melssCRM has recently been featured on a blog on AppStorm on its list of “40+ Amazing Desktop App Alternatives”.

The blog covers various types of products such as Accounting, CRM, ERP, Video Editing, Audio Editing, Time Tracking, Invoicing, FTP, IDE, Media Players, Office Suite and Note Taking.

The blog gives a quick description of melssCRM as:

“The highly customizable melssCRM comes equipped with advanced business intelligence capabilities. Thanks to the excellent statistical analysis reports and charts from the app, you can get deeper insight on the current trends, forecast your sales and plan your development strategy accordingly.”

Take a look at the complete article: 40+ Amazing Desktop App Alternatives.

There are also a few other articles on the web who have covered melssCRM in the recent past. (Links from google translate as the original article is not in English)

Free tools for Web Project Management Every Day

29 Web Applications for Management and Software Engineering (Free)

Let us know if you find other interesting articles about melssCRM on the World Wide Web.

A special thanks to the authors of the above blogs/articles for having featured melssCRM! Makes us proud!

At MELSS we continuously try to improve the performance of our products. We know how painful it is, to sit in front of the PC and wait for pages to load. At this age, every second counts.

About 4 months ago, we came up with some major performance upgrades and server tuning to improve the response of melssCRM. The effort paid off with us becoming faster than 98% of the websites on the Internet with each page taking an average of less than 1.5 seconds to load. This is visible from the graph below (information taken from Google Webmasters):

With our growing customer base and and increased CRM adoption, we would like to improve this further. As the next step, we have upgraded our servers. We believe over a period of time, you should start seeing improved performance and quicker response from melssCRM.

We are also bringing out several feature enhancements and updates that will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

We hope you enjoy the improved performance, just as much as we do!

An Online CRM is a one which can be accessed from anywhere and is primarily a multi-user system.

As the number of users in an organization grow, there are high chances many of them are working from different geographical locations; in different branches.

Adding Life To CRM

When you log into the CRM everyday and you see the same screens again-and-again, you get used to it. You pretty much know where the buttons are and the tabs that are enabled.

That’s why we decided to add some life to the CRM with profile pictures. Now you can add pictures into the profile page and have more fun while at work.

Avoid Confusion

When people are working from different geographical locations, there are chances that you might not have met them face-to-face. There is also a possibility of two or more people having the same name with the same spellings.

In these scenarios, if you assign a record to Person A from Chennai, instead of Person A from Delhi, it can cause confusion.

Hence to avoid confusion, now you have the option of verifying the person’s visual identity along with their designation; email address; and other details to confirm the same.

From now add your profile pictures into melssCRM and avoid confusion.

Check out our previous blog on Manage Activities on Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook and more.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Integration With Google Chrome

In one our previous posts, melssCRM and Google Chrome: 2011 – It’s Integration Time we blogged about how you can use our free Google Chrome melssCRM Quick Lead extension to capture lead information from websites.

Now we have something new in store for you.

iCalendar For You

When you are one the move, you want to plan your work and organize accordingly, what better way to organize than to use a Calendar?

With melssCRM Webcal now you can manage your activities by integrating with other applications that support iCalendar format. Some of the applications that support iCalendar format are Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird (Lighting Extension), Evolution and more.

To enable Webcal, go to extensions through the profile link. Click on Enable Webcal – Yes.

You will get a unique link that shall give you access to melssCRM activities on your iCalendar enabled application.

Integration With Google Calendar

For example, if you are a Google Calendar user and would like to manage your activities from it, you can add a new calendar to your Google account.

Once you click on add calendar, your melssCRM Activities are imported into your Google Calendar.

You can now enjoy working with a synchronized Google Calendar while maintaining a track of your activities in CRM.

Check out our previous blog on Clean Data Ensures Better CRM.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

]]> http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/02/manage-activities-on-google-calendar-apple-ical-microsoft-outlook-and-more/feed/ 0 http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/02/manage-activities-on-google-calendar-apple-ical-microsoft-outlook-and-more/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/melsscrm/~3/Aaajbo2g8Qo/ http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/01/clean-data-ensures-better-crm/#comments Sat, 29 Jan 2011 12:19:57 +0000 asim http://blog.melsscrm.com/?p=848

Data Quality Matters

Data is the core-stone of a CRM solution and you need to make sure that the data it contains is clean.

Since information entry into the CRM is done by various people in the organization, it is a herculean task to maintain a standard and improve the data quality.

Image Source: Techwyse.com

When communicating with customers – only when you have clean data in the CRM, you will be able to interact with them efficiently.

Efforts To Improve Data Quality In The Past

We identified that many of our customers faced an issue with maintaining data quality and have duplicate records of the same Account or Lead in the past.

To tackle this, we implemented intelligent suggestions while creating accounts and leads as well in the search.

Merge Duplicate Accounts

Duplication of records is primarily done through spelling checks. However in a real-world scenario – despite having entered the spellings correctly there can be chances of duplication of records.

One such example is the way a company name is entered in the CRM. Lets say, the name of a company is ABKT Acoustics.

Now,

ABKT Acoustics Pvt. Ltd. and ABKT Acoustics Private Limited both represent the same company, but multiple accounts have been created in the CRM.

You can use the Merge Accounts feature to merge duplicate record into the original record that you want to maintain in the CRM.

When you click on the merge account tool from the original account’s view page, it takes you to a page where – data of both original account and duplicate account are displayed side-by-side.

Once you choose the correct information between the two accounts, you can click on Merge button at the bottom and melssCRM creates a unique clean record of the data.

