Benefits of Having CRM and Project Management in Single Platform

How do we describe CRM?

Most of the Companies strategy for managing their relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers is through CRM or Customer Relationship Management. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) provides you with a platform for tracking your interaction and building relationships with your customer base.

People usually refer CRM to a CRM system, a tool that is used for Project Management, Lead Generation, Contact & Sales Management and more. The goal of a CRM system is simple: increase productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, and improve overall performance. CRM is just more than a suite of applications – it’s a business strategy.

What is Project Management?

Project Management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time.

Every Project is temporary and has a beginning and end time, and therefore defined scope and resources. It involves planning and organizing the company’s resources to move a specific task, event, or duty towards completion. It lets you plan, collaborate with teams, fix the rate for Project, disclose your documents, and exchange views among your team. This allows you to overcome primary constraints of Projects App like scope, budget, quality, invoicing and time tracking.

Introduction to CRM with Integrated Project Management

For all the Service based and Project Focused Companies out there, We know that it is difficult to Track all your client’s lifecycle in a complete way. Updating Client’s on their Projects and Deliverables requires gathering information from various software system and multiple departments.

Not everyone has access to all the information and since the data is being kept in separate places, gathering information to update client become very challenging. To gather information like client’s order request, sales history, and contact information you need to have access to the customer relationship management (CRM) system. But the data on progress, budget adherence, timeline, etc. are being kept in a separate project management system, which might only be accessible to your engineers and contractors.

This miscommunication between departments often causes confusion – or worse, misinformation. Queries take a long time to be responded and make no sense. The relationship is weakened.

This is where Apptivo brings in the proper solution for all companies with CRM  integrated Project Management. By bridging the two systems together, Apptivo helps you eliminate silos and provides visibility to Sales, Marketing, Service, and Operations teams.

Benefits of having CRM & Project Management Conjointly

Strategic Alignment

Strategic alignment is the method of aligning project initiatives with the strategic goals and vision of an organization. Project Management with CRM can assist you with a record of each and every information, so if uncertainties arise during the project, the strategy can reform with Project Management.

Apptivo enables your organization to manage projects from the beginning to the end, and allow employees at different levels to provide input throughout the process. You will find that our approach to project management streamlines your workflow by integrating with nearly every aspect of your business.

Clear Objectives

Every project should have its objective clearly states as the entire project lifecycle is depended on it. Objectives should consist of all Key Performance Indicators which will be used to assess project success. In Apptivo Project Management you can monitor and set the deadlines, as well as track your project progress.  Track and monitor the progress of any project using interactive Gantt Chart and detailed Task management. Using Apptivo Projects News Feed keep track of all the happenings related to a project.      

Project Planning

Project planning is part of Project Management, which relates to the use of schedules such as Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress within the project environment. Everything you do to set up your project for success is called Project Planning. The process of establishing the steps required to define your project objectives, clarify the scope of what needs to be done and develop the task list to do it. This relates to both budgets and estimates and achievement of deadlines. Mostly, tasks take longer time than planned and good project management balances available resources with a practical schedule. Once processes are clear and deadlines seen as being attainable, everyone can move forward knowing that what is being asked of them is realistic.

Systematic Process

Using Apptivo Project Management you can create a standardized and systematic approach to manage your business. Project Management is part science and part art, although it follows a systematic process. The process involves everyone to do the best at the right time and in accordance with the project lifecycle. By following a set of process, each member of the team has their role interpreted with the project being consistently aligned with the basic strategy. Apptivo CRM is great at setting processes and stages for your team to follow.

Progress Tracking

One of the most important aspects of Project Management Software is measuring progress on each task. To keep employees focused and meet goals, and to enable managers to stay on top of what’s happening in the workplace.  With Apptivo Project Management, Everyone working on a project can easily log their billable and non-billable hours using Timesheets. With Apptivo Invoices you can automatically generate invoices from timesheets. With Automated task workflows, you can design blueprints based on the criteria set. View critical path in Gantt Charts. Status reports make sure that all is going to plan and on track in accordance with the original. Apptivo Project Reports can show work completed to-date, hours utilized so far and that everything is in line.

Cheers,
Vipul Jain