CommitCRM Dispatcher: Faster Than Ever Before!

Most things are better faster. You’re not sure whether or not you agree? Think about the Internet, race cars, delivery service, even a trip to the dentist. Generally, faster = better. It’s just that simple.

So, as we kick off 2012, we find ourselves wondering if our users know how to make their dispatching and time management procedures as fast as possible. We want you to have to the best (i.e. fastest) business management experiences.

For starters, did you know that you can click and drag a Ticket marked for dispatching to a specific technician’s time slot in your Dispatcher in order to schedule the Ticket? You don’t have to go back into the Ticket window to schedule a new appointment or task for the Ticket. From within the Dispatcher window, simply click a specific pending Ticket, drag it and drop drop it into your Dispatcher calender. Once it has been allocated to a specific technician and time slot, you can change the scheduling by clicking, dragging and dropping it to another time slot/technician. How’s that for speedy scheduling?

Saving time can also be an aesthetic experience when you assign each technician a specific color so that each one of your technician’s appointments, tasks and service calls are marked in that specific colors to make it easier to manage schedules and appointments and evaluate your technician’s availability with just a glance.

To create recurring color assignments, open the Employees module using the left side pane, select an employee from the list of employees at the top of your CommitCRM screen. Then, click on the Employee tab. You can subsequently click on the blank “Default Color Box” toward the left of your screen and assign the technician a color from the assortment of available standard and pastel colors.

Keeping your fellow technicians informed about scheduled on-site visits and appointment, and changes to their schedules can also be made faster using the CommitCRM’s Alerts Server. With Alerts Server, automatically send email notifications to technicians about important business matters, such as when new appointments and tasks are assigned to them and when changes are made to their assignments.

You can also quickly send copies of the new scheduled appointments to technicians and customers from within the Dispatcher window. Simply right click an appointment box within the Dispatcher calendar, then select Send Email > Appointment/Task Details – Designed HTML.

By selecting this options, a template email containing the information specific to the Ticket and Appointment will automatically be opened in a new email window of your email application (such as Microsoft® Outlook®). After inputting the appropriate recipients (or using the default email recipients set for the corresponding Account), click “Send” and immediately provider your customers and technicians with the specific information.

Faster really is better. And with these speed enhancing features, we hope you succeed in increasing your speed without increasing your workload. With CommitCRM, safely exercise your need for speed!

Until Next Time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Making the Most of 2011

As the end of the year rolls around, we all get a little preoccupied. We start worrying about menus, budgets for holiday, New Years Eve plans, family gatherings and impending vacations. And that’s just on a personal note. On the business side, we worry about what the end of the year reports will reveal about our profits, revenues, productivity and overall performance.

With all of the personal and professional end of the year tasks at hand, it seems natural to table marketing campaigns, and prospect and lead generating activities. Not only is it hard to imagine fitting more work into our end of the year schedules, but we generally assume that all businesses slow down this time of year, making it an imperfect time to pursue new leads.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the end of the year may actually be an ideal time to pursue new and improved business opportunities.

Like you, your customers and suppliers are assessing their expenses and revenues for the year, and are evaluating ways in which they can reduce their expenses and increase revenues for the upcoming year.

Because everyone is taking stock of their contracts and business relationships, this time of year is ideal for touching base with your customers and suppliers to discuss with them ways in which partnering with you can help them reach their fiscal goals for the upcoming year.

When you go about contacting your customers and suppliers, make sure you are prepared so as not to waste their time or yours. Like we’ve already stated, time during the holiday season is a very valuable commodity. Respect the time your associates spend with you and make the most of it.

For current customers, demonstrate the value of the services you provide by preparing a report outlining the services, time, parts, resources, etc. that you have provided over the last year along with the corresponding costs to your customers. Use the report as a springboard to discuss plans for the upcoming year. In addition to determining additional services you can provide to your customers, together, you can develop mutually beneficial, customized billing agreements for the upcoming year based on a set of services, hours or projects. By giving your customers more competitive rates and addressing more of their needs, you should be able to win additional or more regular revenue opportunities.

