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March 25, 2020

Last Activity Report

Stay in touch with your best customers

The Last Activity Report provides the user with the last time any activity has occurred with a Prophet CRM company. The activity could have occurred with any Contact or Opportunity associated with the company.

Use Cases:

  1. See last interaction date with top-revenue accounts (Sort by Won Opp Revenue)
  2. See accounts with largest outstanding/Active Revenue and the date of last activity (Sort by Active Opp Revenue)
  3. See accounts which haven’t been touched in the longest period of time (Sort by Days Since Last Activity)
  4. See User’s last activity date (Sort by Last Activity User)

Report Specs:

  • Columns: Company Name, Days Since Last Activity, Active Opp Revenue, Won Opp Revenue, Last Activity Type, Last Activity User
  • All columns are sortable
  • Report can be exported to .CSV from Power BI Client

Get the Report!

Fill out the form below and one of our associates will reach out to schedule delivering this report.

    Category iconCRM Reporting

    February 24, 2020

    Website integration with Prophet CRM

    Integrate your website with Prophet CRM 

    Prophet CRM helps your team to manage their Contacts, Companies, and business Opportunities through Outlook. Integrating your website with Prophet CRM allows your team to execute their tasks more efficiently and provide a better customer experience.

    Integrating Prophet CRM with your website will help your team:

    1. Provide a better customer experience

    Top sales and customer teams understand that response time to a customer or prospect’s inquiry is paramount. Quick engagement from your team to the end-client creates the best experience for your client, ensuring continued business.

    2. Complete objectives more efficiently

    Once the CRM tracking is plugged into your website, customer data from lead forms will be automatically sent straight to the integrated CRM system. This eliminates manual data input and reduces a significant amount of administrative overhead. Additionally, this helps prevent missed leads created through marketing efforts.

    3. Create higher quality data and profile information

    The best source of information about your customer is your customer! High-quality forms which capture pertinent customer details can be sent directly to the Prophet CRM database, helping your representatives to reach out with the best information.

    4. Increase sales revenue 

    Sales teams benefit from higher quality of data and improved response time to customer issues by creating a high-touch customer-focused environment. This is essential for increasing revenue and gaining confidence from business partners.

    Want to get started? Let us know!

      Category iconCRM Integration,  Uncategorized

      February 9, 2020

      Comparing Outlook Customer Manager and Prophet CRM

      Prophet-CRM-works-how-you-work

      What to use next after OCM?

      Microsoft’s Outlook Customer Manager (OCM) is coming to an end of its run as a lite CRM solution embedded in Outlook. Microsoft has published that it will cease to support OCM in June 2020.

      Outlook Customer Manager provided incredible benefit to firms in the the 1-5 CRM user space by allowing users to manage daily business sales and marketing operations through Outlook. OCM’s essential Outlook integration helped to simplify these functions, consolidating efforts into a single portal rather than multiple softwares.

      If you are a small business owner you may be wondering where to turn for a sturdy and simple CRM replacement.

      Fortunately, firms using OCM can easily transition to Prophet CRM, the leading provider of Outlook-based CRM. As with OCM, Prophet CRM users can manage pipelines with opportunities and projects within Outlook. Teams can consolidate deal-specific information and interaction for collaboration, and managers can have a high-level view of all the functions within the business.

      For Outlook Customer Manager users who are comfortable within the Outlook interface Prophet CRM provides a familiar and recognizable experience. This allows onboarding to Prophet CRM to be quick and easy for transitioning OCM teams.

      What can you do with Prophet CRM?

      • Contact Management
      • Account Management
      • Opportunity Management
      • Relationship Management
      • Pipeline Reporting
      • Activity Reporting
      • Sales Automation
      • Workflow Automation
      • Document Generation
      • Email Tracking
      • Track Notes and Meetings
      • Plan Next Steps

      Contacts, Companies, and Deals

      Outlook Customer Manager and Prophet CRM follow a similar database format, categorizing individual records as Contacts, Companies, or “Deals/Opportunities.” The comparable format will allow for OCM users to easily transition information from OCM to Prophet CRM. Additionally, teams will not have to change the familiar language and processes to accommodate an unfamiliar solution.

