Features – Sparkstone (2024)

Contact management

Manage all your business contacts

• Leads, prospects, customers
• Suppliers, agencies, advisors, employees
• Set up relationships and connections

Integrated communications

All your comms in one place

• Email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook
• Complete histories and conversations
• Auto responders and reviews

Workflow management

Tasks and to do’s

• Plan, manage, measure all your tasks in one place
• Delegate and assign tasks
• Notify and alert

Marketing campaigns

Maximise return from integrated email marketing

• Schedule multiple campaign actions and emails
• Collect statistics and Integrate unsubscribes right back into your database
• Schedule follow up calls and allocate to telemarketers

Opportunity management

Track your sales pipelines

• Unlimited opportunity types
• Custom opportunity stages
• Live pipeline reporting

Sales team management

Track sales activities

• Make it easy for your sales team to perform
• Route field sales reps appointments
• Measure team performance

Customer service

Be the very best

• Enable all your staff to help service customers and prospects alike
• Automate key processes
• Act directly on sales transactions

Customise everything

Make it easy to for your staff

• Customisable workflows
• Forms
• Grids
• Menus

Manage telemarketing

Make the best calls every day

• Fast access to company marketing resources
• List management and call allocation
• Email responders

Manage your team

Customise live views of your business performance

• Dashboards and widgets for at a glance reporting
• Easy grids for custom views of your data
• Group, sort and subtotal data fast

Mobile sales

Enable your field sales reps

• Completely enable your sales reps to do business on the road
• Mobile sales order processing
• Construct meaningful deals on the fly

Grids views:

• Definable columns
• Definable column order
• Grouping and subtotalling
• Multiple column filters
• Export to PDF
• Export to Excel
• Row actions (menu items) according to object
• Multiple sorts
• Save lists
• Saved column views
• Bulk Actions
• Select multiple rows for action
• Easy filters to help users (e.g. dates)
• Pre-set filters
• Last edit columns and create columns available on every grid
• My grids to show the users data
• Enterprise grids to show the whole Enterprises data
• Team/branch grids to show data for the team

Forms views

• Definable forms (per contact type, task type, opportunity type, service type etc)
• Definable “tabs” (unlimited)
• Comprehensive list of standard fields
• User definable fields
• Custom fields
• Form actions (menu items) appropriate to the object of the form
• Revert changes
• Useful short cuts on all forms

Relationships/Connections

• Unlimited user defined relationship/connection types
• Specify relationships groupings
• Add multiple relationships between contacts
• Add employee relationships and determine default contact status, job title, reports to and work address and more
• Draw auto created organisation charts
• Draw wide ranging network charts between your contacts and visualise contact connections more fully than you ever imagined possible
• See all opportunities, quotes, tasks, history for relations from contact grids
• Gender specified and Gender neutral Relationships
• Gender specific and Gender neutral Relationships

Calendar/Scheduler

• Integrate (2way) with Outlook
• Integrate (2way) with Google calendar
• Agenda view
• Month view
• Working week view
• Week view
• Day view
• User view
• Team/Branch view
• Colour coded for ease of use
• Timeline view
• See staff absence – add staff tasks directly from calendar

Data integrity

• Create and edit dates stored on every record and transaction
• Geo track your users interaction with the system

Integrations

• Outlook 365
• Google Mail
• Google Calendar
• Dropbox
• Xero
• Sparkstone ERP
• Magento Ecommerce
• TextAnywhere SMS
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Excel
• Office 365
• and much more…

Dashboards

CUSTOMISE LIVE VIEWS OF YOUR BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

• Configurable dashboard(s)
• Variety of “Widgets” to show summary data
• Graphical widgets to easily show data at a glance
• Drill down to the key data when you want to know more

Search

SEARCH YOUR DATA ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

• Powerful master search for contacts, products, orders
• Grid search on every grid
• Auto filtered results for primary search
• Fast search
• Unlimited user defined saved searches

