Need Help from You Computer Guru's

[sman]

AE is definitely more than I need. I think one of the best features for me is that if I send a letter or email it is stored in the database. It's nice to be able to go back and see all communication with a client or prospect. Both incoming and outgoing.

It wasn't quite as expensive as it is today when I bought it. They had a major upgrade last year. I've played around with Frank's YIO and other than the feature of not storing letters and emails, it seems to serve my needs just fine. Honestly, if I had known about YIO 10 years ago (assuming it was around) I probably would have purchased it instead.

 

[Guest]

Doesn't every CRM, whether insurance-centric or not, allow you to send email and store (and "connect") it to the account or contact (or perhaps project, opportunity, etc.) record?

I know SugarCRM does. And you can receive mail through Sugar as well, although I've never implemented that part of it.

There is nothing wrong with 10 year old software as long as it works for your business model (and if you are a confirmed Luddite .)

There are a lot of guys who don't trust the cloud and are more comfortable using traditional desktop software. I'm the opposite. I hate having to always be downloading and installing software. I swear, Ohio National comes out with an update every other day! PITA. Midland is not so bad.

I run both of those on Windows on my Mac via Parallels. Of course I find that Windows itself and my AVG virus software seems to have an update every few days too! PITA when as a Mac user you don't have nearly as many security patches, etc.

And it seems that often the update crashes and I have to re-boot and re-install it... to get it to "take."

I don't know how you Windows users stay sane (or get any REAL work done) with all of this!

 

[Guest]

I think one of the best features for me is that if I send a letter or email it is stored in the database.

Salesforce Group Edition will send/rec emails and letters and store it as lead/contact activity. It uses GMail out of the box, but there is a free plug-in to use any domain (or just fwd your domain to gmail). It also interfaces with Google Apps, but that is overkill for me.

The "letters" part is a no-brainer. The email is a little more involved but they are improving it all the time. A more expensive edition of SF may have better built-in support for email, I haven't checked (don't use email that much with clients, mostly phone, and that is easily tracked). Even with my edition it is quite simple to generate an HTML email from within the contact record, and it will even let you know if and when they read it.

I customized SF for a friend who sends quotes/contracts everyday, which pull the pertinent lead fields into his various templates, and he bangs them out via email mostly, and print/mail if they don't have email, all time-stamped and stored with the Lead record. (He only uses Lead records, a VERY simple setup, but it's all he needs.) He's been on it all day every day for about a year, no issues at all. He used to use ACT (since 1995!, which I also set up for him back then), but got some kind of virus issue that crippled email within ACT - couldn't fix it. Did the SF customization over a weekend using the trial version, he okay'd it and bought. Took him to the cloud and he hasn't looked back!

I'm no programmer and ACT and SF are very similar in that they are not difficult for a non-programmer to customize. I did want a custom "calculated field" and couldn't quite figure it out - one call to support and I was done in 5 minutes.

 

[sman]

Doesn't every CRM, whether insurance-centric or not, allow you to send email and store (and "connect") it to the account or contact (or perhaps project, opportunity, etc.) record?

They may today, but not sure about 10 years ago. Remember, there wasn't really any "cloud" options available 10+ years ago when I was searching for a CRM.

I swear, Ohio National comes out with an update every other day! PITA.

What bugs me about the Ohio National software is that you can't just update it. You have to download an entirely new version of the software from time to time.

I don't know how you Windows users stay sane (or get any REAL work done) with all of this!

That may explain our "rage" Al.