      OCM users will be pleased to find that Prophet CRM offers a similar “Excel-like” interface where they can easily filter and select records. As with OCM, Prophet CRM provides the user flexibility to create multiple custom views to explore and recall information from the database.

      CRM Reporting – The Big Difference

      The primary differentiator between Outlook Customer Manager and Prophet CRM is the incredibly detailed pipeline and activity reporting Prophet CRM provides. Through Prophet CRM managers have access to traditional PDF-style reports or modern analytic reports to measure their team’s progress.

      Prophet CRM utilizes embedded Power BI, enabling users to see trends in their key metrics. These reporting tools enable sales and project teams to visually reflect KPI’s related to customer interaction, pipeline conversion, and team productivity towards goals.

      Mobile CRM

      Both Outlook Customer Manager and Prophet CRM offer mobile apps to assist teams on the go. OCM and Prophet CRM’s mobile applications are separate environments from the Microsoft Outlook mobile application.

      Contact an OCM Migration Specialist

        Category iconCRM Benefits,  CRM

        November 22, 2019

        How to Restore the Prophet CRM Add-In

        If you want to reactivate Prophet, here are the steps.

        • Open Outlook, in the upper left corner click on “File”.
        • Now click “Options”.
        • A window will appear, click “Add-Ins” from the left side of the window.
        • Now click “Go” at the bottom of the Add-Ins window.
        • A window will appear. Check the two empty boxes that were unchecked next to: “Avidian Prophet” and “Avidian Prophet Ribbon”/”AVTAddin2010″, and then “Ok”.
        • Prophet should be re-enabled. You may need to restart Outlook for it to take effect.

        If you have any further issues, feel free to reach out to us directly at 425-457-7701.



        Category iconUncategorized

        November 22, 2019

        Temporarily Disable Prophet CRM

        If you want to deactivate only Prophet, here are the steps.

        1. In Outlook, click File > Options > Add-ins.
        2. Now that you are on the Add-ins window of the options menu. Click “Go” as underlined in the picture below.
        3. A window will appear. Uncheck “Avidian Prophet” and “Avidian Prophet Ribbon”, and then “Ok”.
        4. Prophet Should be disabled. If these steps don’t work, start Outlook in Safe Mode.

        Category iconUncategorized

        November 21, 2019

        API Integrations and CRM; A Beginners Guide

        What Is An API?

        API stands for Application Program Interface. Simply put is how information is delivered to and accessed from a system. 

        Think of it like this; you are out at your favorite breakfast spot and you want to order blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon, extra crispy. 

        How does the kitchen in the back know what you want from the available items they have to offer?

        Because the waiter told them so.

        Think of an API as the waiter of a system, it retrieves and delivers information from the “kitchen”.

        In real life instead of pancakes, APIs deliver requests to data systems which in turn deliver data back to you.

        It is how you can locate contact info in Prophet CRM that a coworker may have entered through a simple search request.

        What Are API Integrations?

        Let’s go back to our pancake and waiter example, but instead, imagine the pancakes were not for yourself but rather for one of your loyal customers.

        While the kitchen must get the order, it is also important that the sale information, customer information, and payment information are also recorded. 

        More often than not tracking all of this info will require multiple systems.

        This means that you or someone else in your company will be recording highly similar if not the same data into several other programs.

        But what if you didn’t have to?

        What if there was a way for information to be updated in one system from another automatically.

        That is what API Integrations do. 

        API Integrations are essentially a waiter that instead of just reporting orders to the kitchen, also updates the other systems in your business.

        Why is API Integration important?

        API integrations are important for several key reasons:

        1. Automation

        Automating daily activities has become a critical component of productivity in today’s fast-paced work environment. Working smarter and not harder, by reducing repetitive tasks, accelerates and streamline business processes. 

        2.    Consistent Data 

        Reducing the number of times data is manually entered not only reduces the risk of human error but creates a consistent, centralized database. Additionally, it promotes the input of high quality and detailed information by employees as they know they will only have to enter it once. 

        3.    Combines highly focused systems

        API integrations are important because each program or app you use does its specific function so well, that it is hard to use just one during a business sales cycle. Integrating these specialized tools allows for a more fluent and comprehensive sales approach when interacting with potential customers. 

        As this technology becomes more popular 55% percent of CIOs claim that using API integrations is critical to their business strategy according to a survey conducted by Cloud Elements. Additionally, they identified CRM as being the #1 system in need of integrations.

