Vtiger – Contact Management, Sales Automation, Marketing and Analysis Software.

If adding structure and developing a marketing strategy for use with your database is something that would benefit your business then this could be the solution for you.

A fully featured Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) that is open source. Meaning that you will not have any massive bills for software as it’s free.

However, it will need installation, configuration and customisation for your business. Please contact us here for more information..

vtigerCRM Product Overview

This section introduces the vtiger CRM Product and provides an overview of the many functional areas and features it provides. This section is primarily intended for business and IT managers to help them decide how to use the vtiger CRM product. We provide an in-depth listing of the many capabilities in the product. This information will be useful to you as you plan your CRM system.

vtiger CRM is an open source software product that enables you to quickly deploy a CRM system for your business. It implements many of the common CRM functions needed by small and medium sized businesses, to enable them to quickly and easily use CRM to enhance their business functions for sales, marketing and customer service and support. vtiger CRM is a widely used product with thousands of users in dozens of countries. It has a vibrant community of users driving the product forward, and contributing to it’s development. Over a million copies of vtiger CRM have been downloaded by our users. vtiger CRM is designed to be used over the web by multiple users as illustrated below. It runs on a Linux, Windows or Macintosh system, and can be accessed by multiple authorized users over the Internet using a web browser. Each user has access to the data and functionality according to their roles and ownership of the CRM data, and the policies you set for such access.

vtiger CRM provides a complete set of CRM capabilities for the CRM business functions. It enables automation and management of the following CRM and related functions:

• Sales force automation
• Marketing automation
• Customer Support and Service
• Inventory management
• Security management
• Calendaring
• E-mail integration

In addition, vtiger CRM provides many additional tools and features that help CRM users in a variety of related business activities. Many of these tools are mentioned in the feature list below, in the functional areas in which they are most used. As discussed in the earlier chapter, each business will need to choose which of the capabilities provided by the CRM software will be used in their business. Some businesses may start with a limited subset of the functions, or even a subset of their teams, and grow as the users get more comfortable with using the system. Alternately, a business may do a full scale deployment and use a wide range of the capabilities right from the get-go, with proper planning and execution.

Let’s look at the features provided in support of these business activities in more detail. Please refer to the CRM Basics chapter for an introduction to the functional areas and the terms used.

Sales Force Automation Features

ales Force Automation is an important CRM function that streamlines and enhances the operations of your sales team. Sales Force Automation includes many activities needed by your sales team including Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Account & Contact Management, Sales Pipeline Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Analytics, and others. vtiger CRM supports these different aspects of Sales Force Automation as outlined below.

Sales leads are a vital resource for sales and vtiger CRM offers sales teams a full range of lead management functions. vtiger CRM provides the following features to manage sales leads.

• Manage leads end-to-end (from creating leads to converting them into opportunities, i.e. Potentials)
• Capture leads directly from your Web site and transfer to vtiger CRM using vtiger CRM Forms
• Customize online lead form as per your organization requirements
• Import leads from external sources, such as Web downloads, trade shows, seminars, direct mail, and other types of campaigns
• Add multiple products to the leads
• Qualify leads to next stage based on information captured in lead details
• Convert leads into sales opportunities, accounts, and contacts with a single-click
• Lead conversion mapping for all the custom fields
• Create fully customizable lead reports
• Export leads to spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft® Excel®, OpenOffice®, and others for further analysis

Sales staff need to track and pursue every sales opportunity to maximize their success. Opportunity Management is another important sales function covered by vtiger CRM. Opportunities are called Potentials in vtiger CRM. vtiger includes the following features for Opportunity Management:

• Track all sales opportunities end-to-end in a sales cycle
• Associate opportunities with accounts, contacts, activities, and other modules to have a better visibility on the opportunities
• Generate quotes, sales orders, and invoices from the potentials
• Create fully customizable opportunity reports
• Export opportunities to spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft® Excel®, OpenOffice® and others to analyze the sales pipeline and quickly identify the bottlenecks if any

Customer Account Management is central to sales, and vtiger CRM provides a number of Account Management features:

