BizAutomation Review

If you are looking for a QuickBooks CRM or Outlook CRM solution, BizAutomation could have been written just for you. Our BizAutomation Review follows soon.

The developers have tried to make BizAutomation CRM an easy-to-use, full featured, WEB based CRM suite that leverages Microsoft Outlook & Exchange. The feature set includes Sales Force Automation, Service / Support, & Marketing / Campaign Management with free integration with Intuit QuickBooks.

The end result is maximum centralization that enables users to manage customer data from a single place – Microsoft Outlook – eliminating double data entry and maximizing efficiency.

BizAutomation CRM is available directly from BizAutomation.com as an off the shelf software application your company can either host on your Exchange 2000 or 2003 Server (or Small Business Server 2003), or as a web service you can subscribe to from BizAutomation.com, or any of its hosted subscriber partners. You pay a monthly subscription fee for this service.

The shelf application you can license and run on your own networks. Exchange 2000 or 2003 and SQL Server 2000 OR Small Business Server 2003 is required.

The add-ons to QuickBooks 2002 through 2004 integration connector (QuickBooks 2003 or higher required for Canadian users) is included in the price.

</script>It can also be customized to fit your specific business process, and integrates with any application that supports XML.

BizAutomation CRM competes with the likes of ACT!, MS CRM and the similarly priced Goldmine CRM.

Optional capabilities:
Custom connector to your Accounting back end
Web Services through SQL XML APIs

BizAutomation CRM Features & Functionality
Including new features introduced in version 2.0

Admin Panel / System customization:

1. New for version 2.0 ! MS Office integration: Merge values from Contacts with Word templates to make personalized e-documents. Use values from Opportunities to create online proposals. Export reports to Excel. Generate labels and mass mailing lists from profiled lists in BizAutomation CRM.
2. New for version 2.0 ! Structured Interest tracking using AOIs (Areas of Interest): Before you can realize an opportunity you have know that there’s interest. AOIs track interest based on specific or broad product/service categories you define and track before & after the sales cycle. By taking a structured approach to tracking interest you maximize the probability of generating opportunities because you can target specific interest points that lay the ground work for opportunities later on.
3. New for version 2.0 ! Custom field Wizard with Tab based Categorization: Now you create/embed custom fields in custom labeled tabs from a single page view and from all 6 main application tabs (Leads, Prospects, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities). This gives you a contextual view of other related fields on the same page.
4. New for version 2.0 ! User Authorization Security with Territory Management: Create custom user groups to segment views of data and territories, or even views of individual modules.
5. New for version 2.0 ! Workflow Automation: Set rules for routing Leads & Cases based on any number of criteria.
6. New for version 2.0 ! Real Time Email Alerts: You can also create email alerts that automatically send management an email message if an opportunities are being neglected. When assigning an action item (communication or task), opportunity, or case, system can automatically “alert” the assignee via system generated email messages. Web generated leads trigger email alert to lead recipient. Email alerts that trigger on a contacts age or birthday. Coming soon – We will be adding the ability to assign sales process stages to employees, which will trigger email alerts on task assignment and stage completion (so the next assignee knows that it is time to begin his/her stage)
7. New for version 2.0 ! Record Relationship Management: You can now track relationships between records. For example, if you are on a record called IBM and want to know who referred it, or who its main competitors are you can now map and track these links between records.
8. New for version 2.0 ! Multiple Sales Processes: Create multiple sales process configurations to fit different product lines. Then from Opportunity creation process, users can select from the list of custom designed profiles.
9. Customized Dropdowns Default & custom drops downs can be customized as needed.

Sales Force Automation:

Track, create, and manage leads (import CSV files), prospects, accounts, opportunities & deals (closed won/lost), contacts, and forecasts. Promote leads to prospects, then to accounts. Manage active and inactive accounts. Filter all your sales entities by any number of criteria such as size, credit rating, estimated opportunity close dates, size of opportunities by reps, etc… Leverage your email data from within each record to automatically create your email address lists in Outlook / Exchange.