Messages

ALL YOUR COMMS IN ONE PLACE

General

• Send Emails (with/without attachments)
• System emails and notifications
• Send “silent” option so as to not interrupt live workflows
• Save draft messages for later review and action
• Set up auto responders so your contacts get an immediate response – no matter what time they contact you
• Receive inbound messages by Email/SMS/Tweets and system allocates to correct CRM object
• Allocate anonymous inbound messages to users for processing
• Internal messaging between staff members
• Message anybody from one interface and tie message and reply to the contact/opportunity
• Attach messages to any CRM object
• Manage a combined inbox for all message types
• Chose best method of communication for each contact
• Set up unlimited deferred messages per task type based on time offset from planned or completed, start of finish dates

Message Templates

• Set up unlimited Message templates
• Set up default To, cc, bcc addressees on templates
• Set up default attachment(s) for templates
• Message template tags to use dynamic data from Sparkstone CRM to make beautiful personalised communications
• Set up default follow on task for a message

Deferred Messages

• Unlimited user defined Deferred Messages for any Task Type including Database Tasks and System Tasks
• Use any Message Template for Deferred Messages which means you can use Email/SMS/Twitter for scheduled messaging
• Calculate Send Date time with days and/or hours and minutes delays from Task Created date, Task Planned date or Task Completed date
• Specify whether a Deferred Message is active or not
• Specify whether a Deferred Message active date range (valid from/to)
• See planned Deferred Messages when creating a Task
• Optionally cancel Deferred Messages when creating/editing a Task
• Specify Recipients of Deferred Messages (in addition to Message Template recipient definition)

Facebook

• Link to your business facebook page
• Integrate with facebook messenger
• Automatically receive contacts facebook messages directly into Sparkstone CRM
• Automatically receive anonymous facebook messages directly into Sparkstone CRM and create new contacts
• Auto allocate new Facebook communications to the correct team for action
• Create Facebook threads for easy communications management

Twitter

• Send Tweets (DM and broadcast)
• Link to your business Twitter account
• Fully Integrate Tweets
• Automatically receive contacts Tweets directly into Sparkstone CRM
• Automatically receive anonymous Tweets directly into Sparkstone CRM and create new contacts
• Auto allocate new Twitter communications to the correct team for action
• Create Twitter threads for easy communications management
• Create user defined company interest hashtags to follow and trap relevant Tweets for information and action
• Create user defined user interest hashtags to follow and trap relevant Tweets for information and action
• Create user defined product interest hashtags to follow and trap relevant Tweets for information and action
• Create user defined competitor interest hashtags to follow and trap relevant Tweets for information and action

SMS

• Send SMS

Contacts

MANAGE ALL YOUR BUSINESS CONTACTS

Key data

• Business and Person contacts
• Multiple Addresses
• Address purposes
• Default business contact
• Default address contact
• Unlimited email addresses per contact
• Unlimited telephone numbers per contact
• Standard fields shipped in the box
• Person standard fields including (gender, age/birthday)
• Business standard fields include (sector, size, lead source, best days to contact, etc)

Extended data

• Add Contacts Events
• Contact Financial data – how much to they owe pulled straight from your accounting system (may require integration)
• Auto link to companies house data
• Contact gallery for documents, links and images and movies
• Contact comments – fast and easy to use
• Contact rating
• Map contact

Automation

• Contact creation rules and automatic task creation rules
• Add opportunity(ies) to contact
• Add service items to contact
• Add customer service tasks to contact sales order/item
• Add quotes/wish lists to Contacts
• Add Contacts to Data Lists and Queries
• Geo analyse contacts (map contacts with data and see Google street view)

History

• View sales history of contact
• See complete history and all communications with a contact (email, SMS, calls and Tweets)
• See history in conversation (chat) chat view

Tasks

TASKS AND TO DO’S

Creation

• Unlimited task types
• Default messages to send on task creation
• Unlimited task statuses defined per task type
• Task gallery for files and attachments, links and images
• Staff Tasks for HR tasks, absence tracking, appraisals and more
• Set up unlimited deferred messages
• See relations tasks and history from task grids
• Planned and Actual data per task

Automation

• Task status update rules – message and task to create
• Task creation rules
• Default follow-on actions
• Task automation and workflow rules and tools
• Default field data including Start times and durations and delays before start dates
• Map task
• Route task(s) – and show on map
• View task in calendar
• Schedule appointments to appear in calendar

Customisation

• Definable checklists per task type/task
• Planned and Actual data per task
• Default field data including Start times and durations and delays before start dates
• Task script notes
• Task instruction notes
• Task assignment to other users
• Task comments
• User definable task points
• Add tasks to Data lists and Data Queries
• Colour coded task types
• Add multi column custom data to tasks

