16.1
What is MX-Contact Adding to Outlook
Essentially
MX-Contact takes advantage of Outlook and Exchange’s
powerful facilities while at the same time overcoming most
of the previously identified limitations of Outlook. Amongst
other things, MX-Contact adds the following
to Outlook:
- Centralised
“database” on Public Folders.
- Additional “Out-of-the-box”
CRM functionality (e.g. Companies, Opportunities, Products/Services).
- Unlimited additional
user-defined/customisable folders.
- Ability to seamlessly
link items in one folder to those in another either directly
(one-to-many) or via an Association folder (many-to-many),
so as to create a single view of all Customer “Relationship”
information.
16.2
The MX-Contact Base System
The
Base System comprises the “contact management” functionality
of MX-Contact (as opposed to the more advanced “CRM” functionality).
The Base System allows you to maintain details of companies,
contacts, groups (of companies and/or contacts), and the interactions
with these companies and contacts, namely Appointments (Calendar),
Tasks, Journals, E-Mail and Documents. These are described
in more detail below:
16.2.1
Companies
The
Companies folder is used to store the company name,
address(es), web site address, multiple phone numbers, and
any other profiling information that relates to the company,
such as industry, type or status.
The
Company form records the common information required to identify,
locate and categorise a company, on both “General” and “Profile”
tabs:
The
Profile tab contains user-defined fields that are used
to store information that will help you to profile the companies
in your database. These fields can contain picklists that
will ensure that all users select from the same list when
entering information.
16.2.2
Contacts
The
Contacts is where a listing is kept of all the contacts
that one deals with, both individuals and company contacts.
Multiple contacts can be added per company. All the standard
demographic and personal information can be maintained per
contact, including the person’s name, address(es), e-mail,
multiple phone numbers, and any other profiling information
that relates to the contact, such as type or status.
The
Profile tab contains user-defined fields that are used
to store information that will help you to profile the contacts
in your database. These fields can contain picklists that
will ensure that all users select from the same list when
entering information.
16.2.3
Associations/Relationships
MX-Contact
incorporates the facility to link one item with an infinite
number of other items, this establishing the “relationships”
that define a Customer “Relationship” Management System. So
a contact can be linked to any number of companies, opportunities,
journals, documents, orders etc.
The
Association folders are used to link multiple company, contact,
user and team records that are linked or related to a particular
company, contact etc. Association Folders allow many-to-many
relationships to be created between items. That is, one company
can be linked to many contacts, but likewise one contact can
be linked to many companies. These association tabs appear
in the bottom section of the Company and Contact Forms (General
Tab).
16.2.4
Groups
The
Base System of MX-Contact also contains a folder called Groups.
This is for recording details about groups of companies and/or
contacts. A Company Group for example would be a collection
of companies all belonging to the same Holding/Parent Company.
A Contact Group is a collection of contacts linked by some
common bond, such as a family unit, a committee, board of
directors, etc.
16.2.5
Calendaring
Users
continue to schedule Meetings and Appointments in their personal
Calendar in the same way that they’re used to, except that
that they have the additional facility to link an appointment
to a Company, Contact, etc.
The
only visible difference when scheduling an appointment are
the links to various companies, contacts and users that are
seen both in the Contacts field at the bottom of an
Appointment form and in the Links dropdown on an additional
toolbar that MX-Contact adds at the top of the form:
These
linked appointments are seamlessly copied to the MX-Contact
Public Folders so that anyone in the organisation can see
who has scheduled activities with various clients.
16.2.6
Task
Management
Likewise
users continue to utilise their Outlook Tasks to manage not
only personal to-do’s but also tasks that reflect actions
that need to be taken for a particular company or contact.
These tasks are still stored in the responsible user’s Personal
Tasks folder but a copy is (automatically) maintained in the
MX-Contact Tasks folder so that Account Managers can
monitor who is doing what for each client.
16.2.7
Contact History/Activity Tracking (Journals)
Journal
Entries record details of events and activities that have
taken place with a particular Company or Contact. They can
also be linked to any other relevant item (Opportunities,
Events, etc.)
16.2.8
Document
Management
Any
kind of document (Word, Excel, pdf, jpg, etc.) can be linked
to a Company, Contact, Opportunity, etc. so that anyone can
track the correspondence relating to a customer/supplier.
Existing
documents can either be linked or attached to a document item.
If
linked, the documents are stored on the Windows File System
either in a central folder or in multiple folders as required.
If
the documents are stored as attachments they are stored in
the Documents folder of MX-Contact.
Documents
can be generated using the Create New Document tab.
The
name, address, etc. is inserted automatically into the Word
document using Bookmarks in the template.
16.2.9
E-Mail
Handling
All
e-mail sent and received can be automatically linked to a
Company and/or Contact and copied to the MX-Contact (Public)
E-Mail Folder. Thus all (relevant, and non-confidential)
incoming and outgoing e-mail correspondence can be made visible
to the organisation as a whole.
16.3
Sales Automation with the MX-Contact Sales Module
In
most companies sales is a team effort that requires involvement
from multiple individuals all playing a part in moving the
prospective customer towards a buying decision. Critical to
the success of this process is shared information between
the team members so that everyone’s activities are co-ordinated
and one person is not working in isolation, blindly ignorant
of discussions etc. that are taking place between other staff
members and the prospective customer.
The
Sales Module of MX-Contact provides the following folders/functionality:
- Opportunities (with
sub-folders)
- Orders
(with Line Item Details)
The
most common activity associated with the Sales Management
aspects of CRM is Opportunity Management, which is essentially
management of the sales process and tracking of all activities
associated with getting the business in the first instance
(as opposed to keeping it once you have the customer).
