The Magic Button. Everybody wants one. The CEO is looking for a Magic Button that will show all Opportunities, Forecasted Sales, Activities and a complete view of each client on a single screen. The sales person wants a Magic Button which, when pressed, will complete all activities, enter in notes, update the opportunity pipeline and monitor expenses. Are these people somehow misinformed as to how CRM systems work? Or are they simply unsophisticated to the world of information technology?
The answer is, “it depends.” Yes, it is true that no one has figured out how to create a single button which when pressed, knows what the presser’s frame of reference is and, more importantly, what task the person wants completed. But CRM software publishers and their distribution arm, the expert CRM consultants (Value-Added-Resellers) have begun to deliver on the single button promise.
In practice, multiple buttons and simple consolidation of data into single Views have been the answer. In fact, the Magic Button for many is really a Magic View. A single place to go that provides a clear understanding of the data. Initially, that view was made available in the form of a report. More recently, the publishers have been adding Dashboard Views. Dashboards have distinct advantages over reports in that they are live, tend to render faster than reports, and are integrated with the CRM software.
Where Dashboards fall short, is that they don’t help the everyday user in making his/her job easier. Most CRM users spend a majority of their day in Outlook, sending and receiving email. CRM systems that are integrated into Outlook provide the average user with access to a host of client data, by simply clicking on an email. Now the user’s Inbox comes alive. With a single click, the CRM user now has the kind of information that they need to close a sale, or provide top notch customer service.
So the Magic Button does not exist just yet. But we’re getting closer.
by Core Solutions, Massachusetts Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner
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There is no doubt that there is a Magic Button out there, for every task.
Using your CEO and then Salesperson analagies, I have the button for the sales person.
Nice