CRM

[BHG 0]

Hi is anyone using Evernote as client management tool?

[Robert Lacis 2]

We use Evernote Business as to enable our customer engagement process. It's integrated with Salesforce.

[funfunfun1 2]

Where can I find more information on using Cvernote as a CRM?

[Robert Lacis 2]

@funfunfun1 are you looking to use Evernote as a standalone CRM, or, are you looking at how to integrated with Salesforce?

[funfunfun1 2]

@funfunfun1 are you looking to use Evernote as a standalone CRM, or, are you looking at how to integrated with Salesforce?

 Ropela,

 

Thanks for the reply. I guess I misunderstood. I thought there was a way for me to use evernote as a CRM. I run a small business with just a dozen or so clients and thought that would be interesting.

[Robert Lacis 2]

It depends what you want from your CRM. Coming from larger sales organizations (Cisco and Maxim Integrated), I often hear that Salesforce doesn't add much value to the individual sales person and that it's seen as a management/inspection/reporting tool. Salespeople live in email and notes, which I believe makes Evernote a good choice for a small CRM that focuses on closing business as opposed to management reporting.

 

Take a look at the Smartsheet to Evernote integrated. I'm thinking that it might be the right combination of structured data meets unstructured data.

 

I truly believe there is an opportunity for someone to develop a lightweight CRM (read: management reporting/structured data) that lives on top of Evernote Business.

[Mickepicton 0]

i think so  this  different Organize Projects,Share the Knowledge,Research,Record,Never Forget Big Ideas,

[C6REW 416]

I have been using Evernote and before it OneNote for my business for many years.

 

The important thing to get your head around is Evernote is a blank page. It is up to you how you set it up.

 

For me I needed to keep a daily diary of emails, phone calls, quotations etc. 

 

Here is a copy of some notes I put together a while ago explaining how I make Evernote work for my company:

 

 

In my set up of Evernote I have a 'Diary 2014' Notebook and a 'Diary 2014 Completed' Notebook.

 

Any emails or enquiries get sent to my 'Diary 2014' Notebook. I do this by either clicking on the 'Evernote' icon in Microsoft Outlook I then add a date code to the start of the title followed by the name of the company and name of the individual, leaving their title which will often have a reference number.  So by way of example lets say I get an email with the following title:

 

Quotation Required - Reference Stonehenge Water Treatment Works

 

This will be forwarded and the new title will be:

 

140525 - South West Water - Joe Bloggs - Reference Stonehenge Water Treatment Works

 

With various tasks now in the 'Diary 2014' Notebook, I begin to work on them. With potentially so many emails I set up a basic rule as follows:

 

Any communication from a customer is highlighted in Green

 

Any communication from a supplier is highlighted in Purple

 

Any communication from me is highlighted in Red

 

This allows easy viewing of notes within a Note. 

 

All emails to and from customers and suppliers are copied into the Note, with the newest information shown at the top. The original opening part of the Note and any relevant details such as pricing information always stays at the top along with the Tick Box at the bottom of that section and a line.

 

Once the task is completed the 'Tick Box' will be ticked meaning the Note has been completed. The Note is then moved to the 'Diary - 2014 - Completed' Notebook.

 

It becomes an easy way of dealing with tasks as I go through my day and I can easily see how many 'tasks' I have to complete by the quantity of 'Notes' in the Diary 'Notebook.

 

What this method does for me is keep all of my tasks in one location and by keeping the date code (thanks again for the suggestion GrumpyMonkey) the Notes are in date order. My Notes go back to 2007 and if a customer calls about something I have done in that time a quick search can bring all the relevant information to hand.

 

 

Here is a link to a typical and simple Diary Note

 

 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s124/sh/a23c2b03-f582-477c-afe0-df6151a7919b/1c46df5877d8c4d46377076ea7c18d35

 

 

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

 

 

 

[C6REW 416]

Having bought a Surface Pro 3 this week, I investigated and installed Microsoft's Business Contact Manager (BCM).

 

I have to say that this is a very simple way of keeping contact details. I can also report that all 15,000 of my contacts have imported easily.

 

BCM is a plug in for Outlook and automatically links all emails in and out. If you have Microsoft Office, you will have BCM.

 

All my conversations and contact details are now kept inside Evernote using the above mentioned method of communication. This means it is now easy to use Evernote as my CRM for day to day data which can then be retrieved simply as and when I need it.

 

If you want it to be more formal, you could generate and attach a customer number to each instance of communication with the contact. But I don't think this is necessary when a simple search can bring you all the relevant information.

 

By way of explanation as to how simple and useful I find this, I realised that I am not using Maximizer which I love as a CRM for anything other than contact information. Hence moving that over to Outlook, which is less hungry on resources than Maximizer. Having paid many thousands of pounds for Maximizer over the years, even teaching it on a consultancy basis to various companies, you will appreciate that not using it anymore is a very big step! But I like to move with the times and am always happy to investigate new methods of operation. At the same time I am also investigating Access 2013 which has the ability to create Apps for inline use. This would allow us to create our own database - simply - then share with everyone in the company, something that would cost us a few thousand a year to do with the likes of Maximizer or Sales Force!

 

I love new technology making my life easier! Beats paying even more serious amounts of money for other packages that don't actually give me any advantage over what I currently have!

 

Best regards

 

Chris

[chinarut 29]

thanks @C6REW for sharing about your implementation - i like the date code idea!

 

@Robert is correct - I've evaluated salesforce for the "solopreneur" and Evernote is easily providing 10x more value due to its "blank page" nature - I started with this back in August:

 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s427/sh/87418fb6-48ff-48ab-8537-5feb8c6def76/d7b74e3e75bfa409df65b97240f1e803

 

I'm pretty much tweaking it as I go and discovering how it best tracks projects and "customers" the way I want.   I still have a salesforce integration as a backup and haven't had to turn to it yet.

 

I also have notes out to Swipes (startup of the year from EC4) and TaskClone.   I particularly like how Swipes aggregates all the tasks within a note (think a series of next actions for a project) - nice UI and eye candy at this point in time.

 

I agree with @Robert there is huge potential to create a business app - i can't say I'm quite ready to hop back on the M$ bandwagon - no offense @C6REW