CRM independent of Email Provider - Solastis

1. CRM INDEPENDENT OF EMAIL PROVIDER EMAIL IN CRM: INDEPENDENT OF ANY EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER Many CRM software restricts email integration with some specific external service providers. These CRMs can only facilitate email ids that belong to a predefined list of email service providers. i.e, their users can receive and send emails via email addresses but only if they belong to the email service provider supported by the CRM. Like Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft Exchange etc. The expectation here is, the user continues to use email from the respective service provider like Gmail or Microsoft exchange etc, and then tag some of the email messages to the CRM. (Means transfers relevant messages to the CRM vis some plugin). For modern businesses, communication through email is the most important mode, and restricting this to a specific service provider is not a good idea in our views. LIMITATIONS OF USING A CRM THAT RESTRICTS TO A SPECIFIC EMAIL PROVIDER MUST USE SPECIFIC EMAIL PROVIDER FOR CRM The first problem is, in order to use the CRM, the organization must be ready to commit to the specific email service provider. That means if the CRM offers integration with say Gmail then you must be ready to use Gmail as your email service provider. However once you put the CRM in use, you will lose the flexibility of changing the email service. So what happens if your organization grows to sizeable number and you need to consider a new email strategy ? MANUAL SYNCHRONIZATION OF EMAIL Another problem with using external email clients is that they are prone to human error. There are two ways to push emails to CRM when working with external clients. VIA PLUGIN: A plugin appears on the top of all registered CRM email accounts. As the employees are using their own email address for work emails as well, they can use the plugin to push their work emails into the CRM, leaving behind the personal ones in the inbox. VIA BCC: The users of external email service providers can also push their work emails in CRM by adding a BCC addressed to the unique email id that is assigned to the specific case they need to address. This technique is used by CRM that employ the features of both external client service providers as well as a partial email integration via CRM. However, both uses of external clients present quite a few challenges.

2. In case of plugin emails, if the user forgets to use the plugin in a work email, the data will not be stored in the CRM system. Instead, it will just be stored in his inbox. Similarly, in the case of BCC emails, a missing BCC will also cause missing emails in the CRM case files. EXTERNAL EMAIL CLIENTS AND BUSINESS GROWTH This main advantage (as claimed) of using external clients in CRM is that it allows the users to keep track of their work emails via their personal email addresses. But this advantage quickly takes the back seat as the organization grows. The external email service providers can facilitate handling fewer customers with the help of a small number of employees. But, as the number of customers grows, the increasing flow of incoming and outgoing correspondence needs to be accurately tracked and recorded, which can become tricky when even small human errors cannot be tolerated. External email clients cannot keep any record of employees’ activities with the CRM data. Hence, it cannot be determined that important data present in an employee’s email is pushed forward to the CRM or not. This can cause important information to be lost in the racket of all the personal emails coming in. Information lost, is business opportunities lost for new and upcoming companies. Growing organizations require an ordered structure to prosper, but all the procedural requirements to add new data in the CRM system wastes important time and resources. The employees have to juggle multiple platforms to get a complete view of the case. The need to use their personal emails for newer information, and at the same time need to access the CRM to obtain the previous correspondences. Moreover, email account administration is more complicated because, in case of replacement of employees, both of them have to keep close contact with each other to ensure every email is forwarded to the newcomer. Last but not least, having Gmail or Microsoft Exchange as your CRM client involves cost. These external email providers cost an additional amount to the business for each new email address added. FULL EMAIL INTEGRATION IN SOLASTIS The Solastis CRM plus Case Management Platform offers the absolute solution for integrating email into the CRM software tool itself, thereby simplifying the communication conundrum immensely. The full email integration method used in the Solastis CRM plus enables the CRM software itself to act as the mode of sending and receiving emails. The Solastis CRM with full email integration features an inbuilt email client which can be used with any email service provider. Once setup properly, you can send emails directly from the CRM system and all the incoming emails are extracted to the CRM system automatically.

3. Solastis CRM also allows for the company domain name to be used in the email address itself, thereby simplifying the email address for end users. The company can create emails addresses like help@domainname.com and assign it to a whole group of employees in one department. As the emails are retained by the Solastis CRM as opposed to employees inbox, an unavailable employee will not affect the access to the information coming in via his portal, thereby making the email administration an easy task.