Status Codes

• Quick complete tasks from grids and forms using Task status codes
• Default completion notes
• Default follow on action and message

Events

EVENTS

• Create unlimited event types
• Add unlimited events to contacts
• Add recurring events
• Add opportunity and/or task on event creation
• Add quote/wish list to event
• Add tasks and messages to events – see an events entire history
• Define unlimited custom fields for events
• Define custom forms per event type
• Add galleries/documents/URLs and files to events
• Auto create birthday event option based on Contact DoB – B2C setting only

INTERNAL EVENTS

• Create internal events for you own business
• Add Event cost budget, target opportunity value and count, target and actual attendees
• Add internal events to campaigns (eg exhibition attendance)
• Specify event status, event manager, target contact creation and lead source to use on contact creation
• Add galleries/documents/URLs and files to events
• Add tasks and messages to events – see an events entire history

Import utilities

• Customisable web to lead form
• Full contact import from spreadsheets and text files
• Full task import from spreadsheets and text files
• Easily export and set up import templates
• Import complex contact data in single pass
• Create and edit existing data by import
• Easily maintain data for global changes

Maps

• Map single contact – show on Google Map – with contact info
• Map multiple contacts – search result from contact grid
• Map single task – show on map
• Map or route multiple tasks
• Show route information in route itinerary
• Map staff activity (optional)

Opportunities

• Unlimited opportunity types
• Unlimited opportunity stages
• Colour coded opportunity stages
• Add tasks to opportunities
• Send messages about an opportunity
• Add comments to opportunities
• Opportunity stage update rules to automate workflows
• Add contact events to an opportunity
• Create opportunity history
• Maintain opportunity task list
• Add quotes/wish lists to opportunities
• See Opportunities on relations records
• User definable standard date fields
• Add Opportunites to Data Lists and Queries
• Budget
• Estimated commission
• (aka “collections” in our software)
• Unlimited user defined custom fields
• Add comments to Opportunities/collections
• Tag other users in comments and automatically send a message to the user
• Add galleries/documents/URLs and files to Opportunities (Collections)

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Our GDPR application helps you comply with the new regime and makes your life easier, giving you and your contacts peace of mind that you can comply with the new regulatory framework.

Mobile sales

Fully empower your sales team…

Not just with summary details about customers, but give them the tools to plan their days and even make sales whilst they are on site.

Enable your team to be excellent account managers – all in one visit – Make sales, do deals, see profitability, forward plan purchasing, agree customer budget spends, manage credit limits – even take account payments.

• Mobile sales tools
• Create sales on iPad
• Integrate to your ERP system if required
• Live stock levels
• Stock search with easy to use results by brand/category/popular etc
• Choice of search results presentation – product stamps or list
• Powerful Special offers and incentives engine to make sure your team make the most of every encounter
• Favourite products
• Duplicate (copy) complete or part orders
• Create template orders using quotes/orders
• Multi branch stock availability
• Full description and pricing
• Depending on stock system Matrix variants, serial number tracking and Non Stock items/ Service items
• Product images in basket
• Order confirmations by email
• Create order discounts and order line discounts
• Set up deferred messages task types

Wishlists/Quotes

• Define advanced queries for use in building sophisticated data lists
• Create multiple quotes/wish lists (if products file available)
• See product images in wish lists
• Integration with ERP system or Sparkstone required for product file
• Create anonymous quotes/wish lists for later recall
• Reassign quotes/wish lists to new/existing contacts
• EmaIl quotes/wish lists
• View wish list items on web site
• View quotes/wish list on web site
• Add tasks to quotes/wish lists
• Add opportunities to quotes/wish lists
• Add events to quotes/wish lists
• Create sales from quotes/wish lists
• See/Sell from Relations quotes/wish lists
• Beautiful product presentation via ipad