Similarly, when meeting with current suppliers, prepare reports showing the services, parts and time that they have provided you. Based on the data in the report, discuss with your suppliers various customized arrangements that would benefit you both — lowering your costs and increasing the recurrence of your business or payments.

While it is always easier to broach current customers and suppliers than it is to pursue new leads, the end of the year also presents you with an ideal opportunity to follow up on new leads while your competition focuses on end of the year paperwork and festivities.
Make the most of the lull in your competition’s active marketing activities by giving your current customers rewards for referrals, and by daring to be different as you use the holiday season to grow your business.

By impressing current and perspective customers and suppliers with your business’ efficiency and meticulousness now, you can secure for your business a rewarding future before ringing in the New Year. Isn’t that something worth celebrating?

Until Next Time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, Misc | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Season of Gift Giving

The holiday season draws out the best, warmest, fuzziest, and most cinnamon-y of all things. From log fires to hot apple cider, cashmere sweaters and family gatherings, this really is the best time of the year.

Something especially unique about this season is the fact that people put each other first. The season of giving extends from the exchange of gifts to the giving of charitable donations. Brightening up the faces of others becomes just as important as the aesthetic of holiday decorations.

In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, businesses show appreciate for employees this time of year. Budgeting for office gifts however, always poses challenges. So, here are a few gift ideas that are budget friendly, meaningful and can even improve your business’ image or boost morale!

Firstly, for many people, money is tight around the holidays, so instead of gifting your employees another unique gift that they may or may not appreciate, give them the gift of money. Everyone always appreciates a little extra cash to be used at their discretion. Whether your employees need the money to pay their bills, celebrate the holidays with a little more abandon, or they want to pad their savings account a bit more, the gift of green is always appreciated and gives employees the freedom to spend it on what They want!

Other options for meaningful, season-oriented gifts are paid time off so that your employees can enjoy more stress-free time with their friends and family, or charitable donations made in their honor. With paid leave, you help boost moral and increase workplace productivity upon your employees’ return from their holiday vacations. Moreover, it probably doesn’t cost you more per employee than you originally budgeted for the year. Conversely, while making a charitable donation in your employees’ names does cost you, the gift is both tax deductible and is something that contributes to the sense of giving the season inspires. That will undoubtedly lift everyone’s spirit!

Another, possibly more cost-effective gift idea is to purchase a gift that can benefit the entire
office, like an espresso machine or a team outing. Generally, employees are looking to be recognized and appreciated by their company. By providing the entire office with a gift that makes the workplace more enjoyable, employers will meet their employees’ expectations without breaking the bank. So, whether you treat your employees to bonding outing or equip your office with fun magazine subscriptions to enhance in-office lunch experiences, you can find ways to gift your entire office at once.

Another way to be considerate of your staff is by being conscious of the financial burden some may face. As such, institute a Secret Santa gift exchange so that employees won’t feel compelled to exchange gifts with the entire team. Secret Santa also diminishes the hassle and cost of office gift-giving because all employees will only have to buy gifts for one employee. Moreover, for fairness’ sake, it makes sense to set a budget for the Secret Santa gifts so that everyone receives a gift of approximately the same value as what they spent.

We all love getting gifts, of that there is no doubt. But more important than the gifts we give and receive, is the spirit we foster and the cheer that we spread.

Whatever it is that you decide to do for your team, make sure everyone on the team feels appreciated for the work they do and incentivize to make next year even better!

Posted in CommitCRM Company, Misc | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

CommitCRM: Getting Unlimited Access

The tech world is all abuzz over Match, iTunes new application that enables users to access their entire iTunes library from multiple devices. The new iTunes application scans your entire music library, either matching it to one of iTunes’ library files or importing it directly from your library, and, subsequently, makes your entire music library accessible to your password protected account from up to 10 devices.

At Commit, we love music and we are very excited that Match has just been made available to the international iTunes community. As an extension of the iCloud, Match enables your entire music library, including imported files to become accessible from a variety of locations.

Without a doubt, Match has added layers of convenience and fun to iTunes users and music lovers everywhere. Who wouldn’t love the ability to get access to their music library from multiple locations?

