Chat with us, powered by LiveChat

Workbooks under the hood

The breadth of functionality of an enterprise solution, designed for the needs of growing businesses

Workbooks under the hood

Workbooks offer a SaaS Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to run your business and efficiently acquire, convert and retain customers.

Workbooks CRM unites the entire organisation around data and processes, promoting teamwork and collaboration. It provides a single 360-degree view of customers and the information is accessible at all customer touchpoints. Functionalities extend beyond sales, marketing and customer service to include event management, order management and fulfilment, invoicing and supplier management.

The platform is exclusively focused on addressing the needs of growing organisations that are looking for a feature-rich but affordable all-in-one solution, which can be quickly deployed and don’t require complex technical customisation. Pre-built / configured solutions are also available for specific industry sectors, enabling an even quicker time to value.

Marketing management

Segment data for effective targeting. Capture leads automatically from your website. Lead and campaign management to track results and measure marketing ROI (measure expenditures by associating purchase orders/costs against campaigns and track lead conversion all the way to orders and invoices). Automatically assign opportunities to queues or sales reps and much more.

In addition to core CRM functionalities, Workbooks offers Marketing Automation capabilities, fully integrated with the core CRM platform, to help increase efficiency and impact, drive greater engagement, productivity and provide even greater insight. Functionalities include: email marketing and workflows, website visitor tracking, social media management, pop-ups and online surveys.

Sales management

Work more effectively, close more deals and grow revenue.

See all interactions with a prospect, such as activities, emails, cases, opportunities, orders and invoices in a single screen. Record and allocate leads to individuals or queues for follow-up. Easily convert leads into opportunities once qualified. Opportunity and pipeline management. Create quotations from a sales opportunity with a single click. Extensive sales management reporting incl. forecasting, pipeline, conversion rates, the performance by individuals/teams and more.

Order management

Track orders as they are fulfilled. Support workflow and approvals by placing sales orders in queues. Create orders, invoices, credit notes and supplier orders quickly and easily in PDF format. Integrated with Digital Signature solutions including Adobe Sign and DocuSign. Full support for sales tax calculations via rules and multiple currencies.

Customer service management

Deliver exceptional customer service across multiple channels. Track support calls, customer enquiries and project delivery in one place. Enable clients to raise tickets via email, web forms, case portal or phone. Gain complete visibility into a customer enquiry by tracking notes, activities, and emails against a case. Define priorities and customise case types. Measure performance and track Service Level Agreements. Comprehensive reporting to deliver your management information about workloads, recurring problems, root cause analysis, etc.

As part of our platform, we provide a portal framework which allows you to build client portals. The framework includes basic portal functionality, including user management and authentication. This can easily be extended to include a case management portal.

Reporting & dashboards

Build advanced Reports and Dashboards with our easy to use reporting tools. Out of the box, Workbooks provides a range of pre-built Reports and Dashboards that you can use and modify; or you can build your own.

Key features include:

  • Powerful reporting engine, which allows you to easily build detailed reports and summary views
  • Colour coding so you can visually identify and highlight key metrics
  • Set Targets and automatically track your achievements
  • Build multiple views onto the same report, allowing you to easily ‘slice and dice’ your data
  • Charting tools include pie, line, and dial charts
  • Bring multiple reports and charts together to build Dashboards
  • Share and publish reports and Dashboards so everyone has the right information at their fingertips
  • Schedule reports to be delivered via email automatically
  • Connect your reports to TV screens around your office, using our automation engine
Automation engine & workflows

Streamline common business processes using workflow tools and Workbooks Automation Engine. Workbooks includes a set of useful tools such as queues, activities, views and status fields to build simple Workflows without complex configuration.

In addition, the Workbooks automation engine allows you to build scripts to support more complex processes. Automations use the Workbooks API and can access all Workbooks records and capabilities of the platform.

Automations run in a restricted environment to ensure security, but do have the capability to connect to other web based applications or MS-SQL or MySQL environments – allowing you to build Workflows not just within Workbooks but across third-party applications. The Automation engine supports processes such as:

  • Scheduled Processes (automatically run at a pre-set interval)
  • Process Buttons: processes connected to a specific button on a form
  • On-Change Processes: processes that fire when a record has been updated
  • Web Processes: processes that can be run through a URL

We provide a library of scripts for most common tasks, which you can leverage and adapt, or you can write your own.

