Expert: Scottgem - 5/23/2010

Question
How to run my company?

Some background:
I have recently set up a New Media company. We have two rooms and 5 staff. Our main office is a part office and part video production studio (it can flip between the two when required) which we either utilize ourselves as part of jobs for clients or rent out as a photographic and/or green screen video production studio. When it is rented out as a space we are not able to work in there as well. Our other room is an audio studio.We use a combination of Mac's and PC and currently have no intranet so cloud solutions might be best.We also have a mixture of iphone and google phones.

We offer a 360 media solution; Illustration,graphic design,branding,marketing,website design/build/maintenance,video/film production,post production,audio/sound design/recording/engineering,3D animation,2D animation,photography and PR.


I need to do the following process's and I can't seem to find the right software to aid me in this - it would be great if there was a complete solution in one package but separate solutions that dovetail easily with one another will also suffice. I can spend about £300 a year on a solution (preferably broken up into monthly payments.

I need/want to be able to do the following:

I need to store opportunities/ leads into one place.
I need to then be able to take those opportunities and qualify them into potential clients
I need to then create a client page (CRM) either for a client company or individual (this page needs to have a dashboard view of the following: The clients contact details, aggregated email correspondences and notes and the projects we have done or are currently doing with/for them)
I need to  be able to open a project. This project page should have a facebook style wall that me, my staff and the client-albeit with restricted access- can access to share ideas, thoughts and images/videos. I need this project page to also aggregate all emails and notes related to that project as well as an easy view targets/milestones report (i.e 'job is 97% on target etc)
I need to be able to create a WBS (work break down structure) - This could however be done on paper and doesn't need to exist within the software solution.
I need to then be able to create a Gantt chart. This Gantt chart has to know what jobs are assigned to who as well as be flexible to allow amendments on a hourly basis. This Gantt chart also needs to auto adjust its self and understand how some jobs/tasks are reliant on another being finished.

Now here is the tricky bit;

I need the Gantt chart to auto feed/update our master calendar (which is essentially all the calendars of our staff aggregated into one)
I need the calendar to send out alerts (push mobile messaging and desktop)
I also need our pipeline software to show me (presuming a 15 day payment on invoices) the health of our company in real time.

The really tricky bit I am having difficulty getting my head round is how I can make the Gantt, calendar and pipeline
exist in a semi self-perpetuating cycle to one another -i.e they need to constantly be feeding/updating/adjusting  each other.

Also...
I need alerts to get back in contact with clients (either related to specific intel or just as a randomly generated courtesy call)
I need the software to reschedule staff timetables as changes are made (either automatically or manually) to the Gantt and/or calendar so that I we are being as efficient as possible with time
I need to have reports that let me know how efficient (or not) we are as a company
I need alerts to remind me about invoices
I need alerts to remind me about bills etc
I need alerts to warn me about the financial health of the company
Also any other general reports that would aid us in being accountable to client or help us understand our company would also be great.

We only need one master account and up to 6 staff accounts.


I know this is a lot to ask but I have looked at Smartsheets, excel, google apps, google pro, Backpackit, Zoho, salesforce, ACT, Basecamp and others but I can't seem to find either what I want in one package or a way of sufficiently blending various solutions.

Answer
You need a CRM solution plus. Frankly, I don't know of any one size fits all solution. The best thing I can recommend is to roll your own. I would suggest using Microsoft Access as your base. You can integrate that with Project to get your Gantt charts. If you need web access for your clients, then you can integrate with Sharepoint.

The problem is your budget. If you don't have Access or Project, these will probably eat up your budget for at least a year. The good news is that it would be one time payments. Subscribing to a Sharepoint server would cost you monthly, however.

Access comes with CRM templates that can get you started then you can add functionality as needed. You can learn Access and do a lot of this on your own, or farm all or parts of it out to freelance developers (like me). The big advantage of doing it yourself is you can make it do EXACTLY what you want.

Hope this helps,
Scott<>
Microsoft Access MVP 2007
Author: Microsoft Office Access 2007 VBA