We believe that this simple feature will help you eliminate duplicate records from accounts and make your CRM data clean.

Check out our previous blog on Speed Matters: CRM @ 0.6 Seconds.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Note:

Merge Accounts feature is available in Professional Edition and onwards.

]]> http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/01/clean-data-ensures-better-crm/feed/ 0 http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/01/clean-data-ensures-better-crm/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/melsscrm/~3/ABN2Of6N9uU/ http://blog.melsscrm.com/2011/01/speed-matters-crm-0-6-seconds/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:53:11 +0000 asim http://blog.melsscrm.com/?p=826

Behind The Scene Updates

From the last few months, we have been working very hard on improving the speed of our CRM application. We have done a number of internal updates to make melssCRM as fast as possible. To measure the speed, we use Google Webmaster Tools. This tool lets us know that on an average how long does our site take to load. It also gives information on other search engine optimization aspects.

Less Than 1 Second Benchmark

Internally our goal is to achieve a speed of 1.0 second or less. We did numerous tweaks to the code, database queries, caching techniques, front-end HTML code, Java Script, CSS and more, to bring down time required for each page load.

During a recent update of statistics by Google Webmaster Tools, the average time taken by our site has changed from 1.2 seconds to 0.6 seconds. This is faster than 96% of the sites in the world according to Google Websmaster Tools.

We understand that for a web based CRM like ours, speed matters. Our goal is to make the site even more faster and user-friendly. With melssCRM enhanced for speed, hope you get speedy with your CRM operations too.

Check out our previous blog on melssCRM and Google Chrome: 2011 – It’s Integration Time.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Happy New Year 2011

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. “ – G. K. Chesterton

Quote Source: NewYearFestival.com

melssCRM Team wishes you all a very Happy, Prosperous and a successful New Year 2011.

Google Chrome Integration: melssCRM Quick Lead

One of the toughest activity while doing business development is to generate new leads. Adding to the task of generating them is the routine data entry stuff that needs to be done.

When you are working under tight deadlines and targets, a tool such as melssCRM Google Chrome extension can simplify your data entry work.

How?

In two simple steps you can get started with melssCRM Quick Lead extension.

1. Install the melssCRM Quick Lead extension.

2. Login into your melssCRM account and start using it.

Hope you find this extension useful and speed-up the Lead generation process.

We are working on more exciting new features this season. Watch out!

Check out our previous blog on Social Integration With CRM – Track Tweets In melssCRM.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Customer Relationship does not end inside the office, it extends to the real world, on-line world and recently a new addition to this is – the social space. Customers, prospects, partners, vendors, etc – all talk about your products or services almost everywhere and you have to listen to them to find out whether they are happy with what you offer.

As a first step towards listening to them from the social space, we have now provided integration with Twitter. Now you can follow tweets of people or organizations using their Twitter ID. Sticking on to our simplistic approach, to follow tweets – all you have to do is enter their twitter ID inside our CRM and we will show the latest five tweets for you.

Once you have entered the twitter ID and saved the record, you will be able to follow tweets of the person or organization.

Good customer relationship is not only about solving their queries when they ask you for, it is about taking pro-active action on the problems that customers face with your products or services. You may also congratulate your customers on their achievements or milestones, if you listen to them.

Now that melssCRM has gone social, you can now think of innovative ways to listen to people or organizations from the social space.

Check out our previous blog on Boost Follow-Up With Leads.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

One of the most important aspects of marketing is the way you follow-up with leads. It reflects the commitment you have towards winning the deal and converting the prospect into a customer. The better you follow-up with all your leads, the greater are the chances that you end up doing more business with them.

Marketing and sales people find it difficult to remember all the follow-ups that they have to do during a particular time period; and that leads to lower productivity. SMS Reminders are a great way to keep oneself informed, however Email reminders may also do.

To solve this simple problem and give marketing & sales people an efficient tool that will help them remember how many leads they have to follow-up during a particular time period, we have added a widget – Last Activity On Leads.

This widget allows you configure time period ranges. Based on your business requirement and working style, you can configure duration.

Also it identifies leads on which no activity has been performed and displays the cumulative count for an individual user.

Now you can keep yourself informed on how many leads have you followed-up with; during a particular time period and based on that, boost the follow-up with leads.

Check out our previous blog on Keep Yourself Updated With CRM Notifications.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Related Article:

I don’t know how to add a “Widget”!

Image Source: Techmaish.com

Notifications Are Important

In business, you have to keep pace with time, people and technology to deliver the best customer experience. Updated information at times can help you win  great opportunities.

The key to keeping yourself updated is to have a automated mechanism that will help you remind and notify about the latest updates. melssCRM offers automated notifications through E-mail (by default) and SMS.

How It Works

We have analyzed various aspects of how – the customer relationship management process takes place at different organizations; in various industry verticals. Based on the analysis, we have designed a robust notification system that will intimate you with latest updates through Email and/or SMS.

You have the flexibility to decide which set of notifications are relevant to your business and enable them. Also, according your preferences you can set the periodicity of the notifications.

To make the CRM more dynamic, we have alerts that will keep you informed, as and when the changes happen to the information within the CRM.

Try It Out

Explore the various notifications settings that are available to you and energize your business with updated information.

Check out our previous blog on Ensure Prompt Service To Your Customers.

If you would like to keep yourself informed on the latest features and updates, you can subscribe to melssCRM blog through email or Get Social With melssCRM Team.

Note:

SMS notifications are available to customers who have SMS Add-On pack and are geographically located within India.