There are two major players in today’s world of sales: These are Salesforce, which is the No. 1 on-demand and the fastest growing CRM, and MS Outlook, the No. 1 productivity tool. At the core of CRM is sales force automation. Sales force automation users are sales executives. They got used to making appointments online, adding events to MS Outlook, going to meetings and checking details (a prospect’s name, address, cell number, etc.) on the fly by using (mobile) phones. These people want to live in a unified information environment and not to worry about the synchronization process.

InvisibleCRM synchronizes all data invisibly and in the background. A user just needs to create a contact or save a document in one place and it will be automatically distributed through CRM, MS Outlook or Office and mobile phone. Similarly, a user can also enter new leads to Outlook while offline, say, for example, on a plane, and on getting connected, the new records will automatically be added to Salesforce. Also, a new appointment created in a mobile phone gets easily synced with Outlook and Salesforce without additional clicks.

Let’s go into details of how it works:

InvisibleCRM’s SalesDesktop seamlessly unites the two most important applications for salespeople — CRM and the business cornerstone, Microsoft Outlook — to create a fully-featured sales workspace inside Outlook.

Salesforce objects are naturally embedded into the MS Outlook tree. Along with the Inbox and Sent Items folders, users can also see other folders such as Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, etc. Users can easily access all the Salesforce objects, modify them or create new ones, if and when necessary, by using the native MS Outlook forms customized to fit the Salesforce objects.

SalesDesktop can work OFFLINE. Just the same way as processing emails while on a plane or any other place without Internet connection, users are able to create or modify Salesforce objects on the fly. No Internet connection is needed. However, once connected, the data is synced automatically and invisibly in the background, thus not interfering with work. In case of slow Internet connection, the sync process can be interrupted at any moment.

SalesDesktop works as your centralized contact management assistant. Contacts are the basis of each salesperson’s work. Typically, they are stored in a variety of places, starting from business cards holders and mobile phones to MS Outlook and Salesforce. SalesDesktop creates a unified contact list inside Outlook that is synced to Salesforce and PDA. Additionally, you have an option not to share your private contacts in your Outlook with Salesforce. For your convenience, such contacts are marked with different icons. 

The same concept applies to the calendar and tasks. You have a unified calendar and task list. No more double-data entry and conflicts in your schedule! Once you have created an appointment or a task in MS Outlook, which, by the way, you can link with any Salesforce object (be it Account/Opportunity or Contact/Lead), it is synced with Salesforce. No need to inform your colleagues about your personal plans: you choose what to share with Salesforce.

Email correspondence is a vital part of sales communications. Before, to keep a full history of customer interactions, salespeople needed to attach customer emails to Salesforce. This process used to be long and tedious. Schematically, this process can represented as follows: first save an email locally, then open Salesforce, log in, then find the necessary object to which to attach the email, then browse and finally attach. But with the aid of SalesDesktop, users can automatically save their correspondence in Salesforce. All that is needed is to specify which contacts you want to save your inbound and outbound emails. Alternatively, these messages can be saved manually with just a few clicks.

Customer emails may contain questions regarding invoices, purchase orders and other information. Normally, users would need to log in to Salesforce and search for the required information to respond to customer inquires. It is time-consuming to find all the relevant information. This problem has been solved by ContentBridge, a component of InvisibleCRM, which provides users with the actual data when they need it most, especially in the context of customer interactions. ContentBridge aggregates email-centric content that relates to the business objects from Salesforce and provides quick access to this content in the pane within Microsoft Outlook.

Sounds great? Wait… the devil, as the saying goes, is always in the details. InvisibleCRM preserves the natural Outlook experience, so all those productivity features, which MS Outlook users are so keen about such as drag-and-drop, auto complete search, smart filtering, etc. are also available for Salesforce objects! A few examples will illustrate this further:

A sales representative receives an email from a prospect and needs to create a new lead. Usually, what he would do is 1) go to Salesforce.com, 2) log in, 3) create a new lead, 4) fill in the fields, 5) save. With InvisibleCRM’s SalesDesktop, the execution of such tasks is now as easy as drag-and-drop! Now, a user just simply needs to select the required email, then drag and drop it to the Leads folder in the Outlook tree. A new lead will be created and such fields as Name, Email and Description will be filled automatically.

Another example is the customization of Views. You can choose which fields you want to see in the preview and group the Salesforce objects by them. For instance, in the picture shown above, the Opportunities are grouped by probability.

Another useful feature is the auto complete search. Whenever you want to associate an appointment with an existing account or link an opportunity with a contact, etc. just start typing and the most relevant results will drop down.

The bottom line
InvisibleCRM helps organizations drive Salesforce adoption by integrating the CRM with the
desktop and allowing users to work in a familiar environment – MS Outlook and Office – a home to accurate information that is easy to find and navigate. With InvisibleCRM, users increase their productivity, improve the data quality and integrity by tracking customer information and interactions in Salesforce. These processes enable them to provide greater visibility and profitability for their organizations.