Every building, every system, every contact, in one record instead of one person's head.
Your best customer information is in the owner's memory and a spreadsheet last saved in March. The property manager changed in June. The referral from the electrician went cold because nobody wrote it down.
Where the day goes now
- A building has forty extinguishers, three risers and a backflow. The list of them is on last year's report, if anyone can find last year's report.
- The contact on file left the management company a year ago. Reports keep going to a dead mailbox and the renewal call goes nowhere.
- A national property manager runs twelve of your buildings under one agreement, and you treat them as twelve unrelated customers with twelve different prices.
- Leads come in by phone and referral, get a sticky note, and die there. Follow-ups happen when someone remembers.
What CRM changes
- Customer, Building, System, Asset, Location. One record for each, linked, so every job, quote, deficiency and invoice hangs off the same building and the same asset list.
- National Accounts and Complexes. The management company sits above its buildings with its own terms, contacts and reporting; a campus is a complex that a technician visits in one trip.
- Contacts, Companies, Deals, Activities. Prospects and the people at them, with a deal pipeline and a log of every call, email and meeting.
- My Next Actions. The follow-ups due today and the ones slipping, so no lead dies on a sticky note.
The customer record
A customer has its contacts, locations, buildings and complexes, and tabs for its jobs, inspections, services, reports, deficiencies, service quotes, project quotes, billing, documents and agreements. Defaults set the code year and municipality that new buildings inherit. Working windows record when a site can be visited. Portal publishing rules decide which reports, quotes, invoices and contracts appear in the customer's portal automatically and which wait for the office to release them. The Legacy tab holds the notes and files carried over from the system you used before. Tags, notes, a credit limit and an overdue limit live on the customer too, and the credit limit drives the credit hold shown in Billing.
Buildings, systems and assets
A building belongs to a customer and carries its address and coordinates, its own code year and municipality if they differ from the customer's, and an optional building group or complex. Under it sit the systems (fire alarm, wet or dry sprinkler, diesel or electric fire pump, kitchen hood, extinguishers, backflow, hydrants, exit and emergency lights) and under each system the assets: devices with a type and sub-type, floor, location, barcode and section. Each inspection type maps to the system types it covers, so when a job is created the right systems are copied onto the visit and the field app knows what to inspect. Fire extinguishers are tracked as serialised units with their service dates.
Customers, buildings, contacts, systems, assets and extinguishers can each be imported from a spreadsheet. An asset list can also be read out of a previous contractor's inspection report PDF.
Complexes, groups and locations
A building complex is a campus or site whose buildings a technician visits in one trip; its buildings may belong to different customers. Building groups cluster a customer's buildings for reporting. Locations are the customer's other addresses, typed, with coordinates.
Contacts
A contact has a name, title, email, phone and address, an owner, a source and a state of Lead, Prospect, Customer or National Account. Contacts are linked to customers, buildings and complexes, and each link carries roles; the Reports role is what the office uses to pick who receives an inspection report. Customer contacts can be invited to the customer portal, where they sign in with a one-time code and see the reports, deficiencies, quotes and invoices the publishing rules allow.
Sales
Companies are prospects with an industry, size range and website; a company converts into a customer in one action. Deals carry an amount, an expected close date, a probability and a stage of Open, Won or Lost. Activities are the calls, emails, meetings and notes logged against a contact or company, and next actions are the dated follow-ups that My Next Actions lists in due order. Lead sources are a lookup you define.
Maps
The Coverage Map plots every national account, complex and building that has coordinates, with a toggle per type, name and city search, and a list of the records still waiting for an address that geocodes. The Liability Map, in the Jobs module, plots open deficiencies by building.
Bottom line
Reports reach the right person the first time and the next-action list turns referrals into contracts. One recovered lead a month is a new annual agreement a month.
Inside this module
- Overview: Dashboard, Coverage Map
- Sales / Marketing: My Next Actions, Contacts, Companies, Deals, Activities, Tasks
- Account Management: National Accounts, Customers, Complexes, Buildings, Locations