• Store your contacts assets for contract or sales purposes
• Unlimited user defined Asset Groups
• Unlimited user defined Asset Categories
• Unlimited user defined fields
• User defined Asset form per Asset Category – only show the fields you need to show
• Store details about Asset purchase, manufacturer, age, custodian, finance, renewal dates, warranty info, maintenance providers, insurance cover, sale
• Store child assets
• Store real estate descriptions using the Property and Room extension
• Store template assets and save time entering new records
• Auto send renewal reminders based on key asset “dates”
• Build lists of contacts based on asset ownership details
• Store details for Fixed Asset Register maintenance and depreciation (forthcoming)
• Store details of key contacts in relation to assets – everything from finance company to maintenance provider
• Auto create relationships within CRM with key Asset providers
• Store your own assets for maintenance management purposes

Automation:

Automate your workflow

• Task creation rules
  • Unlimited Task creation rules per Task Type (in addition to Task Type settings)
  • Define a linked Opportunity Type (Collection) to update and specify an Opportunity stage to update toTask status codes
  • Quick complete tasks from grids and forms using Task status codes
  • Default completion notes for quick data entry
  • Define default follow on Task Type to create
  • Default follow on task default new status
  • Default follow on task default assignee
  • Default follow on opportunity/(collection) type to create
  • Define default Message Template to sendTask status update rules
  • Unlimited Task status update rules per Task Type
  • Specify Task Status before and Target Task Status “status to be changed to…” for the update rule to apply
  • Optionally define whether a Task Status code is required to change the status for the rule to apply
  • Define default follow on Task Type to create
  • Define default Message Template to send
  • Define default follow on Task assignee
  • Define linked Contact Status to update to
  • Define a linked Opportunity Type (Collection) to update and specify Opportunity stage to update to

• Opportunity Stage Update Rules
  • Opportunity stage update rules can be set up for all Collection groups
  • Unlimited user defined Opportunity stage update rules per Opportunity type
  • Define Task Type to create on changing to specified Opportunity stage
  • Define Message Template to send on changing to specified Opportunity stage

• Events
  • Specify Default Task Type to create on Event Creation
  • Specify Opportunity Type (Collection) to create on Event Creation

Collections:

• User definable Collection groups
• Ships with Collection groups of “Opportunity” and “Project” pre configured
• Unlimited Collection group definition
• For ease of understanding this document uses the collection group of“Opportunities”
• The“Opportunity”Collection features can apply to all Collection Groups

Interface Management

General

• Easy on the eye
• Definable interface to suit businesses and users
• Easy to use
• Intuitive and Easy to learn
• Lots of set up information in your selected profie
• Set it up today and use it straight away
• Simply more out of the box funcitonality than any other system
• Add simple comments to nearly every part of the system
• Add rich text notes to nearly every part of the system
• Use all notes fields in full screen mode
• Dictate into notes fields
• Tag other users in comments and automatically send a message to the user
• Use Alexa to ask questions about CRM (eg where are my next 5 meetings?) – Question bank expanding all the time

Grid views

• Definable columns (standard and optional and custom fields)
• Definable column order
• Definable grouping and subtotalling
• Definable column filter(s)
• Definable sort order(s)
• Saved column views (per user)
• Export to PDF
• Export to Excel
• Row actions (menu items) related to data
• Saved data lists
• Saved dynamic data queries
• Bulk Tasks (actions)
• Select multiple rows for action
• Quick standard filters (eg dates)
• Preset special filters
• Last edit (by and date) columns and create (by and date) columns available on every grid
• “My” grids to show the users data
• “Enterprise” grids to show the data for the whole Enterprise
• “Team/branch” grids to show data for the team
• Any defined grid may be used as the basis for automatic scheduled report delivery

Form views

• Definable forms (per contact type, task type, opportunity type, service type etc)
• Definable “tabs” (unlimited)
• Definable “sections” (unlimited)
• Comprehensive list of standard fields per CRM object (contact, opportunities, tasks etc)
• Custom fields
• User definable fields and field types
• Definable field labels
• Definable field orders
• Definable field sizes and styles
• Definable field visibility
• Definable field default values per object time
• Form actions (menu items) appropriate to the CRM object
• Customisable menu items
• Revert data edits (undo)
• User defined short cuts on all forms
• User comment sections on all forms

Dashboards & Widgets

• Configurable dashboard(s) per user
• Configurable search options
• Fast search option
• Unlimited user defined “Widgets” to show summary data
• User defined Graphical Widgets to easily show data at a glance
• Drill down from Widget to the key data when you want to know more

