tairox crm user guide crm user guide.pdf · the documents program presents a search interface....

TaiRox CRM

User Guide Important Notice TaiRox does not warrant or represent that your use of this software product will be uninterrupted or error-free or that the software product can be run with any other version of Sage ERP Accpac other than 5.6A, 6.0A, or any version of Sage 300 other than 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 or 2018 or that the information in this document is completely accurate. TaiRox warrantees that any media by which you have received this software is free from defects. TaiRox will replace any such defective media. TaiRox expressly disclaims all other warranties, representations, conditions and guarantees of any kind including, but not limited to warrantees for merchantability or fitness for a particular use.

TaiRox CRM User Guide

© 2009-2018. All rights reserved. - 2 -

Summary TaiRox CRM (herein "CRM") is a customer relationship management solution implemented as a Sage 300 SDK module. The entities being managed include:

Companies, which can be linked to Sage 300 Customers

Contacts, which will feed emailing services such as MailChimp or Swiftpage

Opportunities, which can be linked to Sage 300 Orders or Quotes

Communications, which will feed emailing services such as MailChimp or Swiftpage

Cases, created for collections, support and other activities *NEW* A set of programs is provided to manage Collections:

Customer Aging provides a lightning-fast way to view overdue customer accounts

Collections cases are created directly from the customer aging program

Dashboard shows cases that need to be revisited, by day, week or month

Any number of Notes can be attached to a case Access to core entities and functions is provided on the Sage 300 desktop.

Traditional and innovative setup options are provided.



Table of Contents Before You Start

System Requirements Lanpaks and User Licenses User and Territory Considerations Demonstrating TaiRox CRM

The Main Entities and Functions:

Dashboard Companies Opportunities Contacts Contact Groups Documents Charts Communications User Preferences

The Collections Functions:

Dashboard Customer Aging (Customers View) Customer Aging (Documents View) Customer Information Cases Notes

Setup and Maintenance Functions:

License Information Options Opportunity Stages Communication Types Territories Users Optional Fields Import Customers Import Contacts Sync Companies Create Demo Data Remove CRM Data

Appendices

Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program Appendix B - General Operations of a Maintenance Program Appendix C - Exporting to MailChimp and Swiftpage



System Requirements TaiRox CRM has been extensively tested on a Sage 300 2014 and later platforms. TaiRox CRM for Earlier versions of Sage 300 may be provided upon request. TaiRox CRM requires SQL Server 2005 or later. Lanpaks and User Licenses TaiRox CRM does not have its own user licensing scheme. The number of users is controlled by Sage 300 Lanpaks. Adding more TaiRox CRM users will only incur a cost if the number of concurrent users accessing Sage 300 is increased. User and Territory Considerations When a Company is set up, it will be assigned a territory. This may be the default (blank) Territory which is always present. Opportunities, Contacts and Cases are linked to Companies and therefore linked indirectly to a Territory. TaiRox CRM restricts what a Sage 300 User can see based on the territories to which they belong. A TaiRox User needs to be set up and is maintained in a normal Sage 300 SDK table that dumps and loads. The TaiRox User has a Sage 300 User code and describes which territories the user can access. Options when using Territories:

The TaiRox User can be granted a right to see all territories. This is a switch that effectively turns off all restrictions for that user.

The TaiRox User can be granted a right to see any number of specific territories. There is no hierarchy of territories. Avoiding hierarchies is a deliberate design decision to provide maximum flexibility.

Demonstrating TaiRox CRM With a few clicks CRM can generate reasonable data for demonstration. The data will be as if created in the 12 months preceding the Sage 300 session date.

Create Demo Data will create CRM Opportunities, Contacts, Contact Groups, Cases, Notes, Documents, and Communications. Opportunities will have Won, Lost, Closed or Deferred statuses as might be statistically expected. Opportunity dates will be set relative to the session date (forward and backward) as might be statistically expected. Cases will have revisit dates as might be expected. The resulting data will produce reasonable Charts. Remove CRM Data can be used to delete this data.

Note that Import Customers, Import Contacts and Sync Companies are part of go-live and maintenance processes and do not create demonstration data.



Dashboard The Dashboard program provides a quick way to answer the question, "What do I need to do today, this week or this month?"

Notes:

The dashboard is in one of 3 date states: Day, Week or Month.