        Example of an API Integration:

        It isn’t uncommon to use all these programs during one sale:

        1.    Prophet CRM: Gather information and grow the lead

        2.    MailChimp: Email marketing and information delivery 

        3.    Zoom: Schedule a sales meeting

        4.    DocuSign: Finalize and make the sale official 

        Picture this; It’s the start of the week and you have just been assigned a batch of hot leads from your marketing team. 

        You begin to create customer profiles in your CRM platform and attempt to connect with the various accounts you have been assigned. 

        Some pick up, some don’t, some request additional information be emailed to them while a few are ready to talk later this week.

        Moreover, a few accounts from last week are moving towards the closing stage!

        While this is easily organized within your CRM system you may waste the rest of your day using second-tier programs to deliver information, set meetings and send contracts.

        With an API Integration in place, it is as easy as changing the stage of an account and automatically having another program perform the desired action. 

        Customer A moves from prospect to potential and is automatically added to an email list. 

        Customer B wants to see a demo is moved from the potential stage to the demo stage and a zoom meeting invitation is automatically generated and emailed to them. 

        The possibilities are endless and the time you can save in daily activities is infinite. 

        How To Apply API Integrations: 

        So all of this sounds great but how can you get API Integrations up and running? 

        When it comes to implementing your API you have one of two options.

        Option A: In house implementation. 

        This can be done by either having a current member of your IT team learn how to create the code that will connect whichever programs you see fit to make a specific business process more efficient. Additionally, you could hire a contract worker or a new employee that specialized in this area. 

        Option B: Third-party implementation 

        Most major Software As A Service providers have API integrations ready to connect their software to any other major application. Not only is second-hand implantation cheaper, but it is also faster. 

        Contact your CRM provider, as CRM is a great central application to connect other programs too, and ask about API integrations today.

        Category iconUncategorized

        October 8, 2019

        Adding A Contact

        How to add a contact in Prophet CRM.

        Back to Prophet CRM Beginner’s Guide

        There are many different ways to add a contact to Prophet, but this video will cover the simplest way to do so from the Contact Manager.

        Step One: In the Contact Manager, click on the button that says “New” near the top left of the window. A drop down menu will appear.

        Step Two: In the drop down menu, select “New Contact”. A pop up window will appear.

        Step Three: In the pop up window that appears, enter all of the relevant information and click “Create New Contact”.

        Step Four: An Outlook Contact window will come up with all of the contacts information that you had typed automatically filled in. You can make any additions if needed.

        Step Five: Click on “Save & Close” to add the new contact to both Prophet and Outlook.

        Congratulations! You’ve just added a Contact in Prophet!

        Category iconBeginner Guide,  CRM Training

        October 8, 2019

        Using CRM to Recession Proof your Business

        How to revamp your CRM adoption and put the data to work.

        In the last few months nearly every recognized recession leading indicator has flashed.  The yield curve has inverted. The Dow continues to play hopscotch. Pundits are doing their best to look grim. 

        In SMB, sales organizations are either armed to the teeth with preemptive recession strategy or are entirely looking the other way.  If you’re unsure which column you fall into try the following exercise:

        The next time one of your firm’s junior reps lands a deal worth a handshake ask them what they’re doing to recession proof their pipeline. 

        Maybe wait a few minutes, and then ask.

        Hopefully the answer includes CRM.  I’d cross my fingers, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.  Hopefully there’s noble pledge to focus on the fundamentals, preferably one with lots of eye contact.  If not, or if the pledge has a history of running out of steam don’t worry. Here’s a Sales Small Business Recession Field Guide as it concerns CRM, or SSBRFG:CRM for short.  (I’m not in marketing)

        Taking these steps will help you sell strategically through a recession by leaning on your CRM, whether your CRM been a well-oiled machine or the Spruce Goose.

        1.     Let’s reexamine what we know.

        The first step to preparing a recession strategy for your Sales Org should always start with the CRM—specifically the data and trends housed within.  Even if you feel like your solution has been underutilized, odds are very good that the CRM has collected much more data than you anticipated. Get the data and put it in Excel, Power BI, Tableau, or into the hands of someone proficient with these things and start to figure out the basics:

        -How many contacts are being made week over week, and what is the trend?

