1. CRM
Apptivo boasts of a robust CRM feature that includes everything from document management to sales planning and automation. The software’s contact manager is a well-developed tool that allows you to store a good bit of information on your customers. This includes their contact information, social media accounts, and even hobbies and interests. It goes above and beyond being just a centralized data storage unit, though. Within it, you can also view and manage any activities related to your contacts and store documents and notes on them too. What’s more, if the plethora of default fields that the software offers aren’t enough for you, you can create custom data fields that are unique to your business as well.
The software’s sales pipeline management is similarly comprehensive. Apptivo’s Leads app allows you to capture leads from various sources such as emails and web forms. Once leads are obtained, the app automatically qualifies them by assigning a score to them. This score effectively prioritizes your leads and helps your sales reps to focus on prime ones. Helpfully, you can set up the software to automatically assign leads and contacts to team members based on criteria such as geographical location, follow-up activity, or department.
The next step in the pipeline is lead conversion. Apptivo offers users several ways in which to do this. For one, you can set up follow-up calls using the call-log feature. For another, you can reach out to prospective customers through email marketing. Whatever method you decide to use, you can set up a schedule or workflow for it, so nothing falls through the cracks. The software has standard workflows already set up, which can be tweaked according to your business requirements. Also, you can set up triggers that will automatically move leads down the pipeline.
2. Project Management
Apptivo’s project management feature is a well-built and hardy one. The software allows you to create and manage as many projects, tasks, and milestones as you want. A nice time-saving feature here is that you can create and save project templates complete with tasks, milestones, and employees for later use. This feature is a handy one for businesses that do a lot of similar projects. With each project, you can start by giving it a name, description, status, priority, due date, and tag. Also, you can define it as a billable or non-billable project and add a budget with a base fee, estimated costs, and billing method.
Similarly, you can populate tasks and milestones within a project with pertinent details and assign them to your employees. What’s more, for each task, you can create time estimates and dependencies. The software will then generate a project schedule for you based on those values. This schedule can be viewed using Apptivo’s interactive Gantt chart feature. It comes with an easy drag functionality that allows you to edit tasks and dependencies with a minimum of fuss. Importantly, if you change a task’s timeline, the software automatically adjusts the entire project schedule accordingly.
3. Finance Management
The software’s suite of financial apps ranges from ones that help you manage your fixed assets to those that take care of invoices, estimates, expense reports, and payments. Each of these features is easy to use and interconnected. For example, you can convert an approved estimate into an invoice or assign it to a project or task with one click. Also, Apptivo allows you to set up recurring bills for regular customers or service providers.
Furthermore, the app has plenty of payment gateways you can configure to accept payments and pay your suppliers alike. These include cash, check, online, and card payments. Helpfully, when you email an invoice to a customer, you can include a ‘Make Payment’ button in them, an excellent way to facilitate prompt payments. And if your client defaults on their dues, you can send them payment reminder emails from within the software. These can also be configured to go out just before a payment is due.
4. Marketing Tools
Apptivo’s marketing tools allow you to send out the standard and bulk campaign emails. The software has a few themes to choose from when building an email. These can be customized using the drag-and-drop template builder that allows you to insert as many text boxes, images, links, and social-share buttons as you want. Helpfully, the campaign builder has a ‘SpamAssassin Score’ feature that ensures your emails don’t get categorized as spam. The app’s ‘Targets’ feature allows you to quickly build targeted campaign lists using advanced filters and custom criteria. What’s more, you can set up the system to automatically add new contacts to a target list based on your set values.
Another notable marketing feature is testimonials tools. This feature not only helps you collect customer reviews and testimonials but also enables you to showcase them on your website. The app generates a plugin that you can then insert onto your website, inviting customers to review your business. Importantly, the software gives you the option of approving or rejecting a customer’s testimonial, so you have control over what appears on your site.
5. Customer Service
The platform’s customer service tools give users comprehensive help desk capabilities, from setting up service intake channels to creating and resolving tickets. With Apptivo, you can configure multiple ways for customers to get in touch with you, such as calling in, email, and online through a live chat application. The software’s help desk collects all the tickets from your support channels into one central location, so you have a clear picture of your customer’s problems.
The ticketing system is a priority-based one that you can set up to automatically categorize, prioritize, and route tickets to agents according to their status. Importantly, agents get a comprehensive history of the customer’s interaction with the company inbuilt into every ticket they are assigned. The app’s workflow system allows managers to track customer inquiries from start to finish. Similarly, customers can also be in the know-how through Apptivo’s client portal. The portal enables them to view the status of and the responses, if any, to their ticket.
Besides these, Apptivo also has the tools to help you set up a knowledge base for your business. You can use this to create articles, blogs, or FAQ sections. Besides, you can set up a search bar and categorize your articles using tags and keywords to ensure accurate search results, both within your site and the wider search-engine domain.
6. Procurement
Apptivo offers users a basic inventory management feature. With it, you can keep a list-like record of your inventory. However, aside from an item name, SKU number, and the quantity, there is not much else product data you can store. It also does not have an alert system that notifies you if your stock levels are low. That said, the software automatically updates inventory count if an item is sold or restocked. It also allows you to maintain a comprehensive supplier database and create detailed purchase orders with just a few clicks. Besides, you can directly turn a purchase order into an invoice and send it to your customer for billing, another feature that highlights the app’s user-friendliness.
7. HR And Employee Management
This platform’s HR features are not as comprehensive as most of its other tools. Even so, it gives you some recruitment functionalities. You can create a job position, complete with the professional qualifications and the competencies needed for it, along with the compensation offered. As the resumes come in, you can maintain a list of potential candidates filled with comprehensive information on them.
What’s nice here is that you can convert a potential candidate into an employee with just one click. This way, you don’t need to re-enter all that data. Additionally, you can email important documents such as contracts and employee guidelines from within the software itself. Apptivo also allows you to segregate your employees into different departments or groups and assign varying roles and user permissions to them.
