CentraView Review, Part V

(Part IV discussed CentraView's activity module, which despite being hampered by some minor bugs and the calendar module to which it is strongly tied, still manages to be a good and functional tool.)

The marketing and sales modules are for the most part simpler than the other modules that I have reviewed so far.  That lack of detailed and advanced functionality may be a negative to some of the most advanced and demanding users, but most people should find them more than adequate for their purposes.

The Marketing Module

This module is made up of the “list manager,” where users can import lists of contacts or opportunities from different systems; “promotions,” where temporary discounts on selected items can be set; “literature fulfillment,” where users can note customers’ requests for company information; “events,” where special events can be planned and organized; and finally “mail merge,” where the marketing staff has access to email and print letter templates for various occasions.

I tried importing Excel lists into CentraView using the list manager, and unfortunately I found that even with that very common spreadsheet format it was very tough to get it right.  The files have to be converted to either comma or tab separated formats, but unless all the information on them is just right (line return after each line, no strange characters, etc.) CentraView refuses to accept them and displays an error message or blank page.  Even when I thought I had everything right, the file would still often be rejected.  Having said that, once it was accepted, matching field names and finishing the importing process went pretty smoothly and I was satisfied with the results.

The promotions, literature fulfillment, and events sub-modules are very simple, they only have one function each, which they perform fairly well: the promotions feature is simply a tool to set temporary discounts on the company’s products and services; literature fulfillment is simply an activity type that marketers can use to note customers’ requests for marketing literature, while the events feature lets the user describe an upcoming marketing event and invite attendees.  I doubt it was necessary to create separate sub-modules to perform those functions, though perhaps it is a way to give the administrator the option to let marketers have access to specific features, without giving them access to a whole module (for example, with the promotions feature they can change prices of products and services, without having to go into the accounting module, where they could change other things to the chagrin of the accountants).

The mail merge utility is fairly simple, and a great improvement over previous versions of CentraView as far as ease of use is concerned.  The e-mail templates (available in normal text or HTML) can be customized from the administrator module, the text can be modified with different formats, colours, fonts, images, emoticons, etc., which are all nice bells and whistles, but which do not really add a whole lot to the value of the whole system.

The Sales Module

The sales module is divided into two parts: opportunities and proposals.  The first page of each sub-module lists the opportunities and proposals in the same way as all the other modules reviewed so far list their info: through a detailed, customizable and searchable inventory.  In addition, the front page of the sales module also shows two graphics, one showing a pie-chart representation of opportunities by stage, the other one a bar chart of opportunities by month.  The opportunities sub-module keeps track of the usual kind of lead and opportunity information: contact info, source, sales stage, probability, estimated close date, etc.  Furthermore, a drop-down menu displays additional information about any proposals, activities, notes, individuals, expenses and custom fields related to a given opportunity.  Finally, permissions can be given to other user to see or modify the opportunities.  The proposal sub-module is very similar, except it also allows the user to list items and their prices defined in the accounting module. 

Figure 1: The Sales Module Front Page

Just like the contacts module, the sales module provides a great deal of information that is well organized and easy to use.  The two graphs on the front page are a little simplistic, but they do a good enough job of providing a quick overview of the company’s sales situation.  With all the information and data that this module tracks, it would have been nice if CentraView also made it possible to track the history of the progression of opportunities through the various sales stages.  It would let the user see how long the sales cycle is for particular products or services that his company offers, which is information that all salespeople like to know, and something that no current open source CRM that I know of displays satisfactorily.