Another CRM tool for Nonprofits

Here is a quick article contributed by Nicolas Ganivet of cividesk, http://www.cividesk.com.

Managing your non-profit organization with CiviCRM

CiviCRM is a web-based, open source, CRM software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations. It is used throughout the world by thousands of non-profits, some very large such as Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders or the New-York State Senate, but mostly smaller organizations with minimal staff and financial means. As open source software, CiviCRM is free to download and use without any software licensing costs.

CiviCRM covers the full spectrum of non-profit administration including contact, staff and volunteer management, fundraising, event management, membership management, email marketing, reporting, case management, surveys and petitions, etc. As a web-based software, it provides online forms for donations, event registration and membership sign-up including online payments. CiviCRM can be fully integrated within your existing Drupal, WordPress or Joomla website for a seamless user experience.

Whatever the size and purpose of your organization, you ought to consider CiviCRM in order to gain efficiencies in your day-to-day operations, develop deeper and more meaningful interactions with your constituents, and ultimately increase the impact of your organization.

You can gain more insight into CiviCRM and how it would fit with your organization by attending a 2 hour overview session delivered in Denver on August 21 (registration at http://www.t4tcolorado.org/calendar/event/1755). Ample time will be available during this session for answering your questions and sharing experiences.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Zoho CRM, Simple, Powerful, and Affordable

Recently I have done several transfers and initial set ups in Zoho CRM.  There are three key reasons for this, it's simple, powerful, and affordable. 

Zoho has simple, straight forward appearance that when contrasted to other CRM systems allows it to be easily navigated, customized, and most importantly adopted.  This combined with simple set up interfaces that allow customization at various levels provides a clear advantage over other CRM systems. 

Powerful tools come standard with Zoho, including mass emailing, web to lead / contact, case management, invoicing, workflow, and pricing tools at most paid levels.  Combine this with a wide range of tools that can be integrated from other Zoho services and integration with Google Apps and you have a enterprise level system. 

Cost is not a problem with Zoho, it is affordable.   Zoho's nearest competitor based on functionality is Salesforce.   For a Salesforce instance with similar functionality with Zoho the price is about $60 per user a month.  With Zoho the cost is about $20 a month, with the ability to add great functionality like Mail and Project management for the incremental price of between $3 - $5 a month.  

If you would like to find out more about Zoho CRM, click here, Zoho CRM or feel free to contact me. 

How we help nonprofits

One of the most important things that we value is the benefit that nonprofit organizations provide to our community.  With this in mind we provide a diversity of tools to help nonprofits succeed in their missions,

-          A discount on our hourly service and contract service rates.

-          Provide access to low and no cost software and services available only to nonprofits

-          Design, develop, implement and train individuals and organizations on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) / Operations Management Systems (OMS/ERP).

-          IT support from simple desktop support to local and external network support.

Some examples of nonprofit support that we have provided are,

-          Setting up a nonprofit association and membership website for a 250 member organization.   This system allows a full featured website with private member area, social media integration, and automated membership processing.  This includes payment processing; QuickBooks file output, and training materials with video tutorials. Volunteers now spend only 2 hours a month administering the system, rather than the previous 12 hours.

-          Development of a Salesforce.com system to track organizational Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), client record tracking with a full history of all client interactions incorporating audit features, and the ability to expand the database capabilities as the organization grows. The system resulted in a reduction of 32 hours of processing on a quarterly basis and allows the organization to meet their grant reporting requirements in a matter of minutes through automated reporting.

-          An IT audit that resulted in the rationalization of a current organizations infrastructure.  This included implementation of a virtual PBX phone system, remote access system, and automated backup.   Software was updated using nonprofit discounted licenses.  This saved the nonprofit in excess of $750 a month.

If you want to find out more about how we help nonprofits in metro Denver, contact up today at 303-997-2719.

CRM today Part 3 of 3 The unrealized benefits of CRM software

As discussed in the previous blog posting there can be significant challenges in utilizing CRM software.  To assess the true value of CRM software you need to examine the benefits as well. 

When looking at CRM software, are you getting the full view of the benefits?  Some of the traditional benefits assigned to CRM software are,

-          Shared Information

-          Improved Customer Service

-          Better marketing

-          Better communications

-          Easier administration

When you look deeper into the benefits of CRM software, it becomes apparent that the benefits vary based on level of implementation, integration and utilization.  More often than not, some of the benefits of CRM systems remain unrealized, for example,

-          Reduction in infrastructure requirements.  Digitize your customer files and documentation, less file cabinets and office space.  If you have integrated communications, file sharing, and information sharing with your CRM system, do you even need a office?

-          Social Media integration.  With systems like Batchbook, Chatter and other CRM social media integration tools, your customer profiling can take on a whole new dimension.   With updates and workflows triggered through social media updates, your ability to tailor your sales and operations process takes on a whole new dimension.

-          Adaptive sales processes.   With data from the CRM software you can establish your most attractive vertical markets.   After these are identified you can quickly tailor a sales process to exploit the market and combine it with semi customized marketing campaigns, and then tailor your CRM system to report the outcome. You might ask “What is the big deal, I do this every year.” With a well implemented CRM system you can shift your marketing efforts and structure in a period of days, not months or years.

CRM today Part 2 of 3 The challenges of CRM Software

With the brief overview of CRM software provided in the prior blog post in mind, lets move on with the next series installment,  the challenges of CRM software.  With the broad scope of this article series, the challenges that with will view are equally as broad, but to the same extent common amongst all most all CRM software systems.  

Here are the challenges most common with CRM software, 

1) Cost / Benefit or Return On Investment on the CRM software.   With all software implementations there typically is a evaluation process to determine the Cost  / Benefit and ROI, usually able to utilize solid tangible figures.   With CRM software there is the challenge of quantifying the value of the intangible improvements in customer relationships, customer acquisition, and customer retention prior to the implementation of the software.  Surveying and other tools can be used post implementation to quantify these aspects, unfortunately it's too late to add this to the implementation evaluation. 

2) Current technology infrastructure.   While this is becoming less of an issue, there are still challenges with integrating CRM software into existing software and hardware infrastructure.  Some examples of this are legacy or proprietary systems, such as accounting or inventory management not having the appropriate interface to integrate into a CRM system.   This can result in reduction in the the effectiveness of the CRM software as there is a limited sharing of information between.  CRM Software thrives on having the ability to fulfill all of the customer needs, and access to all customer data is imperative to addressing this.

3) Stakeholder adoption.  This is by far the greatest challenge with CRM Software today.   With even the best planned, supported, and implemented CRM, stakeholder adoption can be a challenge.   Time and time again the best designed and implemented CRM system fails to live up to expectations due to a failure in the stakeholders adopting the habits, tools, and business processes that CRM systems require.  There are many ways to better engender stakeholder adoption, some examples are,

a) Change is hard, accept that it will take longer that you think to get the results that you hope for.  Plan for a supplementary adoption plan.

b) Provide appropriate incentives to aid in adoption.   Building incentives in to the adoption plan are great, but if you fail to forecast the outcomes, even the best planned incentive will result in failing to meeting adoption expectations.

c) You might want to adopt a phased implementation model that allows you to implement the most prepared stakeholders first.   With a successful first step implementation this allow you to leverage this success to other stakeholder groups. 

Do not let these challenges cloud your view of CRM software.  In the next installment of the blog series I will review some of the emerging advantages of CRM software.