"sheepCRM is a tool kit to help you manage relationships"
Sounds simple, but that's not the whole story, relationships are very complex things.
What type of relationships and why are they complex?
Relationships between organisations and their contacts.
Contacts can be other organisations and people.
A contact is an organisation or a person who has engaged with your organisation in any way, e.g. something as simple as signing up to a newsletter. You have a relationship with them from the first point of contact and data sharing.
... but why are they complex?
Some contacts increase their relationship with your organisation to become members, book tickets, hire your venue etc, potentially engaging in every service or product you offer.
Each of these services come with choices, options, conditions and exchanges of info, payments etc.
Your contacts each have preferences and needs which you aim to cater for.
This creates complexity to manage, which increases with scale.
As organisations grow, change is applied, processes evolve and guess what.. complexity grows which can take control with negative implications.
Levels of complexity are usually under estimated. Using an equation to emphasise this, think about your organisation with these questions..
Number of products X number of options X number of prices X number of ways to pay X number of different preferences X number of data fields you capture X different communications you send X number of contacts you have etc etc = 🤯
...oh, then add in your contacts' needs, types of interaction, systems, regulations, internal policies etc = 🤯 🤯 🤯
sheepCRM provides a tool kit to help you manage these relationships and their complexity, but it's been designed for your type of organisation and relationships.
sheepCRM is on a mission for simplicity, we love a challenge! (we ask you to join that mission, but more on that later).
"Never underestimate the complexity of simplicity"
Keeping things simple is not easy, some say it's not even a realistic choice (we don't agree).
For example, you could run a membership scheme and keep it simple by offering only one choice, one duration, one cost, one method of payment, one set of communications etc. This can be simple to manage and has lots of benefits, but what if a potential member wishes to pay a different way and won't join if they can't?
The likely output is that you will introduce new ways to pay so to attract more members and grow, but it's immediately growing your complexity to manage.
This is where sheepCRM comes in. You have a job to do, which is to accept multiple payment methods for membership or other services. The tool kit we provide allows you to provide these choices so the member chooses and the complexity becomes simple and automated.
However, remember the equation above, this is one very simple example of many. It is possible to manage this complexity manually, with lots of people, spreadsheets etc but its very costly, ineffective and restricts growth.
We use a mountains metaphor to explain what using sheepCRM does to address this.
Mountain 1 - Fragmented data, systems, people = Complexity difficult to manage.
Mountain 2 (with sheepCRM) - Connected data, time saving, automation = complexity simple to manage & resources focussed on growth and engagement.
Mountain 3 (with sheepCRM) - Insight, Data driven decisions = Long term value growth.
...but what are the tools provided by sheepCRM to do these jobs, save time etc?
Let's stretch the metaphor further and bring in a 🐑 theme to it... by adding in a sheep farmer to the story to explain a high level of what the sheepCRM tool kit provides.
If a farmer was able to farm those three mountains, started with a small flock but aimed to grow it to a strong, healthy and happy flock they would need a set of tools, equipment and ways of doing things. They could not just release the flock onto mountain 1 without any fencing up, cattle grids to keep them on the mountain, markings to show ownersheep (sorry!) etc. The result would be a loss of sheep and no chance of growing to an amount needing mountains 2 or 3!
First they would put up fencing, install cattle grids, etc. We do the same with our settings and controls, they create the environment for your flock to thrive.
Then the farmer would have tools to mark their sheep, track them, identify them, age etc. We provide those tools for you to record, find and view data and information, so you don't have to treat all your contacts like sheep!
The farmer would need working processes, to manage health, routines, timings etc. We provide a range of processes for you to manage your steps such as sign ups, bookings, payments etc.
Finally, the farmer would need to understand data and info about their flock to decide when to introduce new sheep, growth expected etc. We provide reports and information so you can manage, learn and plan your own goals and objectives.
Is perfection a reality?
The reality is not perfect unfortunately! Sometimes a sheep may get through a fence or leave the flock. Even with a simple fully automated process, some exceptions occur, an internet connection is lost, someone makes a mistake, or finds an unhappy pathway! There are also things we don't do yet!
The farmer never stops working and sheepCRM is no different, evolving all the time. Some things are well supported and simple (effective tools), some things are not supported at all (no tools), some things are supported but need your involvement as users (you use the tools) and some of our tools need improvements (for simplicity).
sheepCRM is a SaaS (Software as a Service) product, it's a platform used by many organisations in a similar way. One farmer may build a fence different to another but they use the same materials, we provide configuration options to give you flexibility in how you use the tools, but they are the same tools all our customers have access to.
This means you need to fit your working methods into what the platform can support but the main benefit is you get access to a broad set of tools for a fraction of the cost to build and maintain a bespoke system exactly tailored to your needs.
We invest in the common jobs across our customer base, things all customers can benefit from.
We are no different to your organisation, we are always adding to and refining what we do for our flock of customers.
This is where you come in, we listen to our customers and adapt and evolve the tools within the system to do the jobs you need done, and to make them simple, then simpler etc. Finding the right balance between simple and complexity is an ongoing challenge, but we fundamentally believe that simplicity wins for us all.
What is the role and responsibility of a sheepCRM user?
The last use of the metaphor is in this section: think of yourselves as shepherds.
It's simple but critical: understand the jobs you need to do and what you aim to achieve, choose the right tools to use, learn how to and use them properly.
The benefits of the automation we provide mean you won't need to do as much admin as you used to, so you can focus on your flock, but this means you will spend more time on exceptions; it's important to manage your data properly so your flock is always well tended to.
What are the main parts of the system structure sheepCRM users need to understand?
The main two parts of the system used are settings to make the tools effective and contact records where all details of your relationships are managed.
The following article provides a diagram to support this, and it is explained during our training sessions.
What support is available?
As an organisation it is your responsibility to own how you use sheepCRM and to maintain your own training materials so your users can meet the expectations above, but of course this includes using our generic help and support articles as you wish.
We have a dedicated article which is found below however at a high level we provide online help articles for all users, and we are available within office hours for any technical errors. Training is a paid for service, but we will always help users with queries where we can.
For full details of support please click the button below.
Thanks for reading this article, welcome to Mountain 2 😉