Cirrus Insight

Benefits:

Mobile app provides real-time updates showing who where and when my emails were read. This allowed me to focus follow-up efforts on interested prospects.

Drawbacks:

If emails were opened too many times the granular details would no longer be available.

In sum:

Although imperfect, this was an invaluable tool. Unfortunately several colleagues never bothered to utilize, leading the organization to decide against renewing.

Benefits:

The ability to update Salesforce leads, opportunities and events from gmail. Also the built in calendar function and meeting scheduling is seamless across Gmail and Salesforce. Eliminates double entry in the crm , calendar meetings and your daily email communications. Saves time and provides real-time opens and reads on the mobile interface. The new Flight Plans option allows for sales automation and cadence set up for sequence follow ups and lead and prospect nurture. Very strong for any salesrep to set up their own cadences as well as group cadences defined by Sales Leadership. Deep functionality for affordable user pricing. If your moving into sales automation it is a must have for reps to save time and manage productivity. The ability to add leads and prospects to Flight Plan (Cadence) or remove is extremely easy for anyone to take advantage of.

In sum:

Seamless integration to Gmail, Salesforce and Meeting Requests for Calendar invites. Better sales cadence outreach functionality, easy management of sales campaigns, visibility to the sales process through Cirrus Insight Flight Plans. Saves rep time and double entry of key information around the sales process with Salesforce CRM. Allows our sales team to spend time on key leads that are ready to engage.

Benefits:

Cirrus Insight allows you to seamlessly connect your Gmail and your Salesforce together, allowing you to integrate all of the crm information of your client while you're working at the comfort of your email inbox. It's as if both programs merged into one!

Drawbacks:

If I'm really, really picky about it, I'd love to have integrations like these with other CRM software besides Salesforce, but in general, Tha add on will save your time

In sum:

You nearly double your efficiency in client reach out simply by not having to go back and forth between your email and your Salesforce. The added value this sky rocketing extension brings to your team is simply baffling

Benefits:

Cirrus Insight is a very powerful tool. It quickly and easily links your email communications to Salesforce. It is also a faster way to access records and involves a lot less clicks than the Salesforce interface. I also use and appreciate the scheduling tool and follow-up reminder alerts.

Drawbacks:

Cirrus Insight can be a little opaque. For instance, when you restart your browser, CI will fail to load in Gmail. There is nowhere to "turn it on;" you just have to refresh the tab and wait for it to appear. This is not a regular occurrence, but when it happens, it's annoying.

Benefits:

Citrus Insight allows you to save correspondence in Salesforce in an easy and simplistic manner!

Drawbacks:

There's really nothing not to like about Cirrus Insight!

In sum:

I no longer have to copy and paste correspondence from clients in my Outlook into my CRM. A couple of clicks using Cirrus Insight and it's done for me! Short and sweet! Move onto next task!

Benefits:

Cirrus Insight is great for large organizations, particularly those running large CRM databases. The integration with Gmail allows for users to be more productive and to stay on one screen rather than switching tabs within a browser or perhaps across browsers. The integration is robust and features such as email sync, calendar sync and campaigns are very useful. Email templates also save a lot of time. The calendar scheduler is among the top features as well. Very powerful.

Drawbacks:

Many of the powerful features Cirrus Insight provides are not suited for a small organization, particularly those who do not launch large marketing campaigns. There are several features that are great in a vacuum but that our team is simply too small to leverage. No fault of Cirrus Insight; it is simply a suitability comment.

In sum:

Cirrus Insight has saved us a lot of time since our team has implemented it and has done wonders for our calendar and contact integration with our CRM. While the basic features can be found for free on some platforms, the powerful, unique features are worth the subscription.

Benefits:

I like the ability that Cirrus links to SalesForce and Gmail and locates recipients in the SalesForce database and links emails to the Account/Contact activity log

Drawbacks:

Cirrus is not reliable in locating related SalesForce contacts and particularly not reliable locating contacts when using the 'Add to SalesForce', 'Custom' option that allows linking an email to a standard related lists such as linking an email to Opportunity or Case- there are many examples of these issues that often I've thought to cut-and-paste and email into a SalesForce activity would be faster. Another daily pain is when selecting another tab (instance) of Gmail, cirrus presents a sidebar that says, "Let's put this app to work!" When you're ready to go to work, you're required to click the "Continue" button, only to be greeted with another sidebar that says "Get More Done" that 'promotes/sells' cirrus features Book Meeting, Follow-Up Reminders, Sales Email Campaigns, Email Templates. If you do not select the "Get To Work!" button cirrus is not functional. Why is a productivity application like cirrus requiring me to tell cirrus separately to "Continue" and "Get To Work" when in fact these are redundant requests causing extra keystrokes? Why does not cirrus just start working for me without having to tell the application to start syncing my email (activities) to Gmail? Cirrus is counter-productive for a productivity application.

In sum:

Technical support is good at sending 'canned' responses. I find myself frustrated that cirrus hasn't improved its usability. Please give me two things every month that make your 'standard' features of Gmail to SalesForce work without me having to invoke extra keystrokes or drag picklists to see all available options.

Benefits:

Easy to set up and sync with SFDC ; Meeting builder feature is very nifty ; side bar in Outlook has a ton of information and cuts down the need to go back and forth between Outlook and SFDC for sales related information

Drawbacks:

UI is not intuitive ; it's not obvious what steps you need to take to add an e-mail, though once you do it a few times it's pretty straightforward. Templates are really nifty, but don't seem to work correctly when working with SFDC specific fields.

Benefits:

Ease of use, UI, and streamlined ability to update records and activity in Salesforce

In sum:

As a season sales leader, the Cirrus Insight tool provides my team considerable ROI in keeping them within their Inbox and streamlining Salesforce updates. Gone are the days of spending an hour at the end of your day to log all of your sales activity and opportunity updates. The accuracy of my reports, pipelines, and forecasts have all drastically increased as a result of the Cirrus tool. When transitioning accounts, a sales