Using Office 365 as a simple CRM/one stop shop to run my business?

[K0608]

I seem to be going round in circles trying to find something that will make my admin life a bit easier. Having looked at multiple CRMs (many of them were either far too complicated or too expensive for our needs), I came across CompanyHub, which seemed ideal, and at a reasonable price.

A little more searching and I came back to Office 365, either the business essentials or their standard business package. We're currently using their Office 365 Home Package, along with Zoho Mail's standard email package.

We currently use Contact Form 7 plug-in (I was looking to change to WP Forms) for our enquiry and booking forms on our website, but I've just noticed that Office 365 now have their own form app, that could work quite nicely, and I'm sure integrate well with emails, calendars and spreadsheets.

What are peoples thoughts on using Office 365 in this way?

 

[ffox]

Avoid the Office 365 Business plan. The main deliverable of this plan is the inclusion of desktop versions of Word, Excel etc. You probably do not need these.

Office 365 Business essentials delivers Exchange online for email. I would drop Zoho mail and migrate to Exchange as this will integrate better with all of the other O365 elements that will be of use to you in achieving what your business needs. If this is not possible, you can integrate with Zoho mail, but you will probably need help to achieve that.

Business Essentials also incorporates SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. These are relatively easy to master and will probably deliver all you need to achieve full collaboration across your business, making the need of a formal CRM redundant.

Go one step further to O365 Business Premium and you also get the desktop version of Word, Excel etc, plus Microsoft Bookings which, out-of-the-box, allows you to set up a web page where your customers can reserve time with individuals in your company, set up time or event related recharge rates. It will also store your customer records and employee records etc.

Microsoft Forms is good for questionnaires and surveys, but is not very configurable. Having said that creating input forms for SharePoint is simple and needs no IT knowledge.

If the O365 business plans don't fit your need, take a look at the enterprise plans. These are all charged on a per user basis and I often find that particular business' can get better value for money with an enterprise plan than with business plans. Keep in mind that your Office 365 domain can have a mix of different licences to cover the different roles of the users.

All of the domain data is stored in the same libraries and lists regardless of the license used to access it.

The main thing to remember is that your data is all in O365 and not spread across numerous machines and numerous apps. All of your data is wrapped in Azure Active Directory security.

If you need more detail - just ask in open forum or PM.

 

[K0608]

Avoid the Office 365 Business plan. The main deliverable of this plan is the inclusion of desktop versions of Word, Excel etc. You probably do not need these.

Office 365 Business essentials delivers Exchange online for email. I would drop Zoho mail and migrate to Exchange as this will integrate better with all of the other O365 elements that will be of use to you in achieving what your business needs. If this is not possible, you can integrate with Zoho mail, but you will probably need help to achieve that.

Business Essentials also incorporates SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. These are relatively easy to master and will probably deliver all you need to achieve full collaboration across your business, making the need of a formal CRM redundant.

Go one step further to O365 Business Premium and you also get the desktop version of Word, Excel etc, plus Microsoft Bookings which, out-of-the-box, allows you to set up a web page where your customers can reserve time with individuals in your company, set up time or event related recharge rates. It will also store your customer records and employee records etc.

Microsoft Forms is good for questionnaires and surveys, but is not very configurable. Having said that creating input forms for SharePoint is simple and needs no IT knowledge.

If the O365 business plans don't fit your need, take a look at the enterprise plans. These are all charged on a per user basis and I often find that particular business' can get better value for money with an enterprise plan than with business plans. Keep in mind that your Office 365 domain can have a mix of different licences to cover the different roles of the users.

All of the domain data is stored in the same libraries and lists regardless of the license used to access it.

The main thing to remember is that your data is all in O365 and not spread across numerous machines and numerous apps. All of your data is wrapped in Azure Active Directory security.

If you need more detail - just ask in open forum or PM.

Many thanks for your in-depth reply. I've just been looking through all the various packages that Microsoft offer, and it's a little bewildering, to say the least.

Would it be safe to say that using Libre Office or similar on my desktop would eliminate the need for desktop versions of Word, Excel etc.? I don't use them an awful lot anyway, and if I do, it tends to be at a fairly basic level.

I don't need to give our customers a means to book time slots with our company. Once our customers have specified their preferred dates to book, I then need to find a guide for it, and then confirm those dates with the client, so I don't think Microsoft Bookings is necessary.

It would be great to capture the information on enquiry and booking forms submitted by the customer, but it sounds like that might be possible without using Microsoft Forms, and using Share Point instead. If not, I'm sure that WP Forms has some kind of functionalilty that would enable me to capture that data somehow.

I might be missing something, but I can't really see much of a difference between the Business Essentials package and Enterprise E1 packages.

 

[ffox]

I might be missing something, but I can't really see much of a difference between the Business Essentials package and Enterprise E1 packages.

The biggest difference is the number of users allowed access to the domain. E1 is unlimited, Business Essentials is 300.

 

[ffox]

You can use any client based WP and SS apps you want, but the MS products integrate better than any others. I tend to use the web based apps, which are available with any O365 plan, rather than the client apps.