Buttons & Menus

Main navigation

• User defined main shortcuts
• Recent items access
• User dashboard(s) access
• Configurable “My” grid access
• Configurable “Enterprise” grid access

Top navigation bar

• Main navigation access
• Home/reset button
• Selected Contact display and Contact menu access
• Selected Contact Quick Action button
• Quick access to Conversation view of contact history
• Quick access to “right panel”
• Quick add contact
• View calendar
• View basket

Profile Menu

• User definable
• Standard items
• Profile
  • Tasks
  • Events
  • Opportunities
  • Projects
  • Assets
  • Financial information
  • Orders
  • Sales data
  • Relations
  • Gallery
  • Campaigns
  • Subscriptions and more

Fast info button

• Contact details
• Phone numbers and Email addresses
• Last opportunity info
• Last order information

• Fast action button
  • Custom menu items and labels
  • Add Task
  • Send Message
  • Add Relation
  • Add Asset
  • Add wish list
  • Add opportunity/project
  • Create sale

Memberships

Campaigns

• Unlimited user defined Campaigns
• Specify campaign owner
• Specify campaign start and end dates
• Specify user defined campaign status
• Trigger campaign allowed actions based on campaign status
• Store targets for campaign opportunities generated (value and count)
• Store budget for campaign cost and expected contribution
• Add data lists directly to campaigns and see membership count
• Use campaign data with Mailchimp
• Store campaign notes
• Store unlimited campaign actions (tasks)
• Add deferred messages (emails/sms/tweets), tasks and events to campaigns
• Specify planned dates for deferred actions and plan delivery dates and target completion dates
• Specify action status
• Only trigger actions based on campaign status
• View email statistics on messages delivered (bounced/open rates/unsubscribes) when linked to Mailchimp
• Add contact events to campaigns
• Add new members to campaigns and remove unsubscribers easily
• Easily manage internal campaigns and link to company (internal) events

Memberships

• User definable Membership groups
• Ships with Membership groups of “Campaigns” and “Subscriptions” pre configured
• Unlimited Membership group definition
• For ease of understanding this document uses the collection group of “Campaigns”
• The “Campaign” features can apply to all Membership Groups

Sales Orders

Order History

• See your contacts entire order history
• See order status
• See courier tracking data
• Add tasks and messages to Sales orders – headers and order lines
• See orders in contact history
• Order grid powerful grouping and subtotalling to help analyse sales
• Product images in order grids

Sales data grid

• Analyses your customer sales line by line
• Sales data charts to show your customer sales graphically

Sales order entry

• Mobile sales tools
• Create sales on iPad – integration to your ERP system required
• Live stock levels (as available from ERP system)
• Stock search with easy to use results by brand/category/popular etc
• Choice of search results presentation – product stamps or list
• Powerful Special offers and incentives engine to make sure you sell the most
• Favourite products
• Duplicate orders
• Create template orders using quotes/orders
• Multi branch stock availability
• Full description and pricing
• Depending on stock system Matrix variants, serial number tracking and Non Stock items – tbc – Sparkstone is SNT only at moment
• Product images in basket
• Order confirmations by email
• Create order discounts and order line discounts

Staff Management

Staff metrics grid

• Automatically run Staff Metrics reports (activity counts) weekly and monthly so that you can see at a glance what the team has achieved
• Weekly and Monthly standard reports for all staff
• Data stored as a snapshot for fast recall with actionable intelligence
• Over 30 points of activity captured including tasks completed by group/points earned/opportunities won/lost and much more
• Create ad hoc reports for any period for any member of staff whenever you need

User Performance Grid

• Powerful user performance user definable grid for reviewing performance against target
• All grid features including export to Excel and ability to use grid as part of a scheduled report
• Optionally include targets/actuals/variance columns – per month
• Show by user and all measures
• show by measure and all users
• Choose year to display
• Show by branch/team option

User Targets

• Set comprehensive targets for your users activity so you can measure performance – fast and accurately
• Set Targets per year and spread evenly and/or copy from previous years/other users
• Monthly sales targets, Martin targets, Target Margin %age, Points
• Monthly targets for Contacts created, Opportunity/Collection (per type): created count, closed won count and value
• Monthly targets for Tasks (per Task type): Created count, Completed count, Completed by a task code, Points earned
• Use targets for building widgets