CRM - Stage One - An Introduction

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information.

Wikipedia

Have you ever thought about using Wordpress to manage your business? Well I am going to suggest ways in which this is possible. We will be creating a site that will help us manage each client and view how much time is being spent on each one. We will be able to see at a glance the most recent contact. We will be able to flag customers according to their needs, new contact, red hot sales lead or simply client.

The first decision you have to make is whether to use an existing Wordpress site or a completely new install. For me I would always a completely new install. Why? If you are using an existing Wordpress, every time you load a post or page concerning the crm you will need to make them private. Obviously you don’t want these posts to be seen. It would be quite simple for this to be forgotten. So I create a sub-domain and database and install a whole new Wordpress. Then to protect that I upload this plugin:
Wordpress Password. It is a plugin that simply protects the whole of your Wordpress installation. If someone navigates to the site all they will see if a box that says Enter Password.

To further protect the site in the options/privacy I click on “I would like to block search engines” blob. In options/discussion, I uncheck the first three boxes. This ensures that pings, comments and notifications are turned off.

Ok that is it for now. See you next time.

Full series:
CRM - Stage One - An Introduction
CRM - Stage Two - Customer Records
CRM - Stage Three - Assigning Categories