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I'm new to CRM. I've been tasked with deploying it for our (small) company. I have a tech background, and to be honest, know very little about sales.
From all the research I've done, it seems most of these CRM systems deploy some sort of workflow. Seems a common one is Lead -> Contact / Account -> Opportunity -> Sale.
So in my head I'm thinking about how this might work from the sales people perspective.
Leads come in from multiple places. In all the CRMs I've been reviewing, it's pretty easy to enter and see a list of leads. To me the next obvious step in the workflow is to present a sales person with a list of leads (usually their own generated leads) that meet certain criteria (new leads, leads that are due for followup, etc), and be able to go down the list and call them. So why is it that none of these CRM systems allow you to easily add a call from the lead or contact page? It just seems like an obvious workflow, but instead (in the case of espoCRM as well as others) you have to "add call" then look up the person you are calling. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
The same holds true for followups with contacts.
Please tell me I'm totally missing something! I just seems all these CRM systems just act like glorified address book instead of being a tool to optimize the workflow of the sale people.
I will say I am here because I tried SuiteCRM and found the layout to be poor and not intuitive. I decided to try Zurmo, the UX was much better than SuiteCRM but clearly the project is dying and I'm already running into several major bugs and their forums are dead and support from the dev is nonexistent. But using the EspoCMR demo, it still leaves me thinking "How does this really help our sales people sell?" I feel I must be missing something.
I'm willing to do the research, but point me in the right direction. I will be trying out Espo in the mean time. The Asterisk integration is enticing..
-Mike
From all the research I've done, it seems most of these CRM systems deploy some sort of workflow. Seems a common one is Lead -> Contact / Account -> Opportunity -> Sale.
So in my head I'm thinking about how this might work from the sales people perspective.
Leads come in from multiple places. In all the CRMs I've been reviewing, it's pretty easy to enter and see a list of leads. To me the next obvious step in the workflow is to present a sales person with a list of leads (usually their own generated leads) that meet certain criteria (new leads, leads that are due for followup, etc), and be able to go down the list and call them. So why is it that none of these CRM systems allow you to easily add a call from the lead or contact page? It just seems like an obvious workflow, but instead (in the case of espoCRM as well as others) you have to "add call" then look up the person you are calling. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
The same holds true for followups with contacts.
Please tell me I'm totally missing something! I just seems all these CRM systems just act like glorified address book instead of being a tool to optimize the workflow of the sale people.
I will say I am here because I tried SuiteCRM and found the layout to be poor and not intuitive. I decided to try Zurmo, the UX was much better than SuiteCRM but clearly the project is dying and I'm already running into several major bugs and their forums are dead and support from the dev is nonexistent. But using the EspoCMR demo, it still leaves me thinking "How does this really help our sales people sell?" I feel I must be missing something.
I'm willing to do the research, but point me in the right direction. I will be trying out Espo in the mean time. The Asterisk integration is enticing..
-Mike
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