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Hi Folks, as fieldwork is a bit quiet at the moment I’ve returned to my other hobby, software development.
I’ve been developing, and running within my own business, a CRM (customer relationship management) software on Windows and Android mobile. I’m 5 years down the line with it and I would like to get some ideas from fellow trade forum members about what makes a good CRM for our business.
When I started in this industry I looked at, and trialled, lots of off the shelf products for job management such as ServiceM8, JobLogic, ServiceMate, Commusoft and the like but found them either to be too generic in their approach for what we did or just lacking in functionality compared to a basic pen and paper system. We even spoke to some bigger companies who had bespoke CRM about licensing/franchising but also found their offerings to be short of features and tailored to their specific procedures and ideas about how appliance jobs should be managed.
I rememeber ServiceMate was trade specific but low-tech. They’ve since brought out a newer version that looks very advanced from what it used to be like but it also looks like they’ve had to go into the business of CRM and widen their net to other trades and, of course, raise prices.
Of course, I do see a business opportunity here for my offering, but before I consider whether I want to make the effort of releasing and marketing it I’d like to get some ideas and feedback from members who use other software about what’s good and what’s bad about the offerings out there at the minute.
I’ll start the ball rolling by talking about my own…….
Hats off to you Ken. It takes quite some effort as I know from experience.
I don’t want to tread on your toes, especially on your own board! I’m happy not to take the thread further if you’d rather.
On the other hand if you’re happy for me to talk then I’ll go into some of what I’ve done and people can either shoot it down or offer encouragement.
In the meantime can I have a go on Rapport? Again, if it’s a commercial risk then I won’t pursue it further.
No problem to me if you want to talk about largely anything.
Rapport doesn’t have a free thing any longer, we had to halt that as it was too expensive to maintain frankly but you could ask Sudeep about it as I think he may well have a demo setup somewhere.
But there are a few of the guys that use it and every one that does won’t part with it, I think that kinda says a lot. 😉
K.
kwatt wrote:No problem to me if you want to talk about largely anything.
Rapport doesn’t have a free thing any longer, we had to halt that as it was too expensive to maintain frankly but you could ask Sudeep about it as I think he may well have a demo setup somewhere.
But there are a few of the guys that use it and every one that does won’t part with it, I think that kinda says a lot. 😉
K.
Ok, thanks.
Yes, I think once you get started on a particular software product it becomes the backbone of the business and therefore difficult to change without a lot of hassle.
I’ll start with the Windows desktop. Designed for a minimum two person operation with scheduler/call handler and engineer on the road although also still useful for the sole engineer who does their admin at home on a bigger screen.
I felt it was important to get as much information to hand without cluttering the views. A mix of icons, font sizes and colour coding displays the important information as clearly as possible.
Dashboard (home screen)
There are 3 customisable view columns. In the configuration below they show (from L to R) Active jobs – all open jobs, filtered view for open jobs in ‘Awaiting Parts’ status and finally view for Today’s Jobs.
From this dashboard you know how much you’ve got on, who the customer is, type of job, what status the job is and who has been involved in the job whether they’re in the office or on the road.
What other things do people like to see when they’re looking at an ‘at a glance’ overview of current jobs?
Interesting as we went a totally different route.
Rapport was designed to sit in the cloud and be used anywhere on pretty much any Internet-capable device, so it could be used in the field and interact with just about any other system, hence the name. And designed from the outset so that a sole trader could use it, the notion being that if you were a sole trader with no office support you had to be able to take and log calls on a mobile device but scaleable so as it could be used by multiple call handling staff and so forth as well.
K.
kwatt wrote:Interesting as we went a totally different route.
Rapport was designed to sit in the cloud and be used anywhere on pretty much any Internet-capable device, so it could be used in the field and interact with just about any other system, hence the name. And designed from the outset so that a sole trader could use it, the notion being that if you were a sole trader with no office support you had to be able to take and log calls on a mobile device but scaleable so as it could be used by multiple call handling staff and so forth as well.
K.
It’s not platform specific and I do have IOS up and running also, it’s just we run a Windows / Android setup in my business. Some of the freelance engineers have IOS so we cater for that.
Also cloud based and offers offline functionality for the database ie. you can still use the application on your mobile device without a connection. It will synchronise the data once you get signal back. As we know, so many jobs involve going down into the cellar and it’s very frustrating if you’re trying access data or record notes or photos on the job.
Whilst doing some recent market research I also noted one of the companies we looked at working with has also released their proprietry software. However, from the looks of the website I think it may have not been successful as the links for the free trial don’t seem to be active.
I think that’s one of the biggest challenges in making a software product – is the customer going to be confident that it’s going to be supported for the next 5-10 years.
I’ll come back with some other details when I get the time.
I have looked at over 20, if not more, pieces of software (manufacturers portals and Servicemate etc) and haven’t found anything that really solves all the issues. Some features i’d expect to be “common” are not and the way modern software indexes things is a mystery to me. Integration with modern accounts software has also been a struggle. The leap from 1-4 engineers to handling 5+ engineers has been a struggle.
Give Sudeep a shout and try Rapport, it works (I think) with Quickbooks and Sage and it’s dead simple to use, even for us knuckle draggers.
K.
Give Ken’s solution a shot as they’ve got it ready to trial. My offering, although operational within my business, is still a while from being available publicly.
I’m just really looking for general pointers on what features people are looking for so I can avoid the pitfalls of making this too tailored for us to be useful to other businesses.
I see accounting support is high on the list with you. Now HMRC has gone digital everyone is on Xero, Sage or Quickbooks so it seems a must to have some sort of support for this. We’re on Xero but at the moment I just have my account ‘journal’ the sales ledger in every quarter rather than track every single invoice in Xero. I’ll have a look in to the APIs that would enable automation of this process.
ali_g12 wrote:Give Ken’s solution a shot as they’ve got it ready to trial. My offering, although operational within my business, is still a while from being available publicly.
I’m just really looking for general pointers on what features people are looking for so I can avoid the pitfalls of making this too tailored for us to be useful to other businesses.
I see accounting support is high on the list with you. Now HMRC has gone digital everyone is on Xero, Sage or Quickbooks so it seems a must to have some sort of support for this. We’re on Xero but at the moment I just have my account ‘journal’ the sales ledger in every quarter rather than track every single invoice in Xero. I’ll have a look in to the APIs that would enable automation of this process.
Look at linking to FreeAgent accounts its run by NatWest and RBS, http://fre.ag/4866v2bu
kwatt wrote:Give Sudeep a shout and try Rapport, it works (I think) with Quickbooks and Sage and it’s dead simple to use, even for us knuckle draggers.
K.
I have tried previously but never got a response. I have tried again by contact form and email but still nothing and the telephone isn’t valid? https://www.rapportsoftware.co.uk/contact-us 01563 557156
Hi [USER=”37142″]centigradeltd[/USER]
Can please drop me email on stalati@ukwhitegoods.co.uk with your query and I will be able to assist you.
Thanks
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