• Track all accounts and related contacts, opportunities, cases, and other details from a common repository
• Specify parent-child relationships between accounts and their subsidiaries or other divisions
• Import accounts from external sources, such as ACT, GoldMine, and other applications
• Generate quotes, sales orders, and invoices for the accounts
• Track purchase history of the customers and analyze opportunities for up selling and cross selling
• Create fully customizable account reports
• Export accounts to spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft® Excel®, OpenOffice®, and others to analyze the buying patterns of a customers and set up loyalty programs
• Attach customer-specific documents to accounts for a quick reference in future

Contact Management is another key sales requirement, and vtiger CRM provides a number of Contact Management functions to ensure sales teams maximize the value of their contact lists.

• Track all contacts and related opportunities, cases, activities, and other details from a common repository
• Create the hierarchy of contacts within a company to have a better coordination while dealing with customers
• Import contacts from external sources, such as ACT, GoldMine, and other applications
• Export contacts to spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft® Excel®, OpenOffice®, and others for further analysis
• Synchronize contacts with Microsoft® Outlook®

Sales Activity Management is used to ensure the sales team’s work activities and tasks are managed for maximum productivity. vtiger CRM offers the following Activity Management features.

• Add all important customer-related e-mails to vtiger CRM for quick reference in future
• Store all the details of customer meetings and calls in a n intuitive calendar
• Manage daily tasks of the vtiger CRM users to have a streamlined sales process

Sales teams need good Reports & Dashboards to analyze and improve their sales efforts. vtiger CRM provides a number of tools in this area.

• Pre-build reports for sales force automation
• Sales pipeline analysis by stage
• Monthly Sales pipeline analysis
• Sales opportunities by lead source
• Drill-down the dashboards by time and opportunity stage

Marketing Management Features

vtiger CRM provides Campaign Management, E-mail Marketing, Online Lead Forms, Product Management specifically useful for your organization-wide marketing requirements. The following outlines many of the marketing management features offered by vtiger CRM.

Campaign Management is an integral part of marketing and vtiger CRM offers a number of features to manage and monitor your marketing campaigns.

• Manage organization-wide marketing campaigns
• Track campaign effectiveness based on customer data
• Execute personalized mass mailing campaigns for the campaigns

vtiger CRM supports E-mail Marketing functions as outlined below.

• Manage mailing lists based on existing data related to leads, accounts, and contacts
• Create HTML templates directly from the system
• Send mass E-mail campaigns from the selected mailing lists

A number of Lead Management functions are provided in vtiger CRM to help in marketing efforts to your leads.

• Capture leads directly from your Web site and transfer to vtiger CRM
• Customize online lead form as per your organization requirements
• Import leads from external sources, such as Web downloads, trade shows, seminars, direct mail, and other types of campaigns
• Qualify leads to next stage based on information captured in lead details

vtiger CRM provides other marketing-related modules, such as Calendaring, Contact Management, File Attachments, etc. to help streamline your marketing efforts.

Customer Service/Support Features

vtiger CRM provides enterprise quality Customer Support & Service features, such as Ticket Management, Knowledge Management, Customer Self Service Portal, Reports, and Support Statistics specifically useful for your organization’s customer support force. You can also use other customer support-related modules, such as Products, Activity Management, Calendar, Contact Management, and so on.

Ticket Management is a set of functions related to handling customer support issues, queries, and other service requests. A trouble ticket is the term used for a support request from a customer. vtiger CRM provides the following Ticket Management features.

• Track all trouble tickets related to customers end-to-end as per organization’s customer support process
• Associate trouble tickets with accounts, contacts, products, and other modules to have a better visibility on the trouble tickets
• Create fully customizable list views as per Support person’s requirement
• Provide solutions to the trouble tickets submitted through Customer Portal
• Automatically update the status of tickets through E-mail
• Create fully customizable ticket reports
• Create customer support statistics to help the managers to plan for a better customer support process.
• Create custom fields as per your organization requirements

In order to help customers quickly find answers to their queries and support issues, as well as help support staff find answers more quickly, vtiger CRM provides a Knowledge Base with the following features.

