improveit 360 Software

Coming from another cloud-based CRM, it was supposed to be an easy transition, however, we could only move one email and two phone numbers per contact and lost the tags for the phone number (Home, office, cell, husband's cell, etc). The delays mounted and I had to pay my monthly fees while we waited on implementation. When they finally said "we can't do this" I was deep in the hole. After the signup fee and the monthly fees for several months, they gave me a month back and wouldn't do more. The rep left the company and I was high and dry.

Pros

Had great sales demos! The sales team even invited me out for drinks. I had high expectation for the product, coming from a competing CRM

Cons

It never worked for us. After months of waiting, hours on calls and webinars, investing in training employees to make a switch, we were left high and dry as the algorithm changed between my old CRM and them. They made excuse after excuse. No one took ownership of the problem. We had to part ways and they still had the nerve to charge me thousands without a tangible product. Horrible service.

We purchased software for our company about 6 months ago. They told us the software would be adjusted to fit our specific needs with a personal account manager. Based on this information we paid additional money to fly our account manager to California to train everyone in the company and personalize our software. As of today the software is still not fit to our basic needs showing the sales amount accurately. It was also stated from our "account manager" that each project manager we have would have access to see all current sales, open invoices, and customer information on each open job they have personally. This has still not happened. We attempted to contact our "Account Manager" and he stated that he is no longer assigned to our account and we can try to get it resolved through a ticket based support widget. It was implied in the beginning of the relationship that we would always have an account manager for direct support and now we are being told we need to go through a ticket support system. We would have never brought this software if we knew the account manager and direct support would not be available to us after the purchase. We have invested a lot of time and money into this program for noting because the main purpose was to calculate sales and organize our open jobs for the project managers to have all the information easily accessible.

Overall it a very complicated but well thought out use of Salesforce. It's very important you take all the training, even if you are familiar with Salesforce, so you can maximize the abilities built into the program. Plan on a steep learning curve to be comfortable with everything.

Pros

i360, as we call it in the office is a very versatile and nimble Salesforce integration. it does a good job of managing appointments, keeping track of contacts with the customer and keeping all their info in one central location. We use it for quoting and the templates and products work well and afford us the ability to quickly get pricing for customers. As a sales rep, I am limited from the backend access but the office raves about the ability to manage projects and keep track of tasks. Its also nice that when I do make errors in my quoting or there is a question, the job manager can kick back tasks to me for me to handle with my customers.

Cons

It is pretty limited with it's follow up options for the sales reps once a sale has been made. The HTML emails look terrible, so I send everything in plain text.

Improveit is a Salesforce platform offering the full community that Salesforce provides. The options are endless and the automated reminders can help you to keep all your team on task.

Pros

The estimating software is built right into the program, allowing for instant access to all proposals. You can have multiple market segments if you have multiple locations and they have a franchising option for royalty reporting on sub-businesses.

Cons

The program is bulky and not easy to use. The dashboard gave my team anxiety because it was so busy with unneeded options. Because it doesn't let you tie any function to a close without creating an additional marketing reminder to reach back out, this did not fit with our style of business. This lead to all team members getting bogged down on determining if a marketing app was legit or not. The support staff would take days to reply about issues and after a year of daily use, we were never able to use the mobile app to do anything except view contacts.and so we moved back to an earlier CRM we had used in the past, as the costs were also prohibitive.

Advice to Others

It's hard to determine if all the bells and whistles are what you really need when determining a CRM that will provide the best coverage for your team. I360 is a big Cadillac but sometimes you need the work truck to be competitive.

Likes Best

support has been good, however we seem to need a lot of it - it does what a CRM needs to do

Likes Least

too complicated to make basic changes ourselves - it should have more editable pick lists

Recommendations

Find a program that is easier to navigate too much information doesn't carry forward.

Likes Best

I like the level of detail in reporting options, sources, etc ; very comprehensive coverage of the data storage needs for customer resource management in the industry. However, the best thing about 360 by far is the people. They are active in customer feedback for continuing to improve, you can get a hold of them on the phone easily, and when you need help the person you speak with really seems to care about helping you and has a positive attitude.

Likes Least

The mobile app has bugs that need to be worked out and features/functionality that need to be added. For instance, if you go into "Schedule" then select an "Appointment", then pull up the "Phone Number" to make a call while on the road. Then when you go back to your app (after making the call), the app will go back to the "Appointment" screen, but locks up if you try to go back to the "Appointment" screen. Another scenario - if you go into "Schedule", then go forward or backward "Next Seven Days" or "Previous Seven Days", then select an "Appointment" but don't go any further than that...then when you go back to "Schedule", it loses track of where you were last in "Schedule" and brings you back to the current week. Not major issues, just little bugs that need addressing. On the functionality comment, it would be nice if adding appointments, prospects, etc were possible on the app without having to go to the full site on a mobile device.

Recommendations

We looked at a lot of different options, and 360 is definitely a solid one. The thing to keep in mind is to think about your daily business practice. Some features are more work than benefit, depending on your specific business. If you are looking for a CRM and have not had one in the past, my recommendation is to keep it simple and user friendly...features are great, but be realistic with yourself in time investment if you don't have dedicated staff to manage these tasks in your business. If you have questions, talk to the people at 360 - one of their best assets is their people...fantastic customer service, always available and you can tell they actually care about helping with whatever you need.

Likes Best

Customer Service second to none. Always eager to help.

Likes Least

I have no complaints about this vendor at all. The software is based on Salesforce and it is fairly robust and therefore can be complicated. Improveit 360 has done a good job adapting it to our industry and that is all you can ask of a vendor.

Recommendations

Investigate how long it takes to get a response when you have a need or question. When you are integrated in a CRM product like this it is imperitive that you can get service instantly, not wait hours for a call back. This is where improvit 360 really shines.

Likes Best

It grows with me. Meaning as I starting using one aspect I find another tool that will help me be more productive. The more information I put into 360 the more information I get out and that helps me run reports I can use to help us make better day to day decisions. I have been using 360 for over 3 year and I am still finding way to improve information flow. Having accurate information to back you up, make it a lot easier and faster to lead your company into a competitive and ever changing environment. You are only as good as you people and you information flow.
Something else that makes this product so great is their customer service staff. They really make us feel like there is no stupid question. I don't hesitate to call and they don't hesitate to help in every way they can. A truly remarkable staff!

Likes Least

As of now I can't say anything negative about this product or the people that represent it. There has only been a couple of items I have as for that were not available at the time, but they always helped me work around them.

Recommendations

Try it, grow with it and trust it. If you use it, it can save you hours a day. You can't make more hour a day but you can save them and reuse them to be more productive!