CRM SPECIALIST HELPS NORTH EAST ENTREPRENEURS

Bond managing director Derek Bond and Chief Executive of the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, Carole Beverley

One of the region’s leading names in business management software is applying its expertise to support the Entrepreneurs’ Forum as it continues to enhance what it offers to its growing membership base, with the installation of a new customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sunderland-based Bond, which specialises in technology based CRM, is helping the Forum develop a new system which will manage the client database faster and more efficiently, as well as allowing staff to gather and analyse member data that can then be used to support them more effectively.

The system will also further streamline the Forum’s mentoring programme, by matching mentees with a shortlist of possible established entrepreneurs as mentors.

The Forum, whose membership is made up of over 300 entrepreneurs from around the North East, previously used a combination of spreadsheets and databases for event management and to manage membership lists. With the addition of the new system the Forum is also aiming to increase membership numbers further and to manage links to several other groups it has contact with, such as further and higher education organisations where students are engaged through its youth strand.

Bond managing director Derek Curtis, who is also taking part in the Entrepreneurs’ Forum’s ‘If We Can You Can’ campaign, said: “I’ve been a member of the Forum for four years now, so I’m proud that the organisation chose Bond to revolutionise its CRM.

“Being able to gather and apply a wider range of marketing information should help generate more members, and allow the Forum to grow both its membership base and its range of activities.”

“Having a place where entrepreneurs can go to meet with like-minded people to swap advice and share inspiration is fantastic. I’m looking forward to helping the Forum expand so that more people can reap the benefits of attending events and being a member.”

The next stage of the new CRM integration will involve linking the system with the Forum’s existing events system, so that staff will be able to further monitor the take up and success of events across a number of themes and formats.

Chief Executive of the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, Carole Beverley, said: “We’ve known Derek for a long time and even though we had proposals from other companies to implement the CRM system, we felt that Bond was the only one that shared the same vision and attitude as us, combined with the flexibility we needed.

“There’s no doubt that the new system will transform the way we analyse our data internally. It’s only just been installed, and already we’re finding information retrieval much faster and the dashboard facility, which allows us to view a whole host of bespoke information at a glance, is superb. I’m confident that it won’t be long before it will be delivering some amazing results.”