Commercient SYNC can be a great ally in creating an innovative culture in your company. Let’s talk about connecting your CRM to your ERP today.