Event management

Create events from within Workbooks CRM and publish them on your website. Covers the whole events process from publishing events online to online ticket purchasing, managing credit card payments, capturing attendee information and driving attendee communication.

Contract management

Create contract records and raise cases against specific contracts and contract line items. Use customisable templates so your contracts look the way you want. Make the contract creation an automated process so that fields get populated automatically from the information in CRM. You can easily edit contract and change terms. Workbooks CRM helps you manage contract renewals using workflows that trigger internal approvals or communications with the customer at a timely point in their contract.

Data management

From storage, to data import / export to privacy and GDPR management, we provide a comprehensive set of tools to manage your data effectively and efficiently.

Workbooks makes it easy to get your data in and out of the solution. We provide a comprehensive import tool, which allows you to upload data from .CSV (Excel) format files. The import engine allows you to create multiple record types at the same time (e.g. People and Organisations or People and Activities) and will automatically spot duplicate records.

You can define import field mappings and reuse these for regular imports. You can even automate an import using the automation engine if you regularly import data from the same source. Once data has been imported, we provide tools to validate it before you accept it into your database and you can also roll back an import if you change your mind.

We also allow you to easily export your data. We provide a complete database export – which will export your entire database as a MYSQL database. You can also export any views or reports directly into Excel at a click of a button.

Relationship model

Workbooks provides a rich environment to track relationships. You can track your organisation’s relationships with others, e.g. customers, suppliers, partners, members. You can also track third-party relationships e.g. this Person is the legal advisor to this Organisation.

Relationships can be defined between:

  • People and Organisations – employee, previously employed by, accountant, etc
  • People and People – family member, husband/wife, etc
  • Organisations and Organisations – Subsidiary, Parent Company, Group Company, etc
  • Other records in Workbooks – e.g. ‘Consultant on an Opportunity’ or ‘Agent on a Contract’

Workbooks provides a list of predefined relationships, which you can extend and customise.

 

Security & sharing model

Control which users can access information based on security rules. Workbooks has layered tools to enable you to create the right balance between easy access and solid security. Workbooks Capabilities control which users can access certain elements of the platform and Security Permissions control which records can be edited or viewed.

Each customer is supplied with a standard security configuration which meets the needs of most clients. The Advanced Security Extension can also be purchased which provides more granular control.

Web services API & web processes

Workbooks provides a fully featured RESTFUL API which allows you to programmatically access the Workbooks platform. The API supports all the record types, plus the ability to configure some aspects of the system, such as adding custom fields. We provide wrappers for common development environments including PHP, .NET, Java and Ruby.

Web Processes provides the ability to ‘wrap-up’ a set of business logic with an Automation Script. A Web Process can be written in PHP and hosted within the Workbooks environment and called from a URL. The benefit of a web process is you can define a set of business logic which takes place in Workbooks and invoke that logic with a single call, ideally for website or e-commerce integration.

Email dropbox & Email2Case

The Email dropbox feature makes it easy to get emails into Workbooks if you are not using the Outlook Connector or Exchange Sync. Once configured you can ‘CC or BCC’ a Workbooks email address and the message you send will be automatically processed by Workbooks and stored against the relevant records. Emails are automatically stored against People records by matching the email addresses on the distribution list to records in Workbooks.

The Email2Case automation can monitor a POP3/IMAP mailbox and automatically create a new case record or update an existing case with a new email. The Email2Case functionality is often used by customer services departments to automatically process enquiries, create cases, assign them to the right teams and provide the customer with a reference number.

HTML, PDF & Google Docs output documents

Create professional output documents directly from Workbooks CRM in Word, PDF, HTML or directly in Google Docs. Workbooks supports output documents on the majority of records in Workbooks; the most commonly used ones are Quotes, Orders and Invoices.

Our PDF generation engine allows you to embed logic into the document creation and merge content from Workbooks with external content such as image files held on websites.

Common examples include:

  • Merge product Images onto a quotation record
  • Create Orders including standard terms and conditions
  • Embed logic to hide individual line item pricing
  • Group product pricing together into sub totals based on a category
Sandbox, testing & development environments

All customers can have up to five different database environments within their Workbooks account at no additional charge. This enables clients to have a ‘production’ environment and additional training and development environments. We provide tools to enable you to copy databases, including configuration and control parameters.

Multi-Company, Currency, Tax Scheme & Language

When creating transaction documents, Workbooks offers you the ability to have different tax schemes in different legal entities. Workbooks makes this easy by allowing you to configure different rules for each legal entity, thus ensuring compliance.