        -How many activities have been auto-logged, and what are they?  Who are they being done to?

        Ask increasingly complex questions until the answers become untrustworthy.  This step is getting to the start line. Don’t evaluate the quality of the data, that comes later.

        2.     Synthesize data sources.

        Let’s suppose your SMB sales team has not been saintly with CRM entry and there are a holes.   It’s invaluable to put that data in context with the other business systems. The easiest method is to overlay data from the accounting ERP.  (This can be done quite easily with Microsoft’s Power BI*)

        *Shameless plug, Prophet CRM uses embedded Power BI to give you top tier reporting ability.

        In the same manner as the first point look for any obvious correlations.  Here are a few basic ones to get moving:

        -Is there higher activity on high revenue accounts?

        -Does activity increase with revenue?

        -Do we see regular activity, no matter the sales volume or is there a correlation in purchase activity?

        3.     Reconcile the systems to give your team a head-start

        Truthfully, you should get the systems integrated, but if the cash or time is not forthcoming the next best alternative is to make sure both systems have equal information where there is overlap.  This step is critical, as readily available customer history is a critical ingredient in building the sales team’s confidence and reliance.

        Any CRM worth its salt will have a function to import Excel sheets.  Get spreadsheets from the ERP and make sure the following items are imported:

        -Any contact.  Be scrappy—on occasion the billing department penetrates a client organization better than the sales team.  You can easily get a name, phone number, email, job title, and address/location at the minimum.

        -Any Purchase.  Have the sales team fill out pertinent details on the Excel spreadsheet for the deals they won (lead source, sale type, the basics).  Excel will enable this to be done reasonably accurately en masse, saving time and frustration.

        Import the completed sheet into the CRM so that both systems have the same data.

        4.     Time for a new map

        By now you’re fairly familiar with the key organizational metrics and how to report on them.  From here you can set out a new strategy for engaging with prospective and current clients based on the metrics you can track.

        During this stage it is important to envision these KPI’s in terms of real-life actions and outcomes, save the details of execution for the next two steps.  Ask yourself the following questions, and increase in specificity with each one:

        -How many touches should be put on each prospect before they are declared unqualified or dead?

        -How many touches should be applied during each stage of the sales cycle?

        -How many phone calls do you want your team making on a daily or weekly basis?

        -How many contacts should an AE make in a month—and at what level of the organization?

        -How often should we be calling or emailing existing clients?

        Remember, the goal here is to have the team hit its stride with these metrics BEFORE the recession hits.  These goals must be realistic and accomplishable for each week or each month in the year.

        5.     Time for some tweaks

        Once your strategic goals are outlined from point four the next step is to ensure the CRM reflects those aspirations.  There are two benchmarks to be achieved in this course:

        Benchmark A: Is the CRM configured correctly to capture the appropriate data? 

        Example:     As a Sales Manager, I want to have a very good understanding of our lead source performance—do we have a field where Opportunities or Contacts can be categorized by lead source?

        If the answer is no, then a field must be configured to capture that data AND the team must be appraised of the expectation for that data entry.  As always, trust the team to do it—and then inspect that it has been done on a routine basis.

        Benchmark B: Is the CRM configured to assist the user while simultaneously capturing the data?

        Example:     I want to see that my sales team has followed up on every proposal, is there a way to automate proposal follow ups and report on that?

        ***If the answer for your current solution is no, please skip the rest of the article below and submit your contact information so we can help you! 

        Users will rely on the CRM when it is a vehicle to make their immediate task easier.  The key concept is to introduce accessibility. It must be easy to set reminders, or action items will be left unfinished.  It must be easy to enter notes, or the team will keep all the information in their heads. The brain is not scalable, but Prophet CRM sure is.

        6.     Re-Train the Team

        Odds are good that it’s been a while since your team has had some instruction on the CRM.  If you have introduced new practices per Point 5 you’ll want to make sure everyone is on the same page.  Many CRM solutions have excellent resources available online, or you can call your account manager to schedule some directed training.  This training ensures that everyone is accountable for using the CRM as directed—nobody can claim ignorance.

