Sales

How to Establish Your Automation Platform

OpenView

December 9, 2010

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of out­bound prospect­ing built into your com­pany.  This series will walk through the process, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.  In the next few posts, I’ll be releasing the contents of a quick start guide for the outbound prospecting manager to use to attain success during this process.

Automate!

Your automated platform, or sales CRM, is the place where you should store all of the data pertaining to your outbound initiative and track it on a daily/weekly/quarterly basis.

There are many different options on the market, so be sure to evaluate the following:

 

  • Ease of use/user adaption
  • Accessibility
  • Customizability
  • Analytics and reporting capabilities
  • Integration capabilities
  • Customer service/available resources
  • Security level
  • Costs

Also consider whether you want a SaaS CRM platform, an on-premise system, or an open-source system.

 

OpenView recommends a SaaS CRM, and we advise our portfolio companies to consider Salesforce.com. Why SaaS? Because it offers outstanding accessibility, customer support, upgrades, and control.

In addition to Salesforce.com, other CRM options include Aplicor, Entellium, Microsoft Live CRM, RightNow, SugarCRM, Anteil, Compier, Daffordil, Vtiger, SAP, Siebel, ACT!

Additional resources:

Learning the Ropes: New to CRM? All Things CRM

CRM Platform Selection and Implementation Best Practices, Hitachi Consulting

5 Best Practices for CRM Customization, All Things CRM

Next week, I’ll be posting the next portion of our quick start guide which will cover some helpful ways to to craft your target personas.

Photo by: Robin Rocker