Trialing CCRM: initial reactions – Accounts & other Thoughts!

Hi all!

We are a 6-person tech support company in Miami Beach FL, US, providing independent tech consulting and support (i.e., no selling/reselling of HW or SW) to small biz (mostly windows some Mac). I am currently the only employee and we have 5 independent contractors and as owner of the biz, I am planning to institute PSA (professional services automation; seems to be the buzzword here) software to improve our own company workflows, ahead of planned growth in our headcount. After an extensive web-based search, I am now reviewing 3 solutions: Commit, AutoTask and ConnectWise.

I have installed CCRM on one of our servers (SBS 2003 Premium R2) and after clicking around the program interface a bit and scratching my head:-)!, I have placed a one customer – a small 2-site art gallery – into CCRM to help us get familiar with how the program functions and its capabilitie,s asap.

Some initial impressions:

1. Accounts and the Interface: Still getting my head around the concept of ACCOUNTS. I expected to see in the ‘icon list’ (vertical area in the left pane of the program windows) CUSTOMERS!? Where are they? I can see EMPLOYEES but then no CUSTOMERS? And where are INDPENDENT CONTRACTORS (I guess that is sub-contractors in CCRM parlance?)

Then I realized that the icon groups in the list are NOT mutually exclusive i.e., EMPLOYEES are a TYPE of ACCOUNT.

Suggestion: have you thought of ‘rethinking’ the icon list and laying it out in functional groups, e.g:

---
Customers
Prospects (i.e., Leads?)
---
Employees
Independent Contractors (Subcontractors?)
---
Vendors (Suppliers?)
---
Other Accounts
---

Or of making the program interface more configurable so that users can lay out the icon list the way they want?

I was heartened to see that the program already permits some (quite limited) customization i.e., Show > icon list or icon groups – but the icon group Sales still doesn’t show me my CUSTOMERS and I can’t see a way to alter the content of icon groups, add new buttons for new Account categories, etc.

2. ‘Secondary Contacts’: this also threw me: when I enter an account – actually a CUSTOMER – I want to see COMPANY NAME as the CUSTOMER label – and I may or may not have multiple contacts and locations for this customer. Luckily, the upper view pane in Accounts can be customized to NOT show secondary contacts.

3. INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR (Subcontractor?) Vs EMLOYEE: What is the correct way to create a new SUBCONTRACTOR Account? And because I could only see EMPLOYEE initially, I placed one of our ICs in as an Employee and NOT as an IC. Short of reentering the data, how may I CHANGE the TYPE of this ACCOUNT to IC (ie., SubContractor)? (The Type field is 'locked' to Employee in this IC's Employee record.)

4. Nomenclature used: given CCRM’s international focus, have you thought of/would it be feasible to offer some kind of regional customization i.e., in the US market, LEADS are PROSPECTS, SUBCONTRACTORS are INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS, SUPPLIERS are VENDORS, etc?

5. Context sensitive (usual KB shortcut is F1) and searchable Help: this would be very welcome, as opposed to current link to pdf docs (and that link doesn’t include the web interface set-up doc)

6. Web Interface Set-up: have you thought of adding a GUI to make set-up and modification easier (instead of using a text editor to edit the ini file)

7. NOTES Formating: have you thought of adding formatting capabilities to NOTES in Assets e.g., bold, underline, italics.

Thanx for your assistance, as I work to quickly become more familiar with the program. (And oops, where is the ROADMAP link on the site?)

/dwv
David W. Vaughan
www.A-1techsupport.com
Wired: 305-672-4374
Skype: a1techsupport
Cell-Tech Emergencies: 786-200-6703

Hello DavidW,

1. Accounts types and customizations -
&
4. Nomenclature used: given CCRM's international focus, have you thought of/would it be feasible to offer some kind of regional customization i.e., in the US market, LEADS are PROSPECTS, SUBCONTRACTORS are INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS, SUPPLIERS are VENDORS, etc?

Actually you can customize the Account Types to match your needs. Simply open the Accounts window, select one of your Accounts records (not Employee) and look for the Account Type data field (under the General tab), right click it and select the "Select and Update Values", a window will open where you can modify all existing values and use the terms you use, change Leads to Prospects, Suppliers to Vendors etc.
Besides, RangerMSP is actually very customizable. You can edit drop down lists of dozens of fields so the values reflect your needs (just like the Account Type field as mentioned above), design your own report layouts, rename existing fields labels, add completely new data fields of any type and design your own tabs, and much more.

2. Secondary Contacts
You can select whether to display / hide Secondary Contacts in the Accounts list using the drop down Type selection fields on the Accounts window toolbar. Many times it is very useful to display the list of Accounts together with the secondary contacts. For example, when you search for a person phone number you simply type their name and click find - the system will search in Accounts and Secondary Contacts database at once displaying the right results with you need to select first the type of records you want to search for...

3. ...how may I CHANGE the TYPE of this ACCOUNT to IC
Employee record in RangerMSP have a special type of 'Employee' which cannot be modified. This is because employee records has special characteristics such as that you create users for employees. For all other Accounts (of any type) you can modify the Type field and select any value you need. In your current case, you will need to create new Accounts records for your IC.

(4.see above, together with 1.)

5. Context sensitive (usual KB shortcut is F1) and searchable Help...
This is a good feedback. Thank you.
Currently you need to use our PDF help documents (or online documents displayed in a web browser).

6. Web Interface Set-up: have you thought of adding a GUI to make set-up and modification easier
The web interface set-up process is quite simple, set an IP/Port in the .ini file and install the RangerMSPWebInterface service on your server using a single command.
Anyway, this is another good feedback and we may add GUI for these settings. BTW, you can also click here to read the RangerMSP Web Interface installation instructions in your browser (instead of using the Readme.txt file). You can only read the PDF installation instructions found here

7. NOTES Formatting
We may add notes formatting options in a future release.

I hope this helps.

Neta