Cratchit.org

Vital Information Center

Build Better Customer Relationships

Other contact management systems let you keep information about your customers. They may even attempt to log phone conversations and correspondence. Unfortunately, they're either woefully underpowered or exhorbitantly priced and a pain to use.

We know what we're talking about. We've used the competitors' products.
And that's why we wrote VIC.

VIC harnesses the power of Lotus Notes to allow collaboration between all representatives of your company! Whether your customers last talked to your sales staff or your CEO, you'll know what they were promised, and when they were promised it. And VIC is truly easy to use.

Using VIC, you can improve your relationships and make sure that when your customers deal with your company they get consistent, satisfying service. Satisfied customers mean repeat business, and that means a direct improvement in your company's bottom line. This is what you bought computers for!

With VIC, whenever you deal with your customers, you have full access to information about them. You have detailed records of all interaction between your company's representatives and the customer... literally, at your fingertips.

VIC's My Activities Page displays a personalized list of your scheduled events. On starting the system you know exactly what you've got planned for today and in the near future. Friendly icons differentiate different kinds of events... phone calls, meetings, to-dos, etc.

You have the ability to store detailed information about your customers, vendors, and associates as well. You can associate contacts with organizations and even nest organizations to accomodate subsidiaries and parent organizations. VIC accomodates any information that can be downloaded, typed or scanned and stored digitally. Any information!

VIC includes advanced scheduling features that allow you to track To-Dos, Meetings, Appointments, Product Demos... even Trade Show attendance. You can set alarms and reminders, and VIC will even email invitations to your customers to remind them of your upcoming visit!

VIC's Journal Calendar is your central point of reference for all interaction between you and your customers.

All of your customer correspondence is stored in VIC's advanced Journal. You can instantly retrieve e-mails, letters, faxes, and phone call records by date & time or by customer, company or contact name. And document templates help you to produce picture-perfect letters and faxes, every time.

VIC's full-text search facility gives you the ability to retrieve a document by any word or phrase included within it (and can even find most misspellings!). No more searching through files scattered about in your Windows directories!

VIC allows you to organize and instantly retrieve many types of documents that you need for your business. Product and Service brochures can be easily inserted into correspondence directly from the Library, as can templates of any type. You can also use the Library to store information about your competition, or industry trends; and you can use it to store industry news or reference information that your employees may find useful.

VIC's Contract Database provides a unique storage facility for contracts and warranty information. Other companies make their customers track warranties... this leads to confusion and frustration. With VIC, you can effortlessly track this information for each customer and show them that you're serious about your relationship with them. And VIC will remind you before a contract or warranty expires... so you can negotiate an extension or prepare for upsale.

VIC allows you to instantly share your experiences with your colleagues; but this doesn't chain you to your desk! VIC lets you take your information with you... in your car, on the plane... simply work with a local replica of your data on your laptop computer. Then, from any Internet connection you can synchronize your data. You can even write emails off-line, and they'll be transmitted when you connect. With VIC, you get both the immediacy of a web-based interface with the security and power of a dedicated client!

VIC is designed to be a foundation for specific functionality that you want for your business. We haven't cluttered it up with a bunch of features that look good on a matrix but don't do you any good whatsoever. As an Open Source system you can change anything you like about it, and you own your changes. That's flexibility you literally can't buy.

VIC is still expanding. Enhancements under development include a flexible Projects database and configurable Sales Methodologies. As your company grows, VIC will grow with you. And at Cratchit.org, we listen to you! Tell us what you want to do, and we can make it happen! Even if you have highly specialized needs, we can customize VIC to fit your business.