• Manage product-wise Knowledge Base in a centralized location for a better resolution of trouble tickets within least possible time
• Associate Articles with trouble tickets and products
• Provide public access to the Knowledge Base only after approval
• Maintain up-to-date Articles in vtiger CRM based on customer suggestions & comments

vtiger CRM enables you to provide your customers with a Customer Self Service Portal, which is a web portal that your customers can log into and report and track issues, and get answers from the knowledge base. The vtiger CRM Customer Portal provides the following features.

• Customizable and can be deployed easily on your Web site
• Secured access to the Customer Self Service Portal
• Search Knowledge Base articles before submitting trouble tickets
• Constantly improve the quality of Knowledge Base by threaded discussions
• Notify trouble ticket update to the customers through E-mail
• Follow up the trouble tickets by threaded discussions
• Update customer profiles (limited functionality)

Inventory Management Features

vtiger CRM supports more complete sales cycle management by integrating Inventory Management functions, such as Products, Price Books, Vendors, Sales Quotes, Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, and Invoices with CRM modules, such as Leads, Accounts & Contacts, and Opportunities. Using vtiger CRM you can achieve the seamless integration between pre-sales and post-sales activities in a single application.

vtiger CRM provides a Products Management module to capture and use product information, including pricing, so that your sales team and other staff can apply this information in their sales, marketing, support and other customer related activities. the vtiger CRM Products Management module provides the following features.

• Manage organization-wide product information
• Associate products with other modules for a better 360 degrees view
• Import product details from other applications
• Create custom product fields as per your organization’s requirements
• Attach product-specific documents, such as collateral, license agreements, and others
• Upload product images for easy identification
• Export product details to spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft® Excel®, OpenOffice®, and others for further analysis
• Create Price Books as per customer segment and associate products with Price Books
• Procure products from the selected vendors list

vtiger CRM provides functionality to anable sales teams to easily generate sales quotes for customers. The vtiger CRM Sales Quote module provides the following features.

• Track outstanding quotes from the quotes list view
• Add line items to the quotes and update subtotal, taxes, adjustments, and grand total amounts
• Select different prices for the same product as per customersegment
• Create printer-friendly Sales Quotes and deliver to the prospect customers through inbuilt E-mail service
• Create Sales Order or Invoice with a single click from the Sales Quote
• Avoid duplicate work by dynamically displaying the Billing and Shipping addresses of the prospect
• Display quotes related to accounts under the related list
• Customize Sales Quote fields as per your organization’s requirements

Once a sale is made, Order Management kicks in, which is a set of functions to ensure the order is properly serviced and fulfilled for the customer. vtiger CRM provides a number of features in support of Order Management.

• Streamline organization-wide procurement and fulfillment processes with integrated approach of vtiger CRM
• Track outstanding orders from the orders list view
• Procure products from the best available Vendors/Manufacturers/Resellers list in vtiger CRM
• Manage up-to-date stock position by seamless integration between order fulfillment and available stock in your warehouse
• Customize Purchase Order (PO) and Sales Order (SO) fields as per your organization requirements
• Avoid duplicate work by dynamically displaying the Billing and Shipping addresses of the prospect while creating orders
• Add line items to the Orders and update subtotal, taxes, adjustments, and grand total amounts automatically
• Create printer-friendly Order (PO/SO) and deliver to the Vendors/Customers through inbuilt E-mail service
• Once the Sales Order is accepted, create Invoice from Sales Order with a single click
• Periodically notify the stock position to the parties concerned in your organization so that stock is always available to fulfill the outstanding orders

vtiger CRM also provides a set of functions to support generation of Invoices. Invoices for customer billing are a critical step once a customer order has been fulfilled.

• Track outstanding invoices from the Invoices list view
• Create printer-friendly Invoices and deliver to the customers through inbuilt E-mail service
• Customize Invoice fields as per your organization requirements
• Add line items to the Invoice and update subtotal, taxes, adjustments, and grand total amounts automatically
• Customize Invoice fields as per your organization requirements
• Avoid duplicate work by dynamically displaying the Billing and Shipping addresses of the customer while creating invoices
• Associate invoices with the General Ledger account for hassle-free Book Keeping

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