Comparison of Xero CRM Providers

Which CRM provider provides the best connections to your UK Xero account, and combines sales and marketing functionality that fits well in your client services business?

Introduction

Whilst you – like us – are a Xero fan and user, we recognise that when it comes to choosing a CRM product that integrates with both your Xero account and accounting workflows and the way you do sales and marketing in your business as well, you have a sometimes confusingly wide variety of choice on Xero’s UK app marketplace in the CRM category. Since you are on our site and looking to compare how we stack up in features that might have benefit to your business, the purpose of this feature summary is to present an honest comparison of Connectably’s core functions against other popular software in the CRM category on the Xero UK Marketplace.

There are 100s of online CRM providers around the world. Most are not in our marketplace:

• Some are cross-industry providers like Salesforce, Infusionsoft, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign with limited direct integrations, requiring instead 3rd party add-ons to integrate with Xero. Often these add-ons are both complex to configure and costly. They have not been selected for this review for that reason.
• Others are industry-specific, like Karbon, Accountancy Manager or Senta, in the case of the bookkeeping and accounting industry, for example. As this summary considers those providers who serve businesses across client-services industries and directly have (no 3rd party integrations) a ‘Connected App’ approval status with Xero, and do not charge more for the Xero integration.

At the time of writing, there are 52 apps in the CRM category on the Xero marketplace with ‘Connected App’ status. Some have comprehensive integrations with Xero and traction as app partners; many others have little to no traction. Please consider this your one page summary of the cream of the crop. Each vendor listed below has been selected based on traction (reviews) and capability in the marketplace.

The summary is broken down into 10 key areas:

1. In Their Own Words
2. Xero Integrations and Sync
3. Other Core Integrations
4. Lead Management
5. Email Marketing
6. Appointment Scheduler
7. Quotes & Proposals
8. Getting Paid
9. Other Functions
10. Pricing

In Their Own Words

How does each vendor describe their service in one sentence on the Xero App Marketplace?

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Xero Integrations and Sync

Xero has strict acceptance criteria to be accepted as a ‘Connected App’ on its marketplace. Our four featured apps do considerably more with Xero than most CRMs.

Alongside the other rich functionality that all featured apps provide, Connectably has been developed to also sync direct debit and credit and debit card transactions between partners GoCardless and Stripe and Xero, so that users do not need to re-key or import sales information, and transactions get automatically reconciled.

Syncing to Xero’s tracking categories with marketing lead sources that are tracked and applied by Connectably allows richer reporting in Xero and the ability to view sales and profits by the lead source of where sales have first come from for better-focused marketing activities.

Here’s a summary of the Xero functions the apps connect with and sync:

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Other Core Integrations

You can develop a clear perspective of a software vendor’s culture and perspective on their desired position as a component of your business’ workflows by seeing how they integrate with other software and services you use or would like to use. The summary below is drawn from each vendor’s integrations or features pages:

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Lead Management

How you manage leads is a critical factor in choosing a CRM system. The ‘R’ in ‘CRM’, managing the ‘Relationship’, is the key word. We even wrote a blog on the topic.

There are certain minimums – managing contact information in a GDPR compliant way, recording notes, setting to-do’s and reminders (all our featured apps do these functions).

There are also a number of mini-processes that you don’t tend to think about until you see the gap that not having them creates in your business. Things like capturing leads on your website and immediately segmenting them with tags in your database as they go straight into it, being able to book meetings that record in your Google Calendar (GSuite) or Outlook’s calendar (Office365), and seeing visually how leads are progressing through stages of your sales and marketing activities. The summary below is drawn from each app’s features pages:

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Email Marketing

There are some great advantages to managing email marketing within your CRM software, especially automated email sequences:

• Instead of treating every lead or contact in the same way, sending the same generic email marketing to your entire list, when email marketing sits within your CRM software with contacts segmented by tags along interest areas, buying status, value, lead source, previous activity etc, you can create highly targeted messaging in your communications.
• As leads move between different stages of your sales and marketing workflows, or indeed your delivery and support workflows, you can trigger focused and drip-fed scheduled email content to them over time. Changes to their status (how they’re tagged, the stage they’re in) can be automatically tracked and contacts can be automatically transferred into different follow-up email marketing sequences.
• All activity can be tracked against one version of the contact record – individual emails, bulk emails, responses, clicks on links etc. Having a single view of the contact enriches engagement with them. When you are on the phone, or checking on your mobile on your way to a meeting, you can see clearly what your prospect and client has interacted with.

As a single-point sales and marketing workflows solution for small client services businesses, Connectably stands alone as the only provider within our featured group of apps to offer email marketing within the CRM to Xero users

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Appointment Scheduler

Poor management of time is one of the greatest inhibitors to client services businesses, for it is what you do with the limited time in your working week that you get paid for by clients.

Early adopters of Connectably were big fans of using Zapier to connect Connectably with their preferred meeting scheduling software (e.g. Acuity, Calendly, ScheduleOnce) – where based on calendar availability, and setting meeting durations and space between them – prospects and clients can book time directly into their Google Calendars or Outlook (Office365) calendar.

Such was the popularity amongst these client services businesses, and given Connectably had all the components at its disposal already (calendar, email, booking forms), we took the decision to implement our own simple, quick to use version of appointment scheduling software.

On booking an appointment based on diary rules, contacts are added to the system, tagged appropriately, and can be added to follow-up email sequences using the booking information in confirmation and reminder emails. If meetings are online, and the user has a Zoom online meetings account, then Connectably will not only automatically set up both the meeting in the user and the meeting booker’s diary, but also include Zoom meeting details in the appointment that has been set up.

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Quotes & Proposals

When a customer asks you to quote or agrees to receive one, it means they’re seriously considering doing business with you. New business is won or lost at this stage, so it’s important to get it right. And yet, they can take forever to create without templates or systemisation.

Quotes and proposals are an essential part of running client service businesses. They help you and your customer understand each other and bring you closer to a sale by encouraging the customer to make a decision. They build trust by helping you structure your pricing and the services you offer, presenting your offering more professionally than just following up by email or phone call alone.

Of our featured apps, Connectably is the only provider to offer the creation of quotes/proposals directly within the CRM – on both desktop and mobile views of the application – saving you time, improving professionalism and allowing you to quote more comprehensively than you might otherwise do so (and in so doing, increase the likelihood of more profit per sale):

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Getting Paid

One of the greatest inhibitors to small business survival itself, let alone success, is the cost and impact of late payments. Data from Small Business Insights, Xero’s monthly snapshot of the health of the small business economy, shows that invoices with 30-day payment terms are paid in 39 days on average (Nov 2018).

Connectably stands alone as the only provider on the Xero marketplace to offer secure payments functionality without need for 3rd party add-ons, e-commerce products, or frustrating manual follow-up to try to get late payers to pay.

With payment partners GoCardless and Stripe, Connectably users can reduce average payout timings by 82-87% to 5 days for existing direct debit mandates (6 for new ones), and 7 days for debit / credit card payments taken via Stripe. Payments can be scheduled to be taken with minimum delay or to be taken on specific days of the month.

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Other Functions

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Pricing – Based on 3 Users

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Note: The article is intended to present an honest comparison feature of Connectably’s core functions against other popular software in the CRM category on the Xero UK Marketplace. This feature summary and wording is regularly checked against Xero’s UK Marketplace and vendor’s site links from that marketplace. Please report inaccuracies to support[@]connectably.com and our marketing team will review, analyse and rectify any discrepancies. Last updated: 15th January 2019, v1.1.