Likewise, as an IT support provider, managed services provider or IT consultant, you would probably appreciate being able to access your work-related data from multiple locations. For CommitCRM users, the option is available to not only access your CommitCRM data from up to 10 devices, but you can actually access your CommitCRM data from as many devices as you want using the CommitCRM Web Interface.

The CommitCRM Web Interface allows you to access all of your CommitCRM data, including Account information, Ticket information, Dispatching schedules and Calendars, Asset histories, your Knowledge Base, Reports, sales opportunities, billing agreements and Charge details, from any Web browser! Via the Web Interface, you can also edit, update and create new entries in different CommitCRM modules — giving you the power of CommitCRM’s business automation and management features from any browser, anywhere in the world!

Also, the user name and password protected Web Interface gives you and any additional technicians access to all of your CommitCRM records. You can also specify specific privileges for each technician, thereby controlling each technician’s access to CommitCRM records. You can even configure Web Interface to use industry standard SLL (https) secure communication to have all communication encrypted end-to-end.

In addition, CommitCRM Web Interface can be branded with your logo and name using standard HTML code to create a unique and customize look for your Web Interface portal.

As music lovers around the world laud the release of iTunes’ Match application, we invite Commiters who are not yet familiar with the CommitCRM Web Interface to discover how the branded Web Interface will not only add convenience to your business operations, but will also increase your efficiency, save you money and help you provide improved service to your customers.

Until Next Time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

CommitCRM 5.7: It’s Just Right!

It’s not that we learned everything worth knowing from nursery rhymes or children’s stories, but, the lessons we amassed during our youth definitely continue to resonate with us today.

From the anecdote about Jack and Jill, for example, we learned about the importance of teamwork. From the Three Little Pigs, we learned that shortcuts never pay off. From The Hare and the Tortoise, we learned about humility and consistency. And from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we learned that while many things appear to be incredibly attractive because of their extreme features, nothing is more appealing than an item that is just right!

Whenever we go about building new versions of CommitCRM, we’re a lot like Goldilocks — experimenting with flashy, complicated, and, often, unnecessary features. And then, we are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to trade CommitCRM’s easy-to-use and robust-yet-simple nature for eye catching and overly complicated features.

Drawing on the lesson of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we choose to keep CommitCRM an easy-to-use solution that is just right and addresses all of our users’ needs. For this reason, we elected to preserve the usability, affordability and functionality of our software solution for CommitCRM 5.7. So, instead of providing our users with a professional services automation (PSA) solution that is either too complicated or too simple, too basic or too expensive, we bring IT service providers, MSPs and other IT support providers a PSA that is just right!

From CommitCRM 5.7’s more robust new additions, like the new Quoting module, to its more fundamental enhancements, like the new Keyboard shortcuts that make accessing the applications’ Windows even easier, CommitCRM 5.7 bring users a business automation solution that truly suits their needs.

So far, Commiters have echoed our Goldilocks-like sentiments about CommitCRM 5.7, and have described the new version of our PSA as being just right. More specifically, users have said that CommitCRM 5.7 provides them with the modules they need to run a successful business. One user in North Carolina, for example, shared with us that, for his company, “CommitCRM contains all of the major features and benefits to make it an ideal computer services company CRM tool. Hurrah!” Similarly, another user out of the UK contacted us to share that CommitCRM’s “Quote feature is fantastic and that the Calendar in the Web Interface is very useful.”

We aim to provide users with the enhancements they need to make their CommitCRM experience ideal.

We know that the IT support industry is brimming with a variety of business automation software solutions, from basic ticketing software to customer relationship management (CRM) and PSA solutions.

We are glad to be able to provide you with a unique PSA solution that is designed to be as fully comprehensive as it is usable and as affordable as it is beneficial.

While we continuously strive to improve and expand CommitCRM to bring you even more useful and easy-to-use tools to help you handle complex business scenarios, we are, above all, committed to you, our users. Our hope is that CommitCRM 5.7 and all future versions of our PSA will be just right for you, and by teaming up with CommitCRM, you and your businesses will be more profitable, efficient and better equipped to make your goals realities!

