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CRM

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Customer Relations Management (CRM) tools are used by business entities to track their relation with the customers, share information within the company regarding clients and to create new business opportunities. CRM tools ease the process of identifying, contacting, following-up and evaluating customer needs and satisfaction. Such tools improve communication among the different actors and increase productivity and efficiency.

Need of a CRM for EGI

Ibergrid is setting up a CRM tool based on vTiger to support the "Community Outreach" activity of the NGIs and EGI.eu in a number of areas: - Recording identified contacts & leads to user communities; associate information with these leads based on interviews, discussions - Gathering intelligence about scientific communities, institutes and projects and about topics of collaboration with them - Monitoring activities and progress in community outreach topics - Helping NILs and EGI.eu staff locate expertise inside NGIs

The CRM system has been tuned according to the needs identified by the "Intelligence Collection & Analysis Process" and "ESFRI Contact List" Virtual Team projects in the last two months. (https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/Virtual_Team_Projects) The features and configuration of the CRM system were presented to the NILs in a webminar celebrated in February the 12th. Based on the feedback collected at this event the CRM is being fine tuned and will be opened for the NGIs and EGI.eu.

The EGI CRM is accessible to NILs and EGI.eu members by using the EGI SSO credentials which are integrated in the Vtiger authentication mechanisms. NILs can include other actors forming a network of trust by requesting the access through egicrm.helpdesk@lip.pt.

This document constitutes a short guide to use the system for different use cases.

Who is the CRM for

The CRM processes can be broken down into the following three categories:

  • Operational: Automation of certain business processes. xxxx
  • Collaborative: Emphasis on client / institutes interactions. This is an important point for EGI. EGI clients and partners are distributed and have conversations among them can happen at different places, contexts and times. There is therefore a need to share information.
  • Analytical: Process that may lead to strategies or methods changes. Through the use of the CRM it will be possible to identify bottlenecks and new opportunities. A portfolio of prospective clients will be constructed.

Those process are exemplified in the following three main use cases:

  • CRM Use Case Record ESFRI Data. ESFRI projects have an international structure that need to be considered for efficiently contacting and supporting them. The collection of the information (global objectives and contact points, national end points and associated contacts) and the tracking of the interaction of NGIs representatives and ESFRI contacts need to be managed at a global level.
  • CRM Use Case NILs Interaction : NILs create entries at national level and record the contacts through the EGI-CRM. Moreover, the EGI-CRM can be used to monitor which contacts have not been contacted yet and to see the discussions between other endpoint representatives and NILs in other countries.
  • CRM Use Case EGI.eu Interaction : The EGI CRM tool can help EGI.eu staff on following-up the progress of the different NILs in contacting the potential leads, as well as to identify opportunities and best practices and to widespread the information at international level among all the NILs.

How to use the CRM

This section will explain how to implement the use cases defined in the previous section.

The EGI CRM is based on the Open-Source tool [[ http://www.vtiger.com/crm-on-demand/help/ | VTiger ]]. It is easy to use and free, and can be customized. It provides features to 15 modules covering support, inventory, reports, security management, role provisioning, workflows...

The main concepts around CRM are:

  • Account: A record for a “client” endpoint (project, institution, university, …).
  • Contact: A record for a person associated under an account, used to record conversations.
  • Project: Long term work (tasks, milestones) related to a Contact or to an Account.
  • Activity: Short term work (calls, ToDos, events) related to a Contact or to an Account.

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Specific examples on how to use the EGI CRM are available through the links in the previous Use Case section.

The main actions are described more in detail in the appropriate wiki pages, which are listed here:

FAQ

  • Who should access the EGI CRM?

EGI CRM should be accessed by NILs (https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/NGI_International_Liaison) to form a network of trust and EGI.eu members to follow-on the process.

  • How can I access the EGI CRM?

EGI CRM can be accessed through at http://crm.egi.eu by using the EGI credentials (EGI SSO).

  • How can I contact CRM administrators?

Through the egicrm.helpdesk@lip.pt contact list.