Vincis is active as content management specialist and develops its own CMS called `CastManage’. A CMS is a software solution that supports organisations to manage their internetsite or intranet independently. Vincis has experience in the field of internet, intranet, extranet solutions, multichannel publishing, web design, central office integration and web services.

Since February 2005 VINCIS is working with OpusFlow CRM.

Requirements
 
Like any other company, VINCIS has a feature specification list, against which it will be comparing several CRM software products.  This is their list of requirements.

• The product should not be too restrictive. If there was just one way of making an invoice, for example, it might be considered too ordinary and similar to other companies. It is advantageous to have several options for creating invoices in various company styles. In this particular case, VINCIS has different invoice types for different companies;
• Support communication should be excellent.  There must not be too long a delay between questions from the customer and answers from the software provider;
• The product has to be easy to use (well organised and intuitive);
• The product has to integrate well with Outlook ®;
• It must be possible to order an exact amount of licenses without having to buy bundles or purchase licenses for all employees in the company;
• It must be possible for VINCIS to maintain and adapt the product themselves.
   
  After examining several CRM-software products the choice has come down to just one product that can satisfy all these criteria - OpusFlow CRM.
  

Considerations

Vincis did test several CRM-software products, this resulted to the following comments:

Salesmanager 

• "There was a minimal use of Outlook ®, it is an entirely detached programme. The disadvantage would be that our employees must learn to work with the product before we can really use the product";
• It is too common. "We make different invoices for different companies. Salesmanager only had standard procedures to offer, we do not use those";
• The interface was unattractive "I had the feeling I was working in Windows 3.11", thus an employee of VINCIS.

Mx-contact 

• The product is too expensive; 
• The communication always takes place through a reseller. "We could never get the company itself, communication always went through a reseller. This became cumbersome, they did not have adequate solutions available. Then we had to wait for them to get an answer from the company";
• "There were a lot of bugs in the application".

ACT!

• "It is also a detached programme, therefore with minimal use of Outlook ®".

Perfectview

• "Also minimal Outlook ® use".

MicroSoft CRM 

• "This software is very expensive"; 
• "Nothing works automatically, one must configure EVERYTHING"; 
• "Because MicroSoft is such a large company we never know what they will do with their license agreement". 

Why did you choose OpusFlow CRM?

“First of all, the product had to work in Outlook ®, in order to have a well-known working environment for our people. The product had to be flexible and not aiming at massproduction. We can make invoices the way we want now and not according to the limited standard procedures of a certain product. We can maintain the application ourselves and adapt it. The possibility to start out with a restricted number of licenses is also very important. Because this way we are not obliged to completely arrange our company on the application, but we can use a part of the organisation as a test phase.”

"You can maintain the product yourself, which is exactly what we were looking for", thus Harry Nijkamp.

Implementation and use

Companies and contacts are divided in "codes" and "groups". The user can adapt this description by himself. Vincis uses "products" and "categories" instead of using "codes" and "groups".

Documents are divided in document types / projects and submaps. Tabs that can be found in the option "Document type" on the address card can also be adapted by the user himself.

The Vincis employees have adapted document types towards their own insight, they created "Hosting and fields", "Agreements", "Projects", "Acquisition", "General Correspondence" and "Invoices".