Until next time!
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Carving Out a Piece of the Revenue Pie

Currently, many industries are stuck in zero or negative growth, but for IT support providers, the economic tide is changing, and it is changing for the better!

According to Parks Associates, the SMB tech support industry is growing, predicted to be worth more than $15 billion in the next three years. Combined with household tech support, Parks Associates posits that, over the next three years, the tech support industry will be worth more than $30 billion! That’s extremely substantial growth, especial for today’s standards.

At Commit, we’re hoping that your IT services, managed services or computer repair business gets a piece of the growing tech support revenue pie.

We want to see you succeed, so, when we were working on CommitCRM 5.7, we were sure to include tools that can help you expand your business and increase your revenues. If nothing else, these new additions can help you run your business more efficiently.

One of these handy new features is the Web Interface’s new Weekly Calendar.

The new and enhanced Weekly Calender has transformed the viewing and functionality of the Web Interface’s Calendar. Until now, the Web Interface’s Calender has allowed you to view all tasks, appointments and activities from any Web browser, but in a dense, text-heavy list format.

The format of the Web Interface’s old Dispatcher, task and appointment schedule looks like this, and is still available with CommitCRM 5.7:

With the new Weekly Calendar view however, you, CommitCRM 5.7 users, are able to view all of your appointments and tasks in an easy-to-view, rich layout.

In addition to providing an easier way to view all of your Dispatcher and impending appointments, the Web Interface’s Weekly Calendar also makes it easier for you to quickly assess when you have free time and when your time has already been committed to a task.

In the Weekly Calendar, all of your “free time” slots are accompanied by a green line. All time slots marked by a red line indicate that your time is busy.

By color coding your schedule, the new Weekly Calendar makes it easier for you to asses your own schedule. Similarly, the new feature also provides you with an easier mechanism to view and assess all shared appointments and data from the Dispatcher.

Instead of only offering you the ability to view all of your business’ scheduled activities in a long list, organized according to chronology (date and time), CommitCRM 5.7 enables you to view all of the other technicians’ activities shared with you in the Weekly Calendar.

To optimize the simultaneous viewing of all technicians’ schedules, the Weekly Calendar still distinguishes your availability, by marking your free time with a green bar and your busy time with a red bar, but it also includes other technicians’ scheduled activities. The tasks and appointments for other technicians are attributed to the appropriate technician by name and are also color coded according to the preselected colors for each technician.

By making it easier for you to account for your time and for the time of your fellow technicians, CommitCRM 5.7’s new Weekly Calendar for the Web Interface enables you to manage your growing business with increased ease and improved oversight. So, as your business grows, and the schedules for you and your fellow technicians become increasingly busy, count on the new Weekly Calendar to help you manage your time and be confident in your ability to continue providing your customers with quality and efficient service as you carve out a larger piece of the SMB tech support pie!

Until next time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Product, IT Industry | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ideal Quoting Module Realized!

In an ideal world, increasing revenue would be as easy as accruing bills, and managing Quotes would be as convenient as managing a database of contacts.

With CommitCRM 5.7’s new Quoting module, IT support providers get a professional services automation (PSA) solution that helps make their world a little more ideal.

While it’s not a money tree or an autonomous program that can produce results for you, the Quoting module streamlines the entire sales quoting cycle, from quote generation to follow-up, status changes, customer acceptances, wins and invoicing.

Never before has CommitCRM made it so easy to create, monitor and win sales quotes and proposals.

Curious as to what makes the Quoting module so easy to use and useful? Well, here are a couple significant features and benefits that the Quoting module provides:

Firstly, when you set up a sales quote through the Quoting module, the Quote is linked to a selected Account in order to both save you the time of reentering your contact’s information and in order to automatically include the Quote in your Account’s history for improved customer service.

As you build your Quote, you are able to customize line items for every Quote. As you enter the parts, labor or expense Items into your Quote, you are able to customize the pricing by including discounts, markups or fixed prices. With this Quoting feature, building a Quote is made very convenient and quoting your customers and prospects becomes an instantaneous task.

