Supply Chain Management Software
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| Customer Portal | Contact | Follow ABS on Twitter | 0845 160 6162 | |
The Contact Relations Management (CRM) module is fully integrated with the other OpenLogistix modules such as Sales Order Processing, Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger.
It provides the ability to record events and actions against a company or individual and ensures that nothing ‘slips through the cracks’, it speeds the process of getting the appropriate letter to the appropriate person, it can be used by anyone who interacts with any contact of the organisation and it can provide a single point of access and single ‘version of the truth’ for all users.
There are three prime elements that make up the CRM module, the types of organisation the company has a relationship with, the contacts within those organisations and the events recording correspondence and any other interaction between the company and the organisations it is dealing with.
An unlimited number of user defined analysis types can be recorded against each organization to record information. In commercial use this would include analysis types such as sector, type, employee band and turnover band, in the education sector it can be used to store analysis by funding source, student type or lecturer, while in the not for profit sector analysis of donors may be recorded. On the procurement side analysis may be used to record type of supplier, type of service or product supplied and approved status.
There is then no limit to the number of contacts that can be recorded against each organization and the CRM module enables data to be stored about each individual using user defined fields which can be used to record data such as status or data of birth and pre-defined fields to record information such as telephone numbers and email address.
Prospects can be converted into customers and in so doing the system can automatically create the account in Accounts Receivable (Sales Ledger). The system then enables full drill down between CRM and Accounts Receivable to review the account details, balances and transactions. In the same way prospective suppliers can be converted to suppliers and the Accounts Payable (purchase ledger) account can be automatically created, enabling full drill down to financial details from within CRM.
The heart of the module is the user defined event logs that identify different types of log, such as telephone call, meeting, letter, quotation or sales order with various dates such as ‘to do’ and ‘respond by’, each event has user defined notes capabilities and the ability to store an electronic document. Every log is user, date and time stamped.
Quotations and sales orders can be generated from within CRM, successful quotations can also be converted to sales orders, and the history of quotations, sales orders, products sold and at what price can all be viewed from within CRM.
In order to maximise the benefits of the system, the following Microsoft Office links are available as standard:
| Microsoft Outlook™ Tasks | To provide task management and reminders |
| Microsoft Outlook™ Contacts | CRM can automatically create a new Outlook contact, and maintain contact details in Outlook |
| Microsoft Outlook™ Email | The system is integrated with Microsoft Mail for sending emails |
| Microsoft Word™ | The CRM module utilises word with mail merge for the generation of outgoing letters and mailshots |
| Microsoft Excel™ | All enquiry screens can be copied directly into Excel |
As an integral part of the module is the ability to set up, categorise, run and monitor various campaigns by mail-shot is available, with the facility to indicate hit rates and percentages and to report results. Segments can be based on the user defined organisation analysis to filter by search criteria such as turnover, business type or contact type and combined with Mail-merge letters/brochures.
By extending past the usual bounds of Customer Relationship Management to encompass customers, suppliers and other organisations dealt with, integration between the finance system and CRM and active contact management can bring significant benefits: