Whilst CRM is traditionally regarded as being a system for sales and marketing teams, well-established commercial products such as Sage CRM can be readily adapted to meet other business requirements. We have carried out many successful implementations of Sage CRM for Facilities Management (FM) businesses, improving efficiency, reducing administration costs and providing better management controls. These companies chose Sage CRM over other applications, because Sage CRM offered greater flexibility to adapt the application to their own way of working.

Sage CRM can play a central role in the effective delivery of services for both internal facilities management teams serving the needs of a specific business, and FM companies providing services to a range of clients. Here are just some of the things that we have implemented for our clients.

Planned and reactive maintenance: using the core calendar and team management features of Sage CRM, we have developed an interactive planner, which shows the location of maintenance teams and specialist equipment. This not only provides a means of managing planned maintenance, but also shows team availability for fast and efficient assignment to deal with any emergencies or other reactive situations.

Assign and complete tasks remotely: Sage CRM is designed to be used by people on the move and for businesses with more than one location. It therefore allows tasks to be assigned to users, jobs to be signed off and paperwork completed via mobile devices. Data can also be captured offline for occasions where an internet signal is not available.

Maintaining records of capital equipment: With Sage CRM it is possible to create new entities that can capture information about any physical item. Using this, we have created a means for recording and reporting on all information relating to things such as buildings and capital equipment. This provides a full history of the item with details of any parts used, manages maintenance schedules and links relevant documents and communications. These records can be linked with others to provide a hierarchy such as equipment name, by department, by building etc.


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Job logging and SLA management: Sage CRM has a very powerful workflow tool which can control processes and provide alerts and escalations where required. This ensures that any cases logged are handled in accordance with agreed service levels. Workflow actions can also keep the client informed by sending update emails or SMS messages at each stage. This improves customer service and reduces admin time. A full tracking history is maintained for the job, showing who did what and when which can be used for improving business processes.

Customer self-service portal: Allowing customers to log their own cases and to see progress online has been the major benefit of Sage CRM for most of our clients. The standard self-service feature allows authorised users to log in to a dedicated portal, via the company website to post new cases along with supporting pictures and documents. They can then see progress and receive updates and reports and well as having access to other information such as instruction leaflets, COSHH data and knowledge base which relates to their own site.

Contract management: Any document can be produced from a template in Sage CRM and stored against the relevant record for easy retrieval. Alerts provide a means of keeping track of renewal dates, whilst key contract information such as what is and isn’t covered can be stored in CRM fields. This allows any additional services provided to be properly recorded and, where relevant, invoiced for payment.

Customer communication: Whether you are dealing with internal ‘customers’, or have a number of external clients, Sage CRM maintains a full record of all communications including notes of meetings, emails, phone calls and linked documents. It is therefore easy for anybody to review the history with a client, to be able to pick up new or existing jobs efficiently.

Reporting and analysis: Sage CRM has a number of powerful reporting tools, which can access any information in the CRM along with data from any linked application. This can provide regular reports for the business and customers as well as the ability to run ad hoc reports for any other purpose.

 

The flexibility of Sage CRM means that we can implement either individual functions to meet a specific need, or an end-to-end application that controls a complete business process. We’d be pleased to discuss any requirements that you might have.