Configure which currencies you want to use within the Workbooks UI. You can define exchange rates and exchange rate periods. Workbooks has the concept of a ‘Home’ currency and a ‘Document’ currency. The Home currency is your global consolidation currency so you can report across CRM in a single currency. The Document currency is the currency of the specific record. All records which support line items, like Opportunities and Invoices have a Document currency and a Home currency.

Workbooks is available in different languages. Out of the box we provide support for English, American English, German and Spanish. Our platform however supports any language and customers are able to tailor their own translations, including fields names and pick list values. Users can define their currency and language preferences so that teams around the world are able to work in their local currency and language.

Auditing & Audit Reporting

Track every field change, including previous value, new value, date change and who made the change. Auditing takes place on all records and configuration aspects of Workbooks. You can use audit information as part of the reporting engine to track changes to records.

Mapping

Represent any address information you have in Workbooks CRM as a location on a map. Once enabled, the Mapping Module will show you Organisations and People ‘nearby’ the record you are viewing. So if you are off to see a client or prospect you can see who else is in the vicinity.

You can also see reports in ‘map view’, based on the criteria you want. For example you can create a report of customers in a specific vertical industry or who have purchased a specific product) and see them plotted on a map. You can change the view of a Workbooks grid to a map view and use the filtering capabilities to identify records you want to plot.

MS Outlook, Exchange & Office 365 integration

Synchronise Emails, Contacts, Tasks and Meetings directly with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange or Office365. Workbooks provides two different options for customers:

  • The Workbooks Outlook Connector (WOC)

This is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook on Windows and supports all recent versions of Outlook. The connector allows you to decide which items should be synchronised with Workbooks.

  • The Workbooks Exchange Server Sync (WESS)
    This is a cloud based service that connects Workbooks directly to Exchange or Office365 without the requirements for any plugs-in
Pre-built record templates

The platform is pre-built with all the CRM record types that you will need. Our CRM Edition includes:

  • Organisation, People and Sales Leads
  • Activities including Meetings and Tasks
  • Emails, which can be sent from Workbooks or synchronised from Outlook or Gmail
  • Email templates
  • Marketing Campaigns, Mailshots and Mailing Lists
  • Products, including pricing schemes for both customers and suppliers
    Opportunity and Quotation records

The Workbooks Business Edition includes all the record types in the CRM Edition plus:

  • Customer Orders
  • Supplier Purchase Orders
  • Invoices and Credit Notes

In addition, you can purchase Customer Contracts as a separate module.

Web desktop & mobile

Workbooks provides a Web desktop client for desktop/laptop users. The web desktop is designed to look like a familiar desktop environment, allowing users to create shortcuts and pin records in.

You can control the layouts of records independently on each type of device, customising your mobile deployment with just the information you need on the go, whether you are using a mobile or a tablet.

Portal frameworks

As part of our platform we provide a portal framework which allows Workbooks customers to build client portals. The framework includes basic portal functionality, including user management and authentication. This can easily be extended to include a case management portal.

Data migration tools

Workbooks makes it easy to get your data in and out of Workbooks. We provide a comprehensive import tool, which allows you to upload data from .CSV (Excel) format files. The import engine allows you to create multiple record types at the same time (e.g. People and Organisations or People and Activities) and will automatically spot duplicate records.

You can define import field mappings and reuse these for regular imports. You can even automate an import using the automation engine if you regularly import data from the same source. Once data has been imported, we provide tools to validate it before you accept it into your database and you can also rollback an import if you change your mind.

We also allow you to easily export your data. We provide a complete database export – which will export your entire database in as a MYSQL database. You can also export any views or reports directly into Excel at a click of a button.

Get started for as little as £25 a month!

Whatever your business needs, we have a solution for you.

Standard Edition £25

per user per month billed annually

  • Sales Management
  • Marketing Management
  • Customer Service Management
  • Order Management
Compare full features
Business Edition £55

per user per month billed annually

  • Sales Management
  • Marketing Management
  • Customer Service Management
  • Order Management
Compare full features
Did you know?

You can mix and match editions of Workbooks so you only pay for what you need.

Let's Talk

4.4 out of 5 (106 reviews)

Top 20 CRM 2020 Top 20 CRM 2020

4.3 out of 5 (106 reviews)

High Performer Summer 2022 High Performer Summer 2022

4.2 out of 5 (527 reviews)