Buying software for your business is hard. Determining whether the system you purchase will fit your team’s workflow is a major consideration. Ultimately, you want to know if the use of the system will catch on. If your team ends up fighting the software or using workarounds, user adoption is less likely.
Many software platforms are configurable, allowing you to change options, wording, and workflows. This can help to dramatically reduce the shock of changing systems – as your team’s vernacular, documents, options, and data are all represented in the new system. This is not to say that switching software will not be a big change, or challenging, but that configuration steps can help to lessen the difficulty of the transition.
To expand on the idea of software configuration, we’ve outlined some of the common configuration steps that SalesChain’s onboarding team performs for every customer that signs on.
CRM Drop-Down Selections
When you’re learning a new software system, it can feel a bit like learning a new language! Some terms which reference common vocabulary can vary in different platforms, such as referring to a prospect for sale as a lead vs an opportunity.
It can be a lot easier to adopt a new software system if the terms and options in drop-down menus are familiar. Many CRM companies, including SalesChain, allow the setup of custom drop-down items, helping maintain some consistency and familiarity in the everyday terms your business team uses.
For example, we allow the configuration of different action types when a user creates or completes a task in our system. Your business can designate a certain call you’ve made as a “First Contact” or “Touch Base” rather than using the default “Call.” However detailed you want to get, whatever vernacular you use, this configuration step can help users feel more at home in the system.
In SalesChain, some drop-down options will populate automatically as your system evolves. For example, users who can see multiple sales reps in the system (managers, admins, owners, etc.) will see the “Sales Rep” drop-downs evolve automatically when a new user is added.
Your Marketing Data
Implementing a customized CRM platform can synchronize the efforts of your sales and marketing teams. To make this symbiosis work, there are a few terms that can be configured in our system to align language and make the handoff as smooth as possible.
- Lead Sources
- Lead Statuses
- Lead confidence tiers
- Competitive vendor, lease, and equipment tracking
Of course, if you have sources for this information like EDA Data or ZoomInfo, we offer import tools and integrations to help with the continued data transfer process.
Case Study: Delivery Workflow Automation
In this video testimonial, Crystal Manning talks about how SalesChain’s delivery workflow management tools cut KDI’s DSO in half.
Your Quoting Fields
If you’re an owner or a sales rep in the heat of pricing a deal, you know that it can be very frustrating to not know where to find a certain field or to not know the name by which it is referenced.
While some quoting tools make it very difficult to customize pricing forms or lock you into certain terminology, SalesChain has made it a goal to make our order pricing fields as customized as possible. Whether it’s special credits, miscellaneous fees, or a delivery charge, we can add or subtract fields from our pricing screen that suit your business’ needs and terminology.
This is for the simple reason that every one of our customers does deals a bit differently, and we want to make sure that you can do your transactions in the way that makes the most sense for you.
Here are some examples of the customizable parameters that already exist within the SalesChain platform:
- Manufacturer Credits/Price Levels
- Your catalogs and pricing
- Service rates
- Markups
- Choices of manufacturers and distributors
Your Document Templates
Any document generation system should be robust enough for you to import your own document templates. If you have to switch your entire paperwork library while also dealing with the switch to a different software platform, the changes in your business can get a bit overwhelming for your team.
We built SalesChain’s document generation system with flexibility in mind. We help our customers import their templates for:
- Proposals
- Lease Agreements
- Order Forms
- Service (Maintenance) Agreements
- Equipment build sheets
- Lease buyout acknowledgment letters
- And more
This can help make your team’s transition easier since the documents they’re using will already be familiar, and, as a bonus, can help make your branding more cohesive.
Your Workflow Processes
After the prospecting and order processes are done, your fulfillment automation system needs to reflect the workflow steps that your team follows. SalesChain can help you to design customized delivery workflows that best represent the working steps needed to complete each type of product or service that your business offers. For example, fulfilling an order for two copiers involves different steps than providing IT services for a law firm. Each step of the process may be defined with characteristics that include:
- Sequence of work
- Dependencies
- Assignment of responsibility
- Notifications of assignment and completion
- Trigger dependent steps
20 years of industry experience led to this
It is frustrating to try and force these workflow steps into a cookie-cutter business automation platform that does not meet your needs.
SalesChain’s corporate culture and philosophy have been molded over the course of 20 years of experience in the office technology industry. The fundamental difference in philosophy that sets SalesChain apart is: We do it for you! We have developed customizations within the CRM and Business Automation space already so that you do not need to spend time making them yourself or invest the resources in an employee to manage them.
But our commitment to you does not end there. If there is a chart, report, or other custom feature that we do not already have, we are happy to collaborate with you to make that addition. The key to the success of our product is that we are industry-focused, providing you with customizations that make sense for the products you sell.