1. Opportunity Pipeline Management: Track opportunity-related information from within the context of its source (Prospect / Account record), including opportunity milestones, competitors, key decision issues, and critical business partners.
2. New for version 2.0 ! Item Database: Add products and services into the item database, so that you can associate them with each Opportunity, tailoring units and pricing at the time of Opportunity creation (QuickBooks users can see inventory levels in QuickBooks, as well as update items from or to the QuickBooks item database).
3. Create Pending Invoices: During the process of creating an Opportunity, the order details of that opportunity are displayed in a tabular grid, which can be copied onto the clipboard for pasting onto Proposals. QuickBooks users can automatically create pending invoices in QuickBooks from deals closed.
4. Last 10 sent / received Outlook email tracking by contact: When all you need is to quickly reference information stored in an email message you sent or received for a contact record you’re working on, last 10 sent/received saves you valuable time.
5. New for version 2.0 ! 360° view of email: AUTOMATICALLY displays inbound / outbound email history by contact for ALL users in your organization. This is crucial when considering that up to 80% of your customers intelligence resides in unstructured email messages.
6. Leadbox: Automatically creates leads in BizAutomation CRM from your web site. You are presented with a “You’ve Got Leads” message with the number of leads in your Leadbox, accessed from the Leads section, including support for products and services. Promote the Leads to Prospects, and send all your new prospects personalized email messages (e.g. “Thanks for requesting a demo of our new product, etc..”).
7. Contact Management that works with Outlook contacts: Creating a prospect or account automatically creates a contact in Outlook (including company & contact name). Manage contacts from within the context of a prospect or account. A “Send to Outlook” button enables you to selectively share contacts in BizAutomation CRM with Outlook Contacts.
8. Real-time Forecasting: Leverage the information from your opportunity & sales pipeline to generate accurate forecasts which will substantially improve your company’s procurement logistics.
9. Sales Analytics: What’s your average sales cycle, who are the best reps, which are the best accounts, etc…

Tickler:

The unique tickler section is the BizAutomation CRM’s activity hub. It gives you a single place to see and manage all your “to do” or “past due” activities, including:

1. Follow-up Action Items (Communications & Tasks): Contacting Leads, Prospects, and Accounts requires follow-up scheduling (e.g. “call me in two weeks after the board meeting”). The Tickler lists all “to do” activity including email, phone, and fax activity.
2. Opportunity Due Dates: Shows you a list of projected “close dates” for upcoming Opportunities.
3. Pending Cases: See cases/issues with near term resolve dates (Service/Support).
4. Meetings scheduled in Outlook Calendar: See all your upcoming meetings scheduled in your Outlook Calendar.
5. QuickBooks Users – Lists past due invoices and Accounts that are over their credit limit, giving you a “heads up” while communicating with customers that may not be paying their AR balance on time or have exceeded their credit limit.

Customer Service & Support:

Once a deal is closed, a prospect becomes an account, which makes them eligible for support services .

1. Track pending and overdue issues or manage them by domain to make sure the customer is taken care of. Assign any support item to any other user in your Exchange email domain (anyone@yourcompany.com). Leverage that account data to track, create, and manage service and support issues.
2. Casebox / Customer SelfService: Automate issue ticket creation by enabling your customers to automatically create cases in BizAutomation CRM from your web site’s “support page”. Closing a deal will automatically issue an email message to your customer with the appropriate log on details.
3. View Order Information when creating a new case: Add products and services into the item database, so that you can associate them with each Opportunity, tailoring units and pricing at the time of Opportunity creation (QuickBooks users can update from or to the QuickBooks item database).

Marketing & Campaign Automation:

Maximize the return on your marketing investment with detailed tracking, reporting, and email marketing capabilities in BizAutomation CRM.

1. Marketing analytics: See which marketing programs are yielding deals and which are not. Understand why customers are buying from you in the first place, to help you create strategic marketing objectives based on real intelligence instead of guess work.
2. e-Campaigns: Personalized e-marketing, helps you create profiles of your prospects and accounts based on any number of criteria (zip, position categories, company type, etc..). Once a profile is generated and a message created, a personalized message is sent to your target audience. When done right, email marketing is widely known as having the highest positive response rate of any campaign vehicle.
3. New for version 2.0 ! Survey Builder – Lets you create integrated web based questionnaires and surveys on the fly. Publishing to your web site, enables you to invite participants via our campaign manager. Incoming data from your web site automatically contributes to creating self updating pie chart or bar graph reports. You can integrate AOIs to tag unique visitor interest, or generate qualified leads from survey answers.

Document Tracking:

Upload and save any document from the Prospect/Accounts and Opportunity section of BizAutomation CRM.

Integrated with QuickBooks Pro 2002-2004: Create pending invoices. See inventory levels in accounting from CRM. See account records from accounting and financial data pertinent to the sales process.

3 levels of reporting depth: 1). Report Dashboard 2). Predefined Reports 3). Custom Report Wizard – with save to Excel or XML.

SQL Server 2000 Database Back end Version 2.0 now leverages the power of SQL Server 2000 for maximum performance and scalability.

.NET technology uses Browser client & enables LAN and/or 100% Web access

Contacts and their parent companies can be viewed through Pocket Outlook enabled wireless devices

Leverages Exchange/Outlook platform you already use: Messaging, Calendaring, Contact Management.

See more Outlook based CRM applications.