        7.     Inspect what you expect

        To ensure that CRM usage is habitual, review the system daily or weekly.  Use a specific report which provides visibility to your key metrics, and ensure they are being met on a weekly or monthly basis.  If your CRM doesn’t provide the exact report you require odds are very good that your provider can create a custom report, or guide you to creating your own.

        Category iconCRM Benefits,  CRM Integration,  CRM Migration,  Sales CRM,  Sales Strategy,  Sales Tools

        October 8, 2019

        CRM Implementation Strategy

        Designing a CRM can seem like an overwhelming task.  A customer relationship tool touches all aspects of the business.  Anytime a customer is interacting with sales, support, engineering, or development your CRM tool should be assisting by providing meeting notes, relevant documents, and helpful email templates.  So, where to start?

        Upper Management

        Define exactly where the company is today in terms of products, services, margins, tools, outside resources and inside talent.  It is also critical to know how your company compares to the competition. Upper Management should also provide realistic and concrete goals and sales targets.  These two factors will form the foundation of your sales strategy.

        Sales Strategy

        Customer relationship management software is key to crafting a sales strategy.  Once upper management has defined revenue goals the sales leadership should craft a series of key performance indicators or KPI’s.  Each KPI must be something that can be measured, such as “Cold Calls” or “Proposals Sent.”  

        An organization’s CRM must be designed so that it can measure each KPI and provide reports.  CRM reporting ability empowers leaders to notice trends and lead from the front.  

        CRM Data Migration

        Prior to importing data into the CRM, we find that most clients are sitting on gold that they didn’t have the knowledge or tools to mine.  All of the history with respect to sales and customer relationships is buried in thousands of emails and calendar appointments.

        Data Migration organizes your customer engagement history by importing it into the CRM.  Categorizing, tagging, grouping and identifying network connections is the first step to effective contact management.  

        PRIORITIZATION

        When we work with clients to categorize and segment their databases in order to mine the gold, they are quick to show us the analysis of everything those clients have purchased in the PAST. While that information is important, it only tells part of the story. In today’s competitive environment, you need to partner with your clients and find out where else they are doing business that could and should be done with you. 

        Viewing it from that perspective, the questions is how much business could they potentially do with us? If you are only getting 10% of their business, how can you go after the other 90% that is going to your competition?  This is especially true in the B2B sales environment where a large firm may be consuming the same parts from numerous suppliers.

        Defining what you EXPECT so the CRM can be built to enable Management to INSPECT

        Create actionable and measurable goals in terms of practices, products, services, business or brand lines, new accounts, deeper penetration, lower service requests, higher repeat business etc. It isn’t enough for Upper Management to create the Vision and Mission Statement. The key to success is how that message is:

        *Delivered to all levels of in a manner that allows every employee to understand the logic of how and why it will benefit everyone to execute on it;

        *How those goals will be supported;

        *How those goals will be measured;

        *How those goals will be driven;

        *How the meeting of those goals will be enforced!

        Clarify the actual steps to be taken and the people, (by role), who will execute on those in order to achieve the goals. The CRM enables Management to monitor those steps and the results so that you can make adjustments and provide recognition or coaching. It also enables your employees to more efficiently organize and monitor the results of their own day to day efforts and achievements.

        USER ADOPTION makes or breaks your CRM implementation

        We work to garner User Adoption and the achievement of your goals by designing and customizing a CRM that intuitively matches the flow of your business processes and drives your specific activities. In addition, we train according to the specific User’s role. We deliver the system in a manner that demonstrates how they as individuals can benefit and grow their productivity and revenues by using the CRM. As our CRM solution is EMBEDDED with Outlook, the majority of their daily “Blocking & Tackling” activities are automatically captures. 

        All of those activities and relevant data points can then be rolled up in order to allow management complete transparency without asking for activity reports from your employees. A properly designed CRM can put the data at your fingertips. Management can then inspect what they expect and make adjustments in order to drive success.

        It is easy to demand more sales. It is Management’s responsibility to provide clear goals, strategies, tools and guidance in order to achieve real ROI for the company, the shareholders and employees. Provide a few times when you can be available for a conversation. I’ll confirm one with an invite. Let us further discuss what we are seeing in terms of best practices in your vertical and what a properly implemented CRM can do to raise the bottom line for your company. Also, how we can facilitate your CRM seamlessly within your Microsoft Outlook!

        Category iconCRM Implementation

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