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In-Depth Review
Sales CTRL CRM
Advanced Concepts, Inc.
8875 North 55th Street, Suite 200
Milwaukee, WI 53223
Telephone: 414-362-9640
Email:
info@advanced-concepts.com
Web:
http://www.advanced-concepts.com/
Advanced Concepts, Inc. is a privately-held software developer and
reseller of customer relationship management, wholesale distribution, and
point of sale software applications based in Milwaukee, WI. Founded in 1980,
Advanced Concepts started with providing business management solutions based
upon Open System® Accounting Software to small – mid-size businesses in the
Midwest. The company is recognized by Open Systems as an Executive Partner
and premier software developer of 3rd party solutions integrated with their
family of accounting and business applications.
In 1986, Advanced Concepts released its first commercial software
application based upon Open Systems Accounting Software for wholesale
distributors and retailers called Order PLUS!™. This product is installed in
over 300 sites today throughout the United States and is available for
Linux, UNIX, Novell®, and Windows network operating environments.
In 1992, Advanced Concepts purchased the software rights to a sales force
automation application called SalesCTRL™. This product was originally
developed by Sales and Marketing Systems, Inc., an early pioneer in the
sales force automation market in the mid 1980’s. Advanced Concepts released
several updates including an interface to Open Systems Accounting Software,
and rewrote the product for Microsoft Windows using Visual Fox Pro® in 1997.
Advanced Concepts released an optional Automated Marketing application for
SalesCTRL in 1999 and followed up with a Data Synchronization option for
remote users in 2001. The HotLink interface for Open Systems Accounting
Software and TRAVERSE® was released in 2002. The SalesCTRL HotLink interface
provides customer account, item, order and sales history drill-downs,
auto-creation of new customers, order processing, quoting, and the ability
to email/print acknowledgements and quotes directly from the SalesCTRL
contact screen.
Advanced Concepts products and services are sold nationally through a
reseller channel and a direct sales group.
Product:
Current Version: January
2007
Category: On-Premise Mid Market CRM Solution
Sub-Category:
Client Platform: Microsoft Windows XP
Server Platform: Microsoft Windows Server
Database Platform: Microsoft Windows Visual
Fox Pro
SalesCTRL™ manages the information you need on your prospects and
customers: names, companies, addresses, phone numbers, profiles, activities,
follow-ups, meetings, quotes, sales, opportunities, service issues, letters,
faxes and e-mails.
SalesCTRL is a proven out-of-the-box solution that integrates account
managment, with sales team and opportunity management, marketing automation,
business workflow, customer service and support, custom reporting, and
accounting software interfaces.
You customize it to work the way your business works. Use the pre-de
fined databases and reports and change them, create your own, or purchase
one of our industry specific strategies. SalesCTRL is flexible enough to be
quickly modified by you without custom programming.
Daily Follow-Ups
SalesCTRL instantly finds everyone in your databases you’re supposed to
contact today, tomorrow, next week or whenever they are scheduled. View your
To-do list with a single click on the tool bar or place items on the
internal Scheduler or the Microsoft Outlook® calendar.
Find Any Information Instantly
Find any contact or company in your database by double-clicking a field
and typing the first few letters of their name, company, telephone, city, or
whatever lookup fields you define. Need to find a contact based on several
fields? You can use the “Query” function to find records based on multiple
criteria and save that query for later use. Even if you have 250,000
contacts in multiple databases, the Global Search feature will quickly
locate the contacts.
Keep Detailed Information
SalesCTRL allows multiple multi-level databases that let you have an
unlimited number of contacts per company, and even link companies and
contacts from different companies. You can also add custom Company, Contact,
Account Rep, Sales Partner, Detail Tab fields for profiling and tracking
information about your customers, prospects, opportunities, and sales
channel.
Do you need to maintain multiple addresses per contact? SalesCTRL lets
you track Home, Business or Bill-To/Ship-To addresses in the same record. A
simple checkmark will make either address the main mailing address. We have
provided multiple phone number fields as well as e-mail fields for staying
in touch with your contacts.
Track Contact and Company Activities
Store each contact’s name, address, buying habits, size, source and
unlimited comments describing everything that has happened in the
relationship. With the click of a button, switch between viewing activities
for an individual to viewing activities for the whole company. A very handy
feature for viewing a company’s “Big Picture.”
Report On Anything
Use the standard reports in SalesCTRL or create as many new ones as you
want using the fully integrated report writer. Select, sort and print a
report on anything in your database. Run reports whenever you want or
automatically on a timed basis. You can even include data from SalesCTRL and
OSAS® or TRAVERSE® accounting software applications using the optional
HotLink™ integration. Best of all, you don’t have to be a programmer to use
the helpful report writer wizard.
Easy To Use Database Wizard
Enter data quickly and accurately with ease to use drop-down fields. Even
your custom fields can be configured to use drop-downs. You can also place
your custom fields under Tabs that you can define (Personal, Business, and
Misc.). The system also allows you to rename any
standard field in the database to a name more familiar to your industry. If
you have Agents instead of Salespeople, change the field name and it is
changed throughout the database. Are there fields that must be filled in
when records are added? Configure SalesCTRL to force you to fill in
“Required” fields before leaving a record.
Sales and Marketing Management
It’s a fact. Most sales are made after the sixth contact and most Account
Reps give up after two contacts. A database full of contact information
doesn’t help you unless you can turn that information into a sale. Here's
how SalesCTRL can help your company increase sales and work more profitably.
Automate Marketing
SalesCTRL allows you to automate your company’s marketing campaigns for
staying in touch with clients, prospects, partners and vendors. Build a
Three-Letter Intro Track to introduce your company to a prospect. The system
will print a report or schedule an activity for the Account Rep to call and
setup an appointment. Place your existing clients on a Cross-Marketing Track
to introduce them to all of the services and products that you sell. The
optional Automated Marketing Module will allow you to print, fax and e-mail
letters or call reports, generate an activity, update fields, and start or
remove tracks automatically based upon your criteria.
Automate Workflow
With the Task Manager you can automate internal business processes by
creating workflows to carry out routine tasks that involve daily business
operations. For example, you can download a mailing list and import the
names into the database. Once the names are loaded in the database, the Task
Manager can assign them to the appropriate Account Rep, log an activity
about the mailing, print or e-mail the letter, print envelopes or labels,
and then generate a report of what you just sent. You can then save this
Task for the next mailing. You can have an unlimited number of tasks for
managing newsletters, promotions, product announcements, broadcast e-mails,
faxes, letters and database information. You can even define the Tasks to
automatically run unattended per your schedule.
For pricing details, please contact the company directly.
We have yet to review this product.
We did review this product years ago when it was presented to us by the
original developer, Sales and Marketing Systems, Inc. We have not had an
opportunity to review the current version.
We have had a healthy dialog with the management of Advanced Concepts, Inc.
for more than 10 years. In that time, we have never heard a single complaint
about them.
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