 

[Alan]

I wouldn't use MS forms in your web front end ( just like I wouldn't use Google Forms ).

Depending on volume and automation need, WP Forms captures entries on your WP admin back end. However if you want further automated workflow I would plump for Gravity Forms and then you could use Zapier or other integrations direct into O365 if needed.

 

[Russ Michaels]

You are obviously using WordPress if you are using WP forms. If you upgrade to the full version of WPforms then there is a lot more functionality, or take a look at Gravity forms which has even more. I am pretty sure both will integrate with various CRM's, and there are also CRM plugins for WordPress.

If you are already using ZOHO then they also have a CRM app as well, which is not bad.

I have used hubspot CRM and the free edition actually does quite a lot.

 

[K0608]

The biggest difference is the number of users allowed access to the domain. E1 is unlimited, Business Essentials is 300.

Thanks, there's only myself running the business, and I'm looking to hire someone to help with the admin side of it, so two of us at most, which should keep things simple.

With regards to forms, both WP Forms and Gravity Forms are pretty expensive. I've come across these two, which look to do a similar job for a one-off payment:

https://codecanyon.net/item/arforms-wordpress-form-builder-plugin/6023165
https://codecanyon.net/item/super-forms-drag-drop-form-builder/13979866

 

[ffox]

With regards to forms, both WP Forms and Gravity Forms

Much depends on what data you want to capture and how you want the form to look to the user.
The link below will take you to a standard MS form (on my own site) that took just 2 minutes to create.
https://forms.office.com/Pages/Resp...gpwxVfFtUMEVMRk9YMU1YNkZWUENVME1VRDhOUFcyUC4u

You would launch the form from a click through on your web site. The responses can be harvested from the MS Forms web page, analysed and/or processed in Excel (defaults to the desktop version of Excel), or captured with a Microsoft Flow and deposited straight into a SharePoint List.

SharePoint can then allow you to create multiple views of the data, each filtered to reflect the response work flow status. For instance,, you could filter -
1. All responses not yet answered
2. All responses where a quotation has been given
3. All responses where a guide has been allocated
4. All responses which have been confirmed
5. All responses where a deposit has been paid
6. All responses which have been invoiced.

The filtering can be done manually, or automatically with each status being filtered by the page in which the view is launched.

Non of the above require any IT developer knowledge.

 

[Russ Michaels]

Thanks, there's only myself running the business, and I'm looking to hire someone to help with the admin side of it, so two of us at most, which should keep things simple.

With regards to forms, both WP Forms and Gravity Forms are pretty expensive. I've come across these two, which look to do a similar job for a one-off payment:

https://codecanyon.net/item/arforms-wordpress-form-builder-plugin/6023165
https://codecanyon.net/item/super-forms-drag-drop-form-builder/13979866

They are similar, and there are many others such as formidable forms, ninja forms etc, so you need to look at the features and decide which best fits. Gravity forms is more widely used, with more integrations and features. You then weigh up the benefits you will get vs the annual cost.

If your requirements are very simple, then you can get away with using a FREE solution. The best plugin I have found so far with a decent FREE option is Caldera forms. It also SAVES every form submission, which a lot of form plugins do not do, especially free ones. There are also as I said, various FREE CRM solutions out there, including WordPress plugins.

 

[K0608]

Much depends on what data you want to capture and how you want the form to look to the user.
The link below will take you to a standard MS form (on my own site) that took just 2 minutes to create.
https://forms.office.com/Pages/Resp...gpwxVfFtUMEVMRk9YMU1YNkZWUENVME1VRDhOUFcyUC4u

You would launch the form from a click through on your web site. The responses can be harvested from the MS Forms web page, analysed and/or processed in Excel (defaults to the desktop version of Excel), or captured with a Microsoft Flow and deposited straight into a SharePoint List.

SharePoint can then allow you to create multiple views of the data, each filtered to reflect the response work flow status. For instance,, you could filter -
1. All responses not yet answered
2. All responses where a quotation has been given
3. All responses where a guide has been allocated
4. All responses which have been confirmed
5. All responses where a deposit has been paid
6. All responses which have been invoiced.

The filtering can be done manually, or automatically with each status being filtered by the page in which the view is launched.

Non of the above require any IT developer knowledge.

I'm really looking to have forms that sit on my website, that look like they are part of the website, as my forms currently do. I don't think I need to filter them, not currently anyway.

At the moment, our booking forms come through via email, and then I manually save them to One Drive folders, which I then share with the relevant guide nearer the start date.

 

[ffox]

I'm really looking to have forms that sit on my website, that look like they are part of the website, as my forms currently do

Microsoft Forms are a different animal. The forms and the data they harvest are held on a Microsoft server linked directly to your O365/Microsoft subscription account. Remember that forms and associated data held on your website host server are only secured to the level your host provides. In most cases this will not be as well protected as data on a Microsoft host where they are not only password secure, but also encrypted.

Microsoft forms can be tailored to imitate your website themes, colours and logos and access for your customers is via click link on your website. Unless the user takes note of the Form URL it is unlikely that they will be aware that they are not still viewing your own site.

