It can be a challenge to control the access to and the costs of your Exact Synergy Enterprise environment, while each of your employees have different functional needs. To give you more flexibility, freedom and control over your Synergy Enterprise environment, the new role structure lets you assign specific roles to the users. In product update 247, which is currently in controlled release, we have made several changes to our software based on customers’ experience and feedback.

The main changes in this product update include:

• The monitor section in the personal resource card is now available for the Synergy User, so he can easily check his calendar, view personal documents such as payroll slips and access reports (release note)
• The user with the Employee Self-Service role can now access the HRM module, view the personal cards and requests of subordinates, and create and view vacancies for his cost center. This role is intended to facilitate the daily job of a people manager (release note) 
• Incoming Invoice Register Users are able to delegate and assign delegation to other users with only this role (release note)
• It is possible for users with the CRM role to view person-specific requests that are not defined in HRM settings (release note) 

Please watch the video below to see the improved license roles in action.

If you have any questions regarding the improvements in the license roles structure, do not hesitate to contact Sunil Girdhari (Product Manager) at sunil.girdhari@exact.com.

As you know in the last product update we introduced role based security license model which gives you control over functionality and license cost. As of the product update 245 we made a clean split between the Employee self-service and CRM roles due to different needs and usage. In case the user requires both roles, the roles can be combined giving the user all the functionality of these roles. It is now possible to assign to each role 15 different request types. Hence, if you have both roles, you are able to use up to 30 request types.

Watch the video below, to find out more about the License Model update as of product update 245.

Exact is in the top 2 of most used CRM applications in the Netherlands (source: Automatisering gids). It is not so surprising if you take a look at our customer and products.

Most of our customers are in the SMB and/or professional services market space. They act local or international and have a need for an application that supports all their daily business activities. The sales, marketing and support activities consume a big part of a company’s daily activities, but an application that can only support these processes is not enough! Nowadays the whole organization takes part in these processes, because they are not anymore limited to only one or two departments. Think about the Finance or Order entry department. Each department is involved in activities that are related to your customers.

I was a consultant for over 8 years and visited a lot of customers. What I noticed is that the topics such as CRM and HRM are mentioned a lot during the process of buying the product: “We need to have a CRM application”. When the product is bought, the terms CRM and HRM don’t exist anymore. It is all about processes, reports and who is allowed to see what. The company’s vision and strategy determine which business processes need to be supported and which reports are necessary to measure the input, output and throughput; “Are we on target?”, “How can we improve?” Do you think it matters if these are CRM or HRM process or reports? I can’t draw a line to define where CRM begins or ends. It is different for every company and in fact different for any person. Ask 3 people what CRM is and you get at least 3 different answers.

Synergy is used so much, because it is not limited to only CRM.  Synergy is much more and that makes Synergy CRM powerful. Still with me?  Synergy is used throughout the organization and is not limited to only one or two departments. How could it? Are the other departments not involved or interested in your customers? I don’t think this is true, most of the times. Areas such as CRM, project management and HRM are fully integrated.
Example for project management: The projects you run, the hours you write, the project invoices you send, it all involves your customer.
Example for HRM: if the consultant is sick or a person from the presales with specific skills is on holiday, it as well involves your customer.

So your whole organization works with Synergy, great! As a result all activities within your organization that are related to an account are visible and accessible to everybody regardless of department. Your formal processes are all managed in Synergy, all your reports… in Synergy. Setting up roles and right structure…. Synergy again.  You probably ask yourself can there be more? Yes it can! Because all data related to an account is available at one spot: the account card in Synergy. Think about correspondence, emails, activities, complaints, opportunities, visit reports, quotations, late payments, but also financial transactions stored in Globe such as sales orders and invoices.

There is hardly any other application that can beat that without a need for an integration of multiple systems together. And with all information stored centrally, you have a powerful instrument in hands that allows you to search for new opportunities. Use this information to send a target email campaign. You can check per recipient if he opened the email and which articles he read.  You will learn about his interests and can use that when contacting him. Give him a call!

In the sales order process within Exact Globe, users can define different customers for  ’Ordered by’, ‘Delivery to’ and ‘Invoice to’.

Now think about the following scenario: you’re a supplier and regularly selling to a customer, where this customer has a lot of branches. The customer orders the goods centrally and requires:

• the delivery to be done to one of their branches
• the order confirmation be sent to the email address of the contactperson at the branche.
• Receive the invoice electronically via an email to purchasing department at the headoffice, not to the branche
• As a supplier, you do want to keep your own  CRM system tidy, define as little customers and contacts as possible, but still be able to define exactly what addresses are relevant for this customer

The video shows how Exact Globe can support this scenario. It’s a step-by-step demo, without sound. For better readibility, please click the icon at the right-bottom corner of the video, to maximize the screen. Note that this is current functionality, I used product update 393 for the demo.

Photo credit: Trevor Gibbs (John)