Bringing a checklist when you shop around for a CRM is a good idea, but not when the checklist is too short and vague. The devil, as they say, is in the detail. To help out, we've compiled a list of important features that you should look for in a CRM system.

2. CREATING YOUR
ULTIMATE CRM CHECKLIST
A checklist with only ten or so items on it isn’t going to help
you find the perfect CRM for your needs. It’s too basic, too
vague, and doesn’t really give you a good overview of critical
system features like navigation and customizability.
What businesses don’t realize until it is too late is that it is the
teeny, tiny details that will make or break your CRM
implementation.
As you’ll see, the devil really is in the detail.

3. ALL-IN-ONE SYSTEM
• Find, sell to, implement projects for, support, and hopefully
sell more products and services to your customers using a
single system
• Consolidate business-critical data instead of leaving them
strewn across different apps
• Easily access and manage almost all aspects of your business

4. FAST, INTUITIVE NAVIGATION
• Bookmarks lists let you immediately access the information
you feel is important
• Breadcrumb trail lets you jump to higher page levels without
having to keep pressing the back button on your browser
• Recent pages and activity list lets you get back quickly to
whatever page you were on before

5. COLLABORATE & DISCUSS
• Start an online, threaded discussion using any project, sales
lead, support case, or even a tricky customer
• Upvote comments and suggestions that you like
• Use Requests to ensure the person you need answers from is
immediately notified of your post

6. EMAIL INTEGRATION
• Create a new sales lead
• Update a project or task
• Assign a support ticket
• Log a timesheet
• Attach new notes and details to your customer’s record – all
without leaving your email inbox

7. WEB FORMS ON STEROIDS
• Build your contact database automatically from web form
submissions
• Turn web form data instantly into contacts and support cases
• Customizable web forms can be as simple or as detailed as
you want

8. SELF-SERVICE CUSTOMER PORTAL
• Customers can view projects, tasks, and support tickets as well
as paid and unpaid invoices
• Clients can pay invoices using the customer portal
• Customize the portal and make it look more in line with your
company’s overall branding
• Increase collaboration between you and the client

9. GRANULAR PERMISSIONS
• Set user permissions individually, by workgroup, or by role
• Control access to any project, activity, module, or information
within the system
• Restrict who can view and/or modify private sales leads,
specific projects, etc.

10. TIME TRACKING
• Attach timesheets to projects to make sure everyone is putting
in the hours
• Automatically calculate project budgets by linking them to
timesheets
• Enter timesheet data using a mobile app when out on the field
and a desktop widget when at the office

11. CUSTOM FIELDS
• Add any kind of info no matter how niche or esoteric
• Extend usability of built-in modules
• Ensure standardization of data entered
• Customize modules to handle future expansion / service &
product offerings

12. CUSTOM SALES PROCESSES
• Create and associate different sales processes tailored to
specific products and services
• Set specific processes for different teams in your company or
even those in different regions
• Easily make necessary changes to evolving sales processes

13. PROJECT TEMPLATES
• Manage and deploy projects faster
• Cuts down on time spent creating new projects

14. CUSTOM PROJECTS
• Control every aspect of any given project
• Add sub-projects, tasks, timesheets, and completion stages
• Add a near-infinite number of sub-projects and tasks

15. MULTIPLE PROJECT VIEWS
• Switch between different views quickly and easily
• Use in conjunction with filters to find info faster
• Sort activity according to priority, progress, budget, etc.

16. REAL-TIME PROGRESS TRACKING
• Get a bird's eye view of the status of the company’s projects
• Drill down deep into sub-projects and sub-tasks and check
their status
• Cut down the need for progress report meetings

17. AUTOMATIC REPORTS
• Any and all of the data you enter into the system will be used
to generate a range of reports
• Reports include financials, timesheets, projects progress, and
more
• Bookmark important reports for quick and easy access.

18. WORKGROUPS & ROLES
• Assign tasks or projects to a team rather than selecting the
same set of individual employees.
• Share contacts with a workgroup
• Set access privileges according to workgroups and roles

19. SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION
• Get updated contact info by linking to their social media
profiles
• Filter contacts according to social media profiles

20. CONTACT SYNC
• Two-way syncing of person-type contacts ensure that you can
access all of them through either app
• Sync acts as a backup system; accidentally deleting a contact
in one system doesn’t delete it in the other
• Contact updates made in one system carry over to the other
• Fix incorrect contact detail updates easily by reverting to a
previous version of the contact
• Access contact information in the CRM through your iOS or
Android device

21. DEPENDENCIES & TRIGGERS
• Set requirements for specific project stages like obtaining
permits, finishing reports, etc.
• A task that has dependencies on an earlier task won’t start
until the task before it is completed
• Keep your to do list uncluttered by making sure it contains
only the tasks you need to work on right now

22. SAVED FILTERS
• Remove unneeded items and entries from view and focus only
on what currently need.
• Save filtering parameters to access the results you need most
often with a single click
• Use search filters on any module — contacts, leads, activity
history, projects, communication logs, and even files and
attachments.
• Break down project data and see what’s relevant to you at that
time.
• See active tasks assigned only to you and filter them further
into tasks that fall within a certain date range

23. SMARTVIEWS
• Use and save customized searches through all of your data
and access them with a single click
• Quickly see a list of items that fit a certain criteria (location,
current tasks, etc.)
• Mark items with custom tags (a “good customer” tag for a
preferred client, perhaps) to facilitate quicker searches
• Filter for any employee’s tasks to check how many tasks he or
she has
• Build complex marketing lists by filtering contacts through
granular variables

24. ACTIVITY HISTORY
• Attach new leads, projects, invoices, support cases, and other
activities to a contact
• View every activity associated with any and all of your contacts
in an easy-to-digest format
• Filter and sort activity history according to employee, activity,
or time period
• Search for specific data — be it an amendment to a recent
project or an email from three months ago

25. www.worketc.com