Also, to help make the processes of Quote creation and maintenance easier, the Quoting module gives you the option to enter text-based line items so that you can tailor every Quote to your customer, including specific directions or explanations.

The Quoting module offers feature has built in mechanisms to help ensure an efficient and professional experience for your customers. Not only can customers be provided with a branded hard copy of the Quote, but you can also send them a copy of their Quote via email or provide them with also access their Quotes through the Customer Portal. They can even accept the Quote via the Web!

The advantages of providing customers with online access to their Quotes are that customers benefit from instant access and they can approve Quotes or Proposals at their own leisure and from the comfort of their personal or work computers.

Once you have won the Quote, and the customer has either approved the Quote via the Customer Portal or in writing, you can easily and efficiently convert the Quote into either a set of Charges, one for each of the Quote line items, or into a single QuickBooks Invoice where each Quote Line is converted into an Invoice Line (including the textual lines).

Whether you are simply looking for an easier way to create, manage, win or convert a Quote into an invoice, the CommitCRM Quoting module offers features for you. By using the Quoting module for your entire Quoting cycle, you’ll make your job a little easier, and hopefully your wallet a little richer!

Until next time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Sharing Our Good News with You!

Good news comes in all shapes and sizes. Some good news comes bundled up in a blanket and smells, looks and sounds a lot like a baby. Other types of good news come in the forms of stellar report cards, winning lottery tickets, and pictures of you catching your first fish. So, whether its is celebrated with slew of photographs, a special dinner, a gold star, balloons or a round of applause, good news is always celebrated.

Today, as we invite you to take a look at the official press release written up about the new release of CommitCRM 5.7, we look forward to the various ways in which you will celebrate our good news with us.

News entities such as Yahoo, SaaS News Wire and the San Francisco Chronicle have already joined us in celebrating the release of CommitCRM 5.7. Like us, these news entities recognize that releasing a new version of our software only three months after our previous release is a real achievement. Additionally, the enhancements and new tools included in CommitCRM 5.7 have once again transformed our CommitCRM, professional services automation (PSA) software for IT support professionals, giving it a whole new layer of functionality.

We invite you, IT services providers, managed services providers (MSPs), computer repair shop owners, IT consultants, and the entire community, to read our Press Release and learn more about the new additions to CommitCRM 5.7. We also encourage you to download our FREE, fully functional 30 day trial of CommitCRM 5.7 to see how our good news can be your good news too as CommitCRM 5.7 helps you run and manage your business better.

After learning more about our good news and CommitCRM 5.7, join us in celebrating this achievement by inviting your friends, colleagues and associates to join the family of Commiters who use our easy-to-use, affordable, and fully functional PSA solution to manage and grow their IT businesses!

Until next time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product, IT Industry | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

CommitCRM Forums and the Future of Mentors

The concept of mentoring goes back a LONG time, and its track record is just about as impressive as it is long. Looking back over time, there are a remarkable number of famous and successful mentor-protege relationships. Think about Socrates and Plato, Medici and Michelangelo, or Freud and Jung. Many of mankind’s most remarkable minds and great contributions were made possible by lessons and crafts imparted from mentor to mentee. Without these special relationships, we probably wouldn’t have the Sistine Chapel or the David, or Analytical Psychology.

The importance of mentor relationships has been at the center of many studies over the years. In a 1978, conducted by Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson and McKee, researchers were able to link occupational success to mentoring. Likewise, other studies have linked mentor-protege relationships to increased job satisfaction, higher salaries and faster promotions for the mentee.

How amazing would it be if you could further your career and increase your financial success by collaborating with a mentor? Well, history and research both say that you can really benefit from participating in a mentor partnership.

In the IT industry however, matching yourself up with a mentor is a bit more complicated than in most fields. In academia, a mentor is virtually built into the system; the same thing applies to medicine. Many businesses also incorporate mentoring programs in their company activities.

But, when you work in a small IT support business, there aren’t many organic mentoring opportunities. That is where the CommitCRM Forums come into play.