The dashboard is in one of 2 assignment states: Me or All. Me filters for entities assigned to the logged in user. All shows all entities the logged in user is allowed to see.

All cases and opportunities shown are selected by and sorted by their Revisit Date.

A Today button quickly returns to the session date, retaining the day-week-month state.

The arrows to the right of the Today button navigate to the previous or next day, week or month

The Refresh button reloads the data from the database (changing states does not do this).

Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Case or Opportunity program.

Click on the Company Name column title to open the Company program.



Companies The Companies program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Companies may or may not be linked to A/R Customers. Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Company program.

Click on the icons to the right of the Customer Number (top-right-hand corner) to open the A/R Customer program or the A/R Customer Inquiry program.

Click on the Street1 column title to open a browser at the Google Maps site for that address.

See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Company The Company program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

The field lengths and formatting exactly match A/R Customer fields so that data transferred between CRM and A/R is not truncated or reformatted.

Information from the A/R Address and Contact tabs has been combined on a single tab. Drill Down:

Click on the icon beside Street1 to open a browser at the Google Maps site for that address.

Click on the icons beside E-mail or Contact's E-mail to open an email client with those send-to addresses.

Click on the icon beside Web Site to open a browser at that URL. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Opportunities The Opportunities program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Opportunities belong to one and only one Company.

Opportunities may or may not be assigned to a single User.

Any number of Sage 300 quotes and orders can be linked to an Opportunity. Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Opportunity program. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Opportunity The Opportunity program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Revisit On date is used to construct data for the Dashboard program.

The Stage of an Opportunity is selected from a list maintained by the Opportunity Stages program.

Besides the Name and Notes fields, all other fields are used in one or more Charts. Charts provide weighted or un-weighted estimates of the pipeline value categorized various ways. A Time to Close Chart provides an assessment of past performance.

See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Contacts The Contacts program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Contacts belong to one and only one Company.

Contacts can belong to any number of Contact Groups. The Add to Group and Add To New Group buttons will add all selected contacts (all pages) to the group.

A File/Export function will create a file containing all pages of the filtered Contacts. The file will be in a MailChimp or Swiftpage or a generic Sage 300 format.

In order to export to MailChimp or Swiftpage the contact must have an email address, a first and last name, and must not be un-subscribed, inactive or deleted (or belong to an inactive or deleted company).

File, Import to import an unsubscribe list: a file with a single column (email address).

Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Contact program.

Click on the Company Name title row to open up the Company program. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Contact The Contact program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Social Media links are provided for information that a contact maintains themselves and is likely to be current.

Drill Down:

Click a social media icon to open a browser at the contact's social media page.

Click on the icons beside Email to open an email client with that send-to addresses. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Contact Groups The Contact Groups program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Contacts can belong to any number of Contact Groups.

The Export button will create a file containing the Contacts for the selected Contact Group. The file will be in a MailChimp or Swiftpage format.

In order to export to MailChimp or Swiftpage the contact must have an email address, a first and last name, and must not be un-subscribed, inactive or deleted (or belong to an inactive or deleted company).

Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Contact Group program. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Contact Groups - Contacts Tab The Contacts tab on the Contact Groups shows contacts that belong to the selected Group. Search functions within this tab will further narrow the displayed Contacts.

Notes:

The Link button allows you to search for and add additional Contacts to the selected Contact Group.

The Unlink button will unlink the selected Contact from the selected Contact Group.



Contact Group The Contact Group program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Contact Groups represent a simple way to give a list of Contacts a name. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Documents The Documents program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Documents can be linked to any entity and most entity types.

Document files are not stored in the database. Rather, Documents reference various document storage repositories. Drilling down will open the referenced file.

o Document references can be to web site URLS. o Document references can be to local network locations. o Document references can be to local drives (can only be opened by one user).

Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Document program.

Click on the Document column title to open the referenced file or directory. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Document The Document program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Click on the Finder icon to select a network location.

Copy and paste a browser URL to store a web site address. Drill Down:

Click the drilldown icon to open the referenced file, web page or directory. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Charts The Charts program presents Opportunity data in various forms. A single click on the Create Chart will cause a graph to appear. In the background, an Excel spreadsheet is created containing the consolidated data and the chart. The spreadsheet is completely editable. Many more variations are produced than are shown here. The terms Category and Series are consistent with their use in Excel.

Chart Options Sample Chart



Communications The Communications program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Communications are associated with one or more Contacts or Documents.