To access and process the data you either, log on to the MS Forms web page and view, analyse or download the data into desktop Excel, or use a secure Microsoft Flow to capture the data as the user submits it and push it directly to a SharePoint List on your O365 domain.

This automation means that you no longer have to memorise what data have come in from the forms, or where you stored it. The list filtering will enable you to view record which have just arrived, those that are due action and those that have been updated by action.

This is the kind of work flow that a CRM does.

 

[K0608]

Great, many thanks for your reply. If I were to go for the Business Essentials package, which looks like the best value, what email client do you recommend?

 

[ffox]

I would personally use Outlook, but I would use the web client rather than the desktop client. Web clients are generally faster than desktop clients. Plus, you are not tied to a particular machine.

Having said that, you can use whatever you are used to. Both Thunderbird and Evolution will attach to Exchange.

If you use O365 teams or Groups, both of which I would recommend, the shared mailboxes work better with Outlook.

 

[K0608]

Sorry for the layman questions, but is Outlook Exchange simply their business class email?

 

[ffox]

MS Outlook is the mail client. It comes in two flavours, Desktop and OWA (the web client).

Exchange is the backend server. With most O365 plans you get Exchange online and you can use whatever client you want. It does work better with Outlook though.

One of the most significant features is Group (or shared) mailboxes. With any O365 user licence you can create multiple group mail boxes, each with its own unique email address. You can have [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Etc.

Opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

 

[K0608]

Thanks, and sorry, I did mean Microsoft Exchange and not Outlook Exchange.

What are your thoughts on Outlook Customer Manager, and do you think it would be of much benefit to me? Currently, the only places we keep records of clients are within our emails (Zoho) and their booking forms (in a One Drive Folder).

I should perhaps add that 80% or so of our business is new/one-off clients, not repeat clients. That said, I'm looking to try and do a bit more in the way of newsletters etc. to keep subscribers/past clients in the loop a bit more.

 

[ffox]

Thanks, and sorry, I did mean Microsoft Exchange and not Outlook Exchange.

You seem to be a little confused. There is Microsoft Outlook, which is a mail client. And there is Microsoft Exchange, which is a mail server system.

What are your thoughts on Outlook Customer Manager,

Outlook Customer Manager is an O365 feature. Turned on by default, it uses the engines behind O365 to track, group and make available interactions with customers. In the Outlook web app for instance it allows deep search of email to return all instances of email contact with a customer. It also allows related content search across the whole of the domain content on customer name, email address etc.

If you don't have repeat business with customers its relevance is reduced to locating a single, or a few, emails and contacts in the bottomless pit of email archive. Its also used by the compliance tools built into O365 to regulate and highlight data risk under GDPR, PECR and DPA regulations.

It can, for instance highlight any occurrence of a domain user attempting to send email outside of the business which contains a Bank Swift Code or a National Insurance number.

You can switch Outlook Customer Manager off, but I can't think why anyone would want to.

 

[K0608]

Yep, sorry, too many names bouncing about. I've really appreciated your input so far, and I suppose thinking about the bigger picture, do you think that a move to Microsoft Business Essentials or Business Premium will make a noticeable difference to my admin, which currently spans a number of app/programmes from various companies?

 

[ffox]

do you think that a move to Microsoft Business Essentials or Business Premium will make a noticeable difference to my admin, which currently spans a number of app/programmes from various companies?

Two things here.
1. I can't say what difference the change would make, as I don't know your business, nor do I know (other than what I've read here) your admin process.
A move to O365 will certainly tidy up the task of remembering what is stored where. It will all be available to you through the search function built into O365.

2. Having data spread across a range of apps is always a bit of a nightmare. Remembering which app stores a piece of related information is always a bit chaotic, plus there is a risk. Knowing where all your data is for GDPR, Data Loss and compliance is always a benefit.

With O365 the data is all encrypted and securely stored. The O365 Security and Compliance admin centre allows you to manage all content safely

 

[EmC007]

Customer Manager is only available under Business Premium.

 

[Bill V]

I would consider using an excellent CRM solution called Daylite. It is an effective tool that can make your business much more efficient buy recording who said what to whom and when.
A good way to think about Daylite is to imagine running Outlook but with a fundamental difference. Whereas in Outlook all the data is kept separated in different sections with no ability to contextualise, Daylite will totally allow you to do this. I fail to see why Outlook has never realised this. So in Daylite you might receive an email from someone so you can automatically link it to the person's record. A person may call up so you then add a note to the person's record. If you need to follow up then you ad a task to the person etc etc. in fact ctrl+Link and you can link anything to anything. What you get is a fully contextual database that records everything you have said with a client. A really good example is when you make appointments. Don't you just find it so annoying that for every meeting you have you have go and find the person you are meeting an copy the address and phones number into the appointment so you have it to hand. with Daylite the appointment is linked to the person or company so a simple click takes you to that person. No need to duplicate information. Right there is a huge time saving. Anyway, do have a look at Daylite. We have implemented it for many clients over the years and I find it to be the best small business CRM out there.