CRM

[Robert Strange]

Hi all –

Is it possible to use Tapforms as a CRM? I would like to create forms for:

Customers
Customer sites
Suppliers
Opportunities
Projects
Assets

I would also like to link the forms together – is this possible?

Is it possible to manage tasks with this app? Including task reminders?

Many thanks,
Rob

[Brendan]

Hi Robert,

Tap Forms is capable of recording any type of information you need. It’s not really limited to certain types of information. But one thing that you wouldn’t get from Tap Forms is some kind of dashboard type overview of all your information. Each of your above forms are certainly possible with Tap Forms to make. You can link them all together in various ways by adding a Link to Form field to your forms. That will allow you to manage the relationships between them, such as a Customer having a list of Projects or Assets.

But if you’re specifically looking for CRM capabilities that are already setup and configured for you, then a great one is Daylite by Market Circle. There’s also one that looks neat called Elements CRM. Those are solutions that are already built for you. They also would have special logic in them that do things for you when you change certain values. With Tap Forms you would need to create the forms yourself and there’s no underlying logic (other than a Calculation field) that would update values in a form or another form based on any kind of activity that you do. But it’s certainly doable at a basic level if your goal is simply information gathering, searching and reporting.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

Oh, and I’m not trying to sell Tap Forms short here. It’s perfectly great at what it does. It’s just a more general purpose tool than a specific CRM tool. It’s best that you get the right tool for the job. Tap Forms can certainly go a long way towards helping you manage all kinds of information.

[Charlene Perez]

Brendan-

Currently we have an expansive spreadsheet for 165+ students and all the classes they take in our K-12 educational enrichment program. This was imported from a CSV file into Numbers. The CSV file was imported from a WordPress plug-in form on our website that captured student registration information and class selections. So literally, there is a row for every student and every class they are taking. Since most students take 3-5 classes, you can only imagine how massive this spreadsheet has become and how slow it is to sludge through to find data, even with CTL+F search.

We have a great need to take the information from the behemoth Numbers file and put into a more user-friendly database so that admin people of the school can access it in real-time and we can print out a form with all of the students’ information on it and all the classes for which they are enrolled. Class rosters for the teachers would is also essential.

Because we already owned BENTO, we thought we would create the desired database structure, student forms, class rosters, etc. in that. However, upon further research, we’ve discovered Tap Forms. In your opinion, would Tap Forms give us the multi-user accessibility with real-time data that we need and will be capable of printing out a hard-copy student information form/student schedule form/class rosters we need or is a CRM platform such as the aforementioned be advisable?

And, is there a way to circumvent the CSV and/or Numbers spreadsheet and create a direct import directly from the web-based form to the Tap Form? As you can see, we’ve got quite the cobbled system which worked fine until registration doubled this past year and now we have a need for multiple users to access. The only reason to go the CRM route would be to track tuition payments, however, we can easily trace payments through the PayPal Pro payment gateway we use.

Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated!

[Brendan]

Hi Charlene,

Tap Forms is a single-user database application. If you’re looking for multi-user real-time access, I would recommend Daylite as I have personal experience with it. Alternatively if you want a more general multi-user database solution, then FileMaker is a good choice. But for now, Tap Forms is a single-user database application.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Charlene Perez]

Thanks, Brendan. I somehow missed that in my CRM vs. database research!:-)

[Robert Strange]

Hi Brendan –

Thanks for the honest recommendation of Daylite. I have looked at that one, but I like the idea of building my own system!

I may still create a database with Tapforms, as a data store for my business. Having a dashboard isn’t so important. If I build a Tapforms database, I will keep track of projects using the search functions.

I’m thinking of creating a form for “Companies”. One of the fields could be a Pick List, with categories of “Suppliers”, “Customers”, “Competitors”.

Another form could be “Jobs”, with a pick list for “Opportunities” and “Projects”. So a job that I am trying to win is an “opportunity”, and a job that I have won is a “project”. Another pick list could be for the project status: “Scheduled”, “In Progress”, “Completed”. The saved search filters will be useful for keeping track of project status’s.

The “Companies” and “Jobs” form will be linked together, I will go through the tutorials to learn how to set this up.

Another form could be “Lifts”. We are a lift (elevator) installation company and sell lifts to private and commercial customers. Each lift is different, e.g. number of floors, safe working load, type of drive, etc. The form will store data for all the lifts I have quoted to supply, including the cost from the suppliers, and the price the lift was sold for. This form will be linked to the suppliers and customers of the “Companies” form, and to the projects.

I notice the Link field can open Evernote notes directly on my Mac, by pasting the Evernote Classic Note Link into the field, and clicking the link. This also works for Trello page links. This may be useful for task management.

I have just set up an alert with the “Date and time” field. This created an appointment in my calendar. The appointment was named after the Form, and the Tapforms link in the appointment doesn’t work. If I can work out how to make use of the alerts function maybe I could use this to manage tasks? I will also have a look at the tutorials.

Am I trying to reinvent the wheel here? I’m sure there are task apps out there that already do exactly what I’ve described!

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlene Perez]

Rob- I don’t know if this another alternative or not, but in the past I have used https://www.smartsheet.com/ for project management/project scheduling, CRM/Sales pipeline management, and other database functions. I may go back to it for my current needs, but am still trying to research and TapForms and FileMaker Pro to weigh the pro’s and con’s of both before deciding.

[Robert Strange]

Thanks for the recommendation Charlene. I’ve started playing around with Tapforms, I’ll see how I get on with building my database.

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