CRM with Project
Management

CRM with Project Management gives you the tools you need to successfully manage your projects. Having your CRM and Project Management solution fully integrated gives you a complete accessible solution. It’s a solution to assign tasks, track time, and view all contact details related to your customers.

Do you have processes that are frequently used in your organization? Are these processes time-sensitive and need to be managed and tracked? Have you looked at a task management solution but don’t want to invest the time, training, or budget? You should consider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications with seamless integration to project management tools.

What is Project Management?

Project management initiates, plans, and completes the work (“project”) of a team. The projects must meet objectives and specific criteria for a given time. The challenge of achieving these goals involves constraints like time tracking, quality, and budget.

Key Project Management Features: 

• Scheduling and planning
• Task Management
• Activity monitoring
• Reporting (including Gantt Charts)
• Budget tracking
• Notification for deadlines and important info
• Accessibility/Mobility

Why Have a CRM with Project Management?

When your project management is native to your CRM, you can track leads, manage sales, and deliver projects within one software system. Imagine moving seamlessly from closing a deal to delivery of the project. Your data is shared and stored within the same system.

Templates are available for repeatable aspects of projects, and dashboards show performance across teams. Your customer projects and tasks will sit alongside your customers, contacts, and deals.

Benefits of CRM with Project Management

Visibility

Consolidated information from CRM, provides a complete overview of the customer lifecycle. Team members can view real-time details of an account in one central location. Data is collected from contact management, marketing automation, customer service, and project management.

Streamlined process

Eliminating the organizational silos allows the data to become more accessible across the company. Your teams are engaged with combined information, which creates a more streamlined process. The common platform helps teams work and collaborate on client initiatives and deliverables through task management, project pipelines, budgeting, and reporting.

Increased customer service

Evaluating data collected from your CRM and projects can improve communication with your customers. Analyzing patterns of past and current customer behavior helps build better relationships.

Cost-effective

Having an all-in-one solution provides higher ROI while removing the need to manage two separate systems. CRM tools and project management software are designed to regulate inventory and production costs, which can help avoid unneeded expenditures.

C2CRM Project Management

The C2CRM system has an optional Project Management module that is native to the software. Therefore, it leverages and links projects to all the other modules in the system. It can include associated opportunities, emails, tasks, team members, time tracking, percent completion, and other details of a project. Some of the components include:

Project Templates

For frequently used project types, templates assign users to milestones and set due dates for completion. Roles can be pre-assigned and mapped to milestones. A completed template can generate a new project quickly and efficiently. Users can create multiple project templates with team members and milestone drop-down lists.

Project Roles

If you have multiple participants with different roles in a project, it becomes more complicated to manage everyone’s contributions. With project management, roles can be distinguished by using the tracking capabilities in the C2CRM software.

Project

Each project form is customizable. Users can easily add contacts, companies (including 3rd party vendors), opportunities, and quotes to a project. The form contains a 360-degree view of all customer “touches” related to the project. Examples include Project Tasks, Opportunities, Project Companies, Contact Management, Project Emails, and Project Gantt Charts.

Task Management

To keep a project focused, milestones provide the team members achievable goals to target. Users select milestones, give a description, assign tasks, and select a start and target end date.

Each milestone generates a task for the owner. A notification is sent to the owner, informing them of their assigned task. Once the task is completed, the system closes out the milestone, inputs the actual date of completion, and triggers the next milestone. The system can also include outside companies as members of the project team and assign “email” tasks.

Workflows

Automating elements of project management keeps projects on-track, on-time, and within budget. It begins early in the project with initiation & planning and ends with completion and review.

C2CRM’s Workflow automatically issues tasks and emails to team members in parallel or sequentially to the next milestone (step). It can send task reminders and provide escalation if due dates are not met. Workflow can automatically create a project when an opportunity is closed/won using a menu of product/services project templates.

Performance

Reports can be generated at specific intervals and delivered to the project manager. Standard banded and graphical reports (i.e., Open Projects, Projects by Business Stream, Project Pipeline, Project Activities By Performer, etc.) are available. Custom dashboards with Gantt charts can be generated for management to track the progress of single & multiple projects.

Mobility

C2CRM’s mobile app can track project milestones and allow for task follow up while on-the-go. The full project record with the associated milestones can be accessed. All the linked records to each project are also available for viewing and editing.

Examples of CRM Project Management Usage

Pre-Sales

• Projects are great for managing activities that occur across multiple locations. Marketing organizations can plan and track the necessary steps to attend a trade show and meet with their customers.
• For companies that employ a Stage Gate Process for New Product Development, project management tools track and manage this complex process. It helps by providing customer information across many organizations such as development, marketing, sales, supply chain, systems engineering, and manufacturing engineering.

Post-Sales

• CRM Projects provide an excellent tool for any post-implementation process that is standardized. Many companies have products that require installation in the field. Each product type may have its own set of requirements. Once an opportunity is closed, and a sale has been made, a new project can be created for the installation.

Conclusion

There are comprehensive projects that require complex tasks, people, resources, and budget management. However, many projects have a standard set of processes that need to be managed, tracked, and linked to your customers. CRM project management is the streamlined, efficient solution optimized for a customer-focused project.

C2CRM is the best CRM for project management, but don’t take our word for it. Schedule a demo, and we’ll give you a free 30-day trial of our all-in-one CRM and project management solution. https://www.clearc2.com/contact-us/#schedule-demo