At Commit, we are very lucky to have a community of bright, competent, experienced and successful IT services providers, managed services providers (MSPs), IT consultants, etc. Our informed CommitCRM users cover an array of IT support occupations and a variety of areas of expertise. By bringing all CommitCRM users together in our Forums, we enable all Commiters to mentor each other, sharing their insights, successes, struggles and lessons learned.

In our Running an IT Services Business forum, for example, Commiters can ask each other technical questions, workflow and business related questions and customer relationship management (CRM) questions.

By utilizing the CommitCRM Forums you can benefit from others’ experiences and areas of expertise.

For IT professionals, it’s very apropos that you find your mentors out in cyberspace. While fostering mentor relationships in user forms is avant-garde and modern, it’s no less beneficial to IT support providers looking to learn, succeed and grow.

If you haven’t yet, check out our Forums, and start sharing your questions, experiences and expertise with the CommitCRM community by registering as a forum user.

Forum registration is free and only takes moments to complete!

Until next time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

CommitCRM 5.7: How New Versions are Achieved

If reality worked more like fairy tales, we could just snap our fingers, click our heels together, or chant “Bibbidi bobbito boo,” and any enhancements we would like to add to CommitCRM would just instantaneously exist.

Unfortunately, in real life, we have no Marry Poppins, good witch Glinda or fairy godmother, so, when we decide to augment CommitCRM, we face a number of consuming challenges when we release new editions of our professional services automation (PSA) software solution multiple times each year.

When we released CommitCRM 5.6, in August, only about three months ago, we were already dreaming up CommitCRM 5.7. Our product manager, developers and customer service and support team were sorting through customer suggestions and were brainstorming new ideas of their own.

The process of simply assembling a list of enhancements and new features to add to a new release of CommitCRM takes time. The value and viability of each idea needed to be assessed. Once a list of enhancements is assembled, we have to estimate the time it would take to develop each new feature so that we can both determine which new options to develop concurrently for the next version release and so that we could establish a tentative release date for the new version.

After we came up with the list of features to be included for CommitCRM 5.7, we divided the task between our team and started coding the enhancements, being careful each addition to CommitCRM would interact well with the others, in spite of being created by different developers. Like with every new version, we had to be to sure that API changes were carefully implemented so that new APIs will support all of our new features and options without requiring changes to be made to any third party programs that have already implemented using CommitCRM APIs.

The meticulousness and care applied by each of our developers is the key to the success of each one of our CommitCRM versions. Applying a combination of those skills and patience, our team produced code for all of the new tools and features for CommitCRM 5.7. They tested each of their programs multiple times, addressing bugs, incompatibilities and glitches.

Once our developers were confident in their programs, they handed them to our QA team to test them again. When any new bugs were discovered, the programs were sent back to the developers to fix. The updated versions of the programs were then provided to the QA team for additional review.

With each new version, not only are the new features tested, but our QA team also verifies that the rest of CommitCRM works properly and is not affected by changes to our software solution. As with all of our version releases, everyone did their utmost to ensure that even the Beta version of CommitCRM 5.7 was error free and stable. After CommitCRM 5.7 was reviewed in its entirety, it was released in Beta form to a select group of users as another means of checking the integrity of the new version of our PSA.

Once an error free Beta version of CommitCRM was achieved, we were able to announce and unveil the Release Candidate of the new version. During this period of time, we start coordinating plans to release the new version. We also start sorting through our users’ suggestions, new industry releases, etc. to start preparing for the next version!

Due to the incredible undertaking of developing every new version of CommitCRM, releasing a new version of of our PSA only months after our previous release is an achievement. As with all version releases, with CommitCRM 5.7, we faced the challenge of finding the time to code, perfect, test, and correct ever new feature. Because we believe that we’ve succeeded in overcoming all of these obstacles, we are excited to be bringing you a new set of feature and tool enhancements and integrations only months after bringing you another very robust new edition.

We’d love to share more about our experience of developing CommitCRM 5.7 in just a few short months, but duty calls. Back to the drawing board we go!

Until next time,
The Commit Team

Posted in CommitCRM Company, CommitCRM Product | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments