March 2010 - Posts
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Opportunities, Cases and Solutions in Method CRM now all benefit from our new Document Management feature. So why is this important to you? I’ll tell you. 
The goal of any sales rep in an organization is simple – drive as many sales as he or she can. As managers, owners and team leaders, our jobs are to provide our sales teams with the resources they need to do their jobs well. Many times these key resources can be price sheets, sales presentations, proposal templates, press releases or even the latest marketing ad. What tends to happen with these documents is that they are stored locally on the sales reps’ computers or, if you’re lucky, on a network drive. This means if another employee needs access to this information, it isn’t easily accessible, meaning performance drops as well as sales.
Document Management in Method CRM
The Document Management feature in Method allows you to upload all your documents into specific folders and relate these documents to Opportunities, Cases and Solutions within Method. The folders help to organize the documents, helping to increase efficiency for your sales team. This gives you a central location for all your documents. How many times have you been asked “Can you please email me that Excel spreadsheet that...”? Exactly!
More often than not, documents can be reused. Here is a perfect example which I am sure you can all relate to. A client comes up to your sales rep with a competitor’s brochure. After entering the opportunity in Method, your sales rep attaches this to the opportunity so they can refer to it when trying to win the sale. During your next sales meeting, your team collaborates on how to best deal with the competition and decides to write an internal solution to refer to, which includes how to handle the next client who presents the same brochure. Normally you’d have 2 copies of this brochure but because this brochure is stored in Method’s Document Management, the brochure has already been uploaded by the sales rep and can be referred to by the writer of the solution. Talk about a full circle solution. 
If you’re worried about storage space or prefer to store these documents on your web server, you can use external URL links to refer to your documents as well.
Danny Do Couto
Method Integration
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Last night I was enjoying the spring like temperatures here in Toronto and decided to take a stroll with a friend and meet up at a local hangout. While there, I quickly looked at my iPhone to check my calendar and see how my Friday was looking. What I loved was the fact that I could see all my scheduled activities, including phone calls and meetings for Friday that were synced from Method to Outlook and over to my iPhone. It dawned on me at that exact moment that I had to share this with the Method Community.
Method CRM Activities appearing on an iPhone
My iPhone is connected to our local Exchange box at the office so all my appointments from Outlook already get pushed onto my iPhone. Now that I am using our new MOPI (Method Outlook Plug-In), my appointments from Method get brought over without me thinking twice about it. Check this out:
Here is an appointment that I have in my Outlook calendar. I’ve taken full advantage of categories so “Yellow” means it is “In Progress” and “Black” means “Meeting”.
When I open up my calendar on my iPhone, I can see my Outlook appointment, including who the appointment is for and a contact number.
If I check out the appointment details, I can see all the goods on what this appointment is all about including comments, the priority and a number where Mr. Jackson can be reached.
If I need to get a hold of him, all I need to do is select the number with my finger and it dials the number.
Voila! How cool is that?! Yes – I am an iPhone lover.
Have a great weekend
Danny Do Couto
Method Integration
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Last year, I was super excited when we released version 1.0 of our Outlook plug-in tool. Now, less than a year later, I am thrilled to announce version 2.0 is officially open for public beta.
Caution – please sit down if you’re not already, as you may experience higher than normal levels of excitement when reading through the list of new features this plug-in has to offer.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
New features for our Outlook Plug-In 2.0
- Create new QuickBooks customers, vendors, leads and contacts directly from Outlook and have it instantly appear in Method and QuickBooks. This means you will be able to create new contacts on the fly without flipping screens to QuickBooks or Method.
- Bi-directional sync of calendar appointments from Method CRM to Outlook or Outlook to Method CRM. Choose the amount of days you would like to sync, or a specific day and your activities/appointments will appear in both calendars.
- Categories in Outlook can be linked with Method CRM’s Activity Type and Activity Status fields. Why is this useful? Say for example, I set my green category in Outlook to match my Method Activity Status “Completed”. Now when I finish an appointment, in Outlook I can assign the category like I normally would and the next time I sync, that activity would be marked as completed in Method CRM.
- Priority levels can now be assigned to follow-up appointments. This way your most important activities get the attention they need.
- All email screens now support the ability to send emails directly to Method in a single click!
- Lookup email addresses from Method CRM on any email screen using the “Address” button. Once the address is located, it is automatically inserted into the To, CC and BCC fields. No need to switch windows to lookup an email address! Can’t find the address you’re looking for? Add it directly from the Address window. How sweet is that?
- Turn your Outlook Contact into a new QuickBooks customer/vendor/lead/contact in less than two clicks.
- Step-by-step activity submission allows you to quickly see if the activity being added from Outlook to Method CRM has any open Cases or Opportunities that the activity might be associated with or require updating.
The new plug-in packs a lot of punch and a ton of value since its free for all Method users. A few things to keep in mind though:
- During the beta, all questions need to be posted on the forum. Here is the link for your reference:
http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/19.aspx
- This plug-in only works with Outlook 2007 and higher. But if you’re using an older version of Outlook, you can still use our older version of the plug-in.
- Unfortunately, the plug-in is a desktop app, so it doesn’t have the same flexibility you’re used to with Method to customize it as your heart desires. See what happens when you get spoiled with the Method mentality?
Now that we are done with all the official business of what it can do and how to get help, click the link below to be taken to the forum post with instructions on getting setup.
http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/p/628/2096.aspx#2096
Once you get the plug-in working for you, please comment on your favorite new features!
Cheers,
Danny Do Couto
Method Integration
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Method’s web based interface already allows you to create a QuickBooks Sales Order and have that Sales Order appear in QuickBooks real-time. Slick, isn’t it? What many QuickBooks users are accustomed to is the ability to convert a Sales Order into a QuickBooks Invoice.
Now you might ask yourself, “What’s the big deal? If QuickBooks can do it, why can’t Method?”
I get this question all the time and it really comes down to one thing. Can the QuickBooks SDK support such a feature? Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t (more on that later). Lucky for us, the SDK does support the ability for developers (like us) to take advantage of such a feature and we have now made this available to the Method Community.
“Create Invoice” button on Sales Order Screen
The Sales Order screen now has a “Create Invoice” button located at the very bottom of the screen. Converting a Sales Order to an Invoice is simple. In Method, click Customer Center > Sales Order and follow these steps:
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Select an existing Sales Order from the left or create a new one.
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Click Create Invoice.
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Each of the items from your Sales Order will appear. Select the items you would like to appear on the Invoice by checking the checkbox and click Next. The Invoice screen will appear, preloaded will all your customer information and include the items you selected. Update the quantity you wish to charge, just like you would in QuickBooks, and click Save & New.
That’s it!
Your Invoice has now been created and your Sales Order has been updated accordingly. So what if you didn’t Invoice all the items or quantity on your Sales Order? Method acts the same way as QuickBooks, so those items will still be outstanding and waiting to be invoiced.
Now, remember earlier when I was talking about the SDK and what we can and cannot do using the SDK?
Sometimes we get asked if we can covert other types of QuickBooks transactions, such as an Estimate to an Invoice. Unfortunately, our hands are tied. Intuit decides which features the SDK will support and if the features are not added to the SDK, no developer will be able to take advantage of such a feature. For features that are supported by the SDK, we do our best to leverage these features in Method for the Method Community.
Cheers,
Danny Do Couto
Method Chief Operating Officer
  
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 When entering a customer or vendor into QuickBooks, you already have the ability to add contact information for the main contact, as well as one additional alternate contact. Is this sufficient? What happens when you have more than one contact at that company such as the accountant, manager, VP, or sales rep? In this day in age everyone has a cell phone, so if you’re like me, that alternate contact might already be used to store the main contact’s cell phone number. Then what? Thank goodness for the QuickBooks notes field! With today’s new Method feature, you won’t need to worry about where to store these additional contacts and can do away with the QuickBooks notes workaround.
Unlimited Contacts to QuickBooks Customers and Vendors
 Method users will now benefit from the ability to add an unlimited amount of contacts for customers and vendors. This means you can now track every point of contact for each of your customers and vendors without worrying about where to store this information. Clicking on the “Add/Edit All Contacts...” button for a customer/vendor brings up a new contacts screen. In this screen you can enter in contact information for each contact at the company. Why stop there? Because Method has built in CRM functionality, you can also enter in detailed activities for each contact, such as phone call conversations, emails, meetings and more. So what happens if the fields we provided aren’t enough? Come on now, this is Method we’re talking about. Just add your additional fields to the new contacts table and drag the new fields onto the screen. By the way, if you’re concerned about how to avoid certain contacts getting sensitive information, keep track of that with the “Opt Out” check boxes.
If you’re wondering where these “additional contacts” live, they are stored in your Method account. Of course the main contact and alternate contact for the customer and vendor are synced with QuickBooks in real-time.
Two new features in one week – now that’s impressive!
Cheers,
Danny Do Couto
Method Integration
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As a sales representative, managing your sales opportunities is pretty important. After all, an opportunity that is monitored and managed properly could potentially equal a sale. Throughout a typical sales process, a sales representative would update the opportunity “stage” to match where the client currently sits in moving ahead with the sale, as well as how likely they will be to pull the trigger. Now wouldn’t it be nice if all I had to worry about was updating my “stage” and not what probability percentage we were at? This is especially a nuisance to update if I already know certain stages typically equal certain probability percentages. Seeing as we use what we preach, we’ve added a little something to help out with this.
New feature: Automatic Probability %
Clicking the “Stage” dropdown list for any opportunity will expose a new column indicating the default probability percentage associated with that stage. Once a stage is selected, the probability percentage will automatically update to the default percentage. How does this benefit you? You don’t have to worry about entering in the percentage manually by typing it in. Secondly, you don’t have to remember to do it! You laugh, but it’s true. Can you imagine setting an opportunity to “Closed Won” yet forgetting to set your percentage to 100? That would totally throw off the very cool graphs I talked about last week in my blog post.
Of course, you can always add your own stages and change the percentages to match your needs by clicking the details button (... – the three dots next to the dropdown list). If you don’t like the default set by that stage, just type one in manually and override it.
What’s even cooler is that a new plug-in we are releasing will also update the percentage using the same perference you set in Method. Oops...more on that later.
Cheers,
Danny Do Couto
Method Integration
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