This guide is designed to help you to become familiar with the On-Demand software. It provides an overview of the system and instructions for performing many of the most common operations.
Contents
Introduction
Commence On-Demand is a powerful web-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for managing client and sales related information. On-Demand provides a compre-hensive suite of tightly integrated applications that manage ac-counts, contacts, marketing, sales, leads, opportunities and cus-tomer service.
Logging On
Since On-Demand is a web-based service, you log on in the same way as other web sites requiring a Username and Pass-word.Like other sites on the World Wide Web (WWW) you will access On-Demand by using a web address called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Your address will be provided to you by your Commence sales representative or your organization’s System Administrator.
Digital Dashboard
The Digital Dashboard is your “home page” when using the On-Demand software. This is the first screen you will see when log-ging onto the system. Here you will find a quick snapshot of daily activities such as e-mail, calendar, opportunities, alerts and company news. To access this page from other modules, click on the House icon at the top left of your screen.
Leads
A “Lead” is considered a name of a person or business that is not yet a qualified account. Some companies may use an inside sales team to qualify leads then pass the “hot ones” on to the sales team. Sales people may be doing this task themselves from imported lists, trade show guests or other sources. Having a separate repository of Leads is critical to ensure that your “Ac-counts” lists are not cluttered with hundreds of less-valuable records.
Accounts
Maintaining Account and Contact information is central to every On-Demand activity. Sales, Leads, Marketing, Support, Calendar appointments, etc., all revolve around your accounts. In most cases, entering account information is the first thing you will want to do as a new On-Demand user. Then, you may wish to build a database of other information associated with those accounts.
Calendar
The Calendar module provides you with the ability to schedule appointments, meetings, activities, and events. Your calendar can be viewed in daily, weekly, monthly or yearly formats. You may share calendar items with others or mark them as private so they only appear on your calendar.
Activities
During the course of a business day, many events can be hap-pening simultaneously, whether they’ve been scheduled or not. Activities may or may not appear in your calendar. If no time is associated with an activity, it will appear on your Activity list, along with scheduled items. Items that had no time associated may be given a time at a later date and then appear in the ca-lendar.
Sales Opportunities
The Sales module offers a comprehensive solution for efficiently managing and tracking each stage of the sales cycle from lead through closure. Extensive reporting and graphical analysis provide management with timely accurate sales and pipeline reporting. This enables the effective management of new leads and new opportunities.
Marketing
On-Demand supports four types of marketing activity:
- Promotions
- Literature Fulfillment
- Events
- Mail Merge
You may work with any one of these by making the corres-ponding selection from the Marketing Module Action panel. Promotions, Literature Fulfillment, and Events record in-formation for reference and function in a very similar manner. Mail Merge allows you to launch a mailing or Email cam-paign from within On-Demand.
Support
On-Demand is designed to help your customer support efforts in three key areas:
- Tickets – specific, known customer support issues
- FAQ’s – Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
- Knowledgebase – A database of articles containing information about your products and services, which are helpful to existing and potential customers.
- Analytics – Graphic charts which help you to track the resolution of tickets.
Documents
The Documents module represents a library of company re-lated documents. Documents are grouped in folders which may be nested creating a tree of folders similar to the folder tree found on a typical PC hard drive Each On-Demand user within your organization will have their own folder for retaining documents. Other folders (and nested folders) may be created as desired.
Analytics
Various charts and other graphics may appear on your screen when the “Analytics” module is selected. These graphs present data based upon the information in your On-Demand database.
Reports
Various reports are included with Commence on-Demand and your administrator may create new ones, allowing you to man-age a wide range of activity about your business.
Saved Searches and Lists
There are many effective ways to manage records by name, grouping or other cate-gorical descriptors. Commence OnDemand enables your company to share a range of accounts lists, and also allows individual users to create and save “Saved Searches” from any of those lists. The lists come in handy when doing mail merge, emails or re-ports.