The Export button will create a file containing the Contacts for the selected Communication. The file will be in a MailChimp or Swiftpage format.

In order to export to MailChimp or Swiftpage the contact must have an email address, a first and last name, and must not be un-subscribed inactive or deleted (or belong to an inactive or deleted company).

Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Communication program. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Communication The Communication program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

The Type of a Communication is selected from a list maintained by the Communication Types program.




Customer Aging (Customers View) The Customer Aging program provides a lightning-fast way to see customer aging information with links to collection cases displayed. The Customers view:

Notes:

Overdue customers are shown in the grid.

Each line shows the collection buckets for a customer as of the session date. Totals are displayed at the top of the page.

A red exclamation point (!) indicates that there are open collection cases for that customer.

Options can be selected to match the Sage 300 aging calculations. Drill Down:

Click on the Customer Number column title to open the A/R Customers program.

Double-click on a row to open the Customer Information program.



Customer Aging (Documents View) The Customer Aging program provides a lightning-fast way to see customer aging information with links to collection cases displayed. The Documents view:

Notes:

Overdue documents are shown in the grid.

Options can be selected to match the Sage 300 aging calculations. Drill Down:

Click on the Customer Number column title to open the A/R Customers program.

Click on the Document Number column title to open the A/R Document Inquiry program.

Double-click on a row to open the Customer Information program.



Customer Information The Customer Information program displays collections-related information, including the cases and documents that are open, credit limit, balance and average days to pay.

Drill Down:

(Cases tab) Double-click on a row to open the Case program.

(Documents tab) Click on the Document Number column title to open the A/R Document Inquiry program.



Cases The Cases program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Cases may be for Collections, Support or Other. Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Case program.

Click on the icons to the right of the Customer Number (top-right-hand corner) to open the A/R Customer program or the A/R Customer Inquiry program.




Case The Case program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Revisit On date is used to construct data for the Dashboard program.

Cases may be of type Collection, Support or Other.

Severity and Priority values provide ways to filter cases. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



Notes The Notes program presents a search interface.

Notes:

Notes may be attached to Companies, Opportunities, or Cases.

Notes may be several thousand characters in length. Drill Down:

Double-click on a row to open up the Company, Opportunity or Case program. See Also: Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program for searching, sorting, tabs and common button explanations.



Note The Note program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

Notes are always linked to a single entity: a Company, Opportunity or Case. See Also: Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program for tabs and common button explanations.



User Preferences User preferences are maintained per user.

Show Deleted: CRM never deletes companies or contacts from the database. Rather, the deleted data "disappears" and is held in a "Recycle Bin". Performance and storage capacity today are sufficient to support this style. Turning this switch on will allow you to find deleted data in the places where it would normally show up and recover the data with a single click. This switch would only be turned on when looking for deleted data. Page Size: Display devices come in a range of sizes and aspect ratios. This setting allows you to adjust how many lines per page are displayed in CRM grids to better match monitor sizes.



License Information This will be the only program available until an activation code is entered. The Client ID and Company information must match that shown by the Sage 300 License Manager.

The Help About menu choice will show build information and links to the TaiRox web site.



Options Options are per-company settings for all users.

Default Page Size: Each user can control the size of paging grids so as to match the characteristics of their display devices. This option specifies the default for each user until such time as the user changes their own settings. See User Preferences, Page Size.



Opportunity Stages Opportunity Stages is a maintenance program that enables administrators to specify the stages of an opportunity.

Notes:

The Sort Order is a number used when presenting data in drop-down lists and charts.

When data is activated, the following stages are created in sort order: o UNQUAL o QUALIFIED o MEETING o PROPOSAL

When an opportunity stage is marked Inactive, it will no longer be presented as an option when adding new opportunities. An inactive stage will continue to be displayed in grids and charts if present in the selected data.



Communication Types Communication Types is a maintenance program that enables administrators to specify the types of a communication.

Notes:

When data is activated, the following types are created: o EMAIL o FAX o MAIL o PHONE o TEXT

When a communication type is marked Inactive, it will no longer be presented as an option when adding new communications. An inactive type will continue to be displayed in grids if present in the selected data.



Territories Territories is a maintenance program that enables administrators to specify the territories to which companies belong.

