Start-up company using Insightly
February 25, 2016
Start-up company using Insightly
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Plus
Modules Used
- Insightly iOS / Android Mobile App
Overall Satisfaction with Insightly
Door Renew is a franchise business providing service to homeowners and business. The corporate office uses Insightly as a CRM to keep track of people investigating franchise ownership. Existing franchisees use Insightly to track job leads, handle follow-up, monitor job progress and run sales reports. In short, we use Insightly in all levels and departments of the business to track leads from the moment they come in all the way through back-marketing campaigns.
- One thing I really like is Insightly's integration with Google Apps. Door Renew, both the corporate office and individual franchisees, runs on Google Apps so having a CRM that integrates was important to us.
- The ability to customize Insightly is quite helpful. We regularly add fields that are particular to our business model. On the back-end, Insightly allows us to build custom reports, which we find quite helpful.
- Like many businesses we're often out of the office and need access to our CRM. Insightly's mobile app is helpful, easy to use and has nearly all the features I need while away from the office.
- There's a feature I really like but isn't working right now; the ability to import individual Google contacts into Insightly. Leads are entered into Contacts so we have them in our smart phones. We also need them in Insightly so this feature is used nearly every day. When it works it's fantastic and when it's not I miss it. Right now it's not working so I have to double enter. We're confident it will be solved soon.
- Insightly does a great job of tracking Contacts and Opportunities. We would like more robust reporting to automatically track important metrics such as the closing rate on a particular marketing campaign.
- We use Insightly to capture quite a bit of information on each customers job, including the sales amount. I would like to track my Accounts Receivable through Insightly. (We don't track individual customers in our accounting software.)
- As the administrator for our Insightly account I would find it helpful to have more control over which users see which fields, especially the custom fields.
- Increased Sales
- Improved efficiency
- Centralized contact management
Sales: probably. We certainly have better ability to track sales than our old manual system.
Efficiency: Insightly has definitely us become a more efficient organization.
Centralized mgt: absolutely. It's very helpful to see the franchisees' information and provide support based on fact, not anecdote.
Efficiency: Insightly has definitely us become a more efficient organization.
Centralized mgt: absolutely. It's very helpful to see the franchisees' information and provide support based on fact, not anecdote.
As a start-up we didn't know exactly what we would need. Rather than invest in an expensive and full-loaded CRM like GoldMine we wanted something that would grow with us. Insightly has worked well during our first two years and I don't anticipate changing in the near future since the features it has are working fine for us.
Insightly Feature Ratings
Using Insightly
4 - Corporate staff uses Insightly to track the progress of people who want to learn more about a Door Renew franchise opportunity. Existing franchisees use it to track job leads, jobs progress and run marketing reports.
1 - As a start up we don't have a dedicated IT support staff. I am the one who configured Insightly, makes customizations, adds users and provides support. Fortunately it's quite intuitive so support calls are rare once a user is trained.
- Tracking incoming leads from people interested in a franchise. It's a very competitive market and people are usually evaluating several franchise concepts. We must keep in regular contact with them and Insightly helps us do that.
- Email follow-up is important and Insightly's templates are great for this. Once the templates are created they can be accessed from the Contact screen and sent out - all from Insightly. It tracks what was sent so I don't mistakenly send a duplicate.
- Advertising is expensive and we need to know what's working. Insightly tracks each marketing source so I know which jobs, and the dollar amount, came from each marketing effort.
- We enter specifics on every job into Insightly. At some point the franchisee will want to sell his or her business. By having complete customer and job information in a single space, Insightly, the value of the company is enhanced an verifiable. The prospective buyer will appreciate the thoroughness. It will be a very simple matter for the buyer to have complete access to customer history, sales and back-marketing.
- By creating custom reports and exporting them to Excell we keep track of the days since last contact for all sales leads.
- We added a custom field to track the stage that a prospect is in within the sales process. By reporting on these fields we know which leads need attention and which ones might be slipping through a crack.
- Track accounts receivable. Not possible at present so we've submitted a proposal for consideration.
- automated reminders. As our franchisees begin to offer maintenance plans it would be great to track this in Insightly. Having the software automatically remind us when a maintenance call is due would be fantastic.
Evaluating Insightly and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Analyst Reports
The ability to grow with us as our company emerged was important. we wanted the software to change based on our needs, not change our company based on the products capability. Insightly is easy to customize and has served us well at this stage of our development.
While I might look at additional CRM platforms than we first evaluated I don't think it would change our ultimate decision.
Insightly Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - Initially we implemented it only for the franchisees. This required minimal customization since most everything we needed was already in Insightly. Once we gained familiarity with the product we added a few custom fields to the Contact screen. The next step was adding a couple custom fields to the Opportunity page. By taking a gradual approach we were able to clearly define the need/solution. This was better than haphazardly adding fields - which would later need to be discarded or changed. After things were stable with the franchisees we rolled out the corporate office usage. We followed a similar approach in adding custom fields. So far, so good.
Change management was minimal - It was simple for us because we're small. Prior experience with software rollouts in larger companies had taught me to clearly define the need/problem before tossing out half-baked solutions.
- Getting an understanding of the Insightly framework so I knew where to find 'under the hood' elements.
- Understanding Insightly's terminology and vocabulary so I didn't confuse it with something different I may have had in mind. Not major issue.
- Since we're a start up there is no benchmark against which to measure the delta. Overall, I'm pleased with Insightly and feel it provides a solid, single program that helps us effectively manage our business.
Insightly Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Knowledgeable team Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | Poor followup Problems left unsolved |
No - We haven't had the need for additional support.
Yes - It is still in process.
On my touch-screen monitor the size of the Insightly screen suddenly became much larger. I believe I had inadvertently done this. It was very frustrating since it now required scrolling, both vertically and horizontally, to see the entire screen. Insightly's support was emailed and in short order showed me how to restore the default setting. The problem was, indeed, something I had done.
Using Insightly
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Entering contacts. Basic, simple, straightforward.
- Creating Opportunities for a contact and entering pertinent details.
- Finding things. There are multiple search options that make it quick and easy.
- When working on some items within a Contact, email for instance, you are taken out of the Contact when done. I prefer to stay w/in the Contact.
- The default settings in the Contact screen are usually NOT what we use. For instance, the phone, email and address default to the Work setting. I wish I could change the default so I didn't have to re-set each time.
Yes - The mobile ape works fine. It has nearly all the features of the table/PC version. The one thing I wish it has was the ability to attach/send email templates.