16.3.1
Opportunity
Management
All
potential sales to companies and contacts are called Opportunities.
The MX-Contact Opportunity Management facility allows you
to collect and report on a variety of information relating
to an opportunity such as expected values, probability of
closing a sale, estimated close dates and more.
The
Opportunities folder shows a listing of all opportunities:
A
variety of Views is available to sort, group and filter the
information so as to see for example only the “Open” opportunities.
General
Information
The
General tab records the basic details about the opportunity:
Any
number of companies, contacts, users and/or teams can be linked
to an opportunity.
In
addition all activities (journals, tasks, appointments, documents
and e-mail) that relate specifically to that opportunity can
be linked to the opportunity so that one can get an overview
of what has transpired in the progression of this opportunity.
Details
The
Details page typically records the expected values, dates
etc. that relate to the opportunity, but then is also used
to record the actual detail when the opportunity is either
won or lost.
In
the case of a lost opportunity one can track who was awarded
the business and the reasons (if known).
16.4
Marketing Management with the MX-Contact Marketing Module
The
Marketing Manager in a company generally needs to manage one
or more of the following activities with the company’s customer/prospect
database:
The
Base System of MX-Contact includes the facilities to produce
either non-personalized or personalized direct mailings/letters
or e-mail shots. These facilities are mentioned here because
of their applicability to the other Marketing-Module specific
features.
Event
Management involves tracking the details of events such as
functions, dinners, seminars/training courses, golf days etc,
and the process of inviting, following up, registering and
(where applicable accommodating) the attendees of the event.
Here
MX-Contact will enable you to send out invitations by direct
e-mail, fax, mail, etc. to subsets of your customer prospect
database, co-ordinate the responses, and then record details
of the travelling/payment information relation to those attending
the function, training course, etc.
Tasks
can be linked to an event corresponding to various activities
that need to be done for the event (booking the venue, etc.)
and assigned to internal staff members responsible for carrying
out the task. This is handled via the standard Outlook Task
functionality but with links to the Event.
All
outbound and incoming e-mail to and from attendees will be
linked to both the respective companies/contacts as well as
the event.
Documents
of any type (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) can be linked
to an Event for Itineraries, Maps, etc. This will also allow
for Document templates to be sent to groups of contacts at
a certain status, e.g. reminder letters, etc.
The
Campaign Management Module sets out the objectives of a marketing
campaign such as a series of advertisements and tracks the
progress and results of the campaign in terms of responses
received, sales made, etc. In many respect the functionality
of Campaign Management is similar to Events, even though the
focus is different.
The
Surveys Feature of MX-Contact allows you to define templates
of standard questions that need to be asked during a survey.
So if a Customer Satisfaction Survey is conducted then the
appropriate questions are mapped out in a sequence.
Surveys
can also be used to gather information about a company or
contact. The responses given by the client can then automatically
update the relevant database fields for that company or contact.
16.5
Service Help Desk Management with the MX-Contact Support Module
The
Support Module consists of the following components:
-
Asset
Management/Product Registrations
The
Registered Products screen records the details of each product
sold to a customer, either a company or an individual client
(contact) purchaser. This is particularly applicable for serialised
inventory (either computer hardware/office equipment, etc.
or software with individual serial numbers/license keys).
Components
are attached to Registered Products and record details of
each component of a main system or configuration. For example
a computer system may be built up of Case, Power Supply, Motherboard,
CPU, Hard Drive(s), etc. Each component may be individually
tracked.
-
Incident/Service
Request Management
An
Incident is a record you create and associate with a company
or contact to record a problem and its resolution. For example,
a customer may have a problem with a product that you have
supplied. Logging, handling, resolving, and closing Incidents
are the primary tasks of most support system users.
Support
Incidents are also referred to as Work Tickets, Job Cards,
Service Calls, etc. depending on the nature of the industry,
and may be renamed accordingly.
This
module deals with the management of support issues or defects.
Using
MX-Contact, you can track and resolve issues. An Issue is
a record that describes a problem in a product or process,
or a feature request for a product or process improvement.
It is similar to a Support Incident except that people involved
in the design or construction of the product or process typically
resolve Issues, and quite often these issues are not necessarily
linked to specific companies and/or contacts (although they
may be).
This
module deals with the management of support contracts.
Support
contracts are agreements between your organization and your
customers to provide support services. It is imperative to
ensure that there is a valid support contract for the account
so that your organisation is paid for the support services
it provides.
Support
Contracts are typically linked to certain Registered Products
supplied to the Customer. One Support Contract usually covers
several products, of which each one in turn may comprise several
components.
16.6
MX-Contact - Optimised for a Managed Exchange Environment
MX-Contact
Version 6.01 has been specifically optimised for use with
remote Exchange Servers. Outlook 2003’s Cached Mode provides
the facility whereby the Public Folder data is synchronised
constantly to a local off-line file (an “.ost” file) in order
to improve performance. As a result, when using MX-Contact
and opening say company/contact records for example, these
are actually opened on the local “cached” folder (as opposed
to the remote Exchange Server Public folders). So this is
naturally much faster fast when compared to the time it would
take to open that same item across a very slow internet connect
when the data is held on a remote server that might be on
a different continent.
When
you save changes to an item, these changes are then first
saved to your hard drive. Outlook 2003 then takes care of
seamlessly synchronising the change(s) back to the Public
Folders in the background, while you continue with other tasks.
In
particular MX-Contact is designed to handle working with both
online and offline folders and to switch seamlessly between
these when required.
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