When a Company is set up, it will be assigned a territory. This may be the default (blank) Territory which is always present. All entities directly or indirectly are linked to a Company. TaiRox CRM restricts what a Sage 300 User can see based on the territories to which they belong. A TaiRox User needs to be set up and is maintained in a normal Sage 300 SDK table that dumps and loads. The TaiRox User has a Sage 300 User code and describes which territories the user can access. Options when using Territories:

The TaiRox User can be granted a right to see all territories. This is a switch that effectively turns off all restrictions for that user.

The TaiRox User can be granted a right to see any number of specific territories. There is no hierarchy of territories. Avoiding hierarchies is a deliberate design decision to provide maximum flexibility.



Users The Users program presents a search interface.

Notes:

A TaiRox CRM user must be a Sage 300 user.

In order to control access to information by territory, a CRM user has added information, namely that the user can access all territories or a restricted list of territories.

When data is activated, the CRM user ADMIN is created.

The Territories tab has a Link button that will grant the selected user access to one or more territories. An Unlink button removes that access.




User The User program provides maintenance functionality.

Notes:

A CRM User must be set up in order to use CRM. The CRM user must be a Sage 300 User.




Optional Fields Optional Fields is a maintenance program that enables administrators to specify the optional fields in use by a Company, Contact, Opportunity, User Document and Communication.

Notes:

A CRM optional field behaves exactly like any other optional field in Sage 300.

When an optional field for a company is the same as an optional field for an A/R Customer, the Promote function (Promoting a Company to an A/R Customer) will copy this field to the A/R Customer's optional fields.



Import Customers Import Customers is a program that will create or update CRM companies from A/R customers.

Notes:

The most common use of Import Customers will be when initially setting up the CRM data. It is likely that all A/R customers will become CRM companies and the Insert Only operation will be used. Filtering by ranges is also possible.

Operations include Insert Only, Update Only or Insert and Update. If you are unsure that you wish to update CRM data with A/R customer data, you may wish to use the Sync Companies function.

An option is provided if inactive customers are to be included.

Territories belonging to customers will be added to CRM data.

Optional fields are not imported using this program.



Import Contacts Import Contacts is a program that will create or update CRM contacts for organizations that use TaiRox Productivity Tools to add multiple contacts to A/R customers.

Notes:

The most common use of Import Contacts will be when initially setting up the CRM data. It is likely that all A/R contacts will become CRM contacts and the Insert Only operation will be used. Filtering the contacts belonging to specific customers is also possible.

Operations include Insert Only, Update Only or Insert and Update.

An option is provided if the inactive contacts or contacts for inactive customers are to be included.

Optional fields are not imported using this program.



Sync Companies Sync Companies is a program that will quickly identify which CRM companies have data that is inconsistent with the linked A/R customer.

Notes

When the Check button is pressed the first 500 companies that are out-of-sync with customers will be shown.

The Company Name itself may have changed. More likely, details such as addresses or phone numbers will have changed.

Double-click on one of the companies displayed and all fields that are different will be displayed. An action can then be selected for each difference. Actions include: None, Update Company Value and Update Customer Value. Pressing Update Records will make the appropriate changes. Some actions may be unavailable in some circumstances. For example Sync Companies will not update the currency of an A/R customer.



Create Demo Data Create Demo Data quickly creates data for demonstration from Sage 300 sample data or from a copy of a production database. The data is created relative to the Sage 300 session date.

Important Notes:

Create Demo Data can only be run on databases with empty CRM tables.

Create Demo Data marks the database as "Demo". In that state a warning message appears whenever the Sage 300 desktop is opened. Remove CRM Data can be run on a database marked as Demo. Remove CRM Data will delete all CRM tables and deactivate the application, removing CRM entries from common services.

Notes:

A key reason to create demonstration data is so that sales pipeline charts generated from opportunities will look meaningful.

A pseudorandom number generator (aka a deterministic random bit generator) is used to vary the data in a consistent way. This means companies will have no contacts, one contact or several contacts. The same holds true for other entity relationships. Dates will also be varied.

All demonstration data is created relative to the session date. Some data (e.g. created-on and modified-on dates) will be set to a value earlier than the session date ("the past").

Opportunity stages and communication types are varied as might be expected in a typical pipeline.

Opportunities have special dates (expected-closed, revisit-on) that would normally be set to a value later than the session date ("the future"), unless the opportunity stage has been won or lost, in which case these dates and the closed-on date will be in the past.

Contact names are created with various first and last name combinations so that searching will find more than one name in a search (e.g. same first name) and yet the first and last names will be different.

Optional fields are not created using this program.



Remove CRM Data Remove CRM Data quickly deletes all CRM tables and deactivates the application, removing CRM entries from common services.

You must type YES, all upper-case, in order to enable the OK button. Important Notes:

Create Demo Data marks the database as "Demo". In that state a warning message appears whenever the Sage 300 desktop is opened. Remove CRM Data is the only way to exit Demo mode.



Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program Tabs: When a row in the main display grid is selected, clicking on another tab shows all of the entities that are linked to the selected entity. New entities can be added from those additional tabs. Documents can be linked to any entity (a many-to-many relationship).

Search: Searching is performed "like an internet search engine". Enter a single word (or part thereof) and all entities with that word in any text field will match the search. Enter a second word to refine the search to all entities.

Advanced: There will be situations where a specific value or range of values (e.g. a date range) is to be found. Further, some entities have lists of values and a subset of these values are to be found. In these situations, use the Advanced Search capabilities.

Sorting: Each entity has an appropriate drop-down from which to select the sort order. Hovering above the icon to the right of the drop-down will show "Ascending" or "Descending", the current order. Clicking on this icon will reverse the sort order.

Navigation: Navigate through a list of entities by clicking on one of the navigation icons or enter the page number and tab out of the field.



Appendix A - General Operations of a Search Program Common Buttons beside the Navigation control:

Add - Adds a new entity. Also do this by pressing the Insert key while in the grid.

Delete - Deletes the currently selected entity (after confirmation). Also do this by pressing the Insert key while in the grid. Deleted entities can be "recovered". A user preference "Show Deleted" allows deleted entities to be seen so that they can be recovered by double-clicking on the selected row.

Link / Unlink / Promote - Are used when two types of entities can be linked together. Promote is a special case of Link that connects a Company to an A/R Customer.

Change Log: Every change to every field in every key entity is logged. When viewing a change log, select a row in the top grid and the bottom grid will display all of the field that have changed. In the example here, an Opportunity of $13,000 with a 60% certainty has been changed by the ADMIN user to an Opportunity of $15,000 with a 70% certainty.

Double-Clicking on a row will open a window for side-by-side comparisons. This is particularly useful for comparing Notes.



Appendix B - General Operation of a Maintenance Program A maintenance program provides a way to edit data using familiar Sage 300 controls. The ID is displayed beside the main entity name. This is a unique number, internally generated. Several tabs will be present on the entry form. For example, the Company maintenance program has tabs for the Contacts, Opportunities and Documents that are linked to that company.

Clicking on the Contacts tab shows the linked contacts for the company. It is possible that a large number of entities are attached to a single company, so the search function can further narrow down the list.

There are extensive ways to drill down to data from many different locations. Add, Delete, Link, Unlink and Change Log Buttons Some or all of the following buttons will appear on each tab of a maintenance program.

Add: Provides a way to add new entries by popping up an entry form. Delete: Deletes entries. Note that deleted entries are retained in the database and can be viewed when the User Preference "Show Deleted" is checked. Link: The same document can be linked to multiple entities of any type. Clicking Link adds a link to an existing document. It does not create a new document. Unlink: A link to a document can be removed. This removes the link by deleting a row in the link table and "Show Deleted" will not show a deleted link (the link can be easily re-added).



Appendix C - Exporting to MailChimp and Swiftpage Email blasts can be sent to Contacts using MailChimp or Swiftpage. There are 3 ways to create a file that can be easily uploaded and imported into these websites:

All of the filtered contacts can be exported from the Contacts program using the File, Export function.

All contacts belonging to a Contact Group can be exported from the Contact Groups program by pressing the Export button.

All contacts belonging to a Communication can be exported from the Communications program by pressing the Export button.

In order to export to MailChimp or Swiftpage the contact must have an email address, a first and last name, and must not be un-subscribed inactive or deleted (or belong to an un-subscribed inactive or deleted company). MailChimp, Swiftpage or Generic? Very few email blasts are customized, and those that are rarely use individual details beyond First Name and Last Name to customize the individual emails sent. The MailChimp format includes just 3 fields: Email Address, First Name and Last Name. This format can also be imported into Swiftpage or other services. The Swiftpage format includes many other fields that could be used for more complex communications. These fields will need to be remapped when importing into Swiftpage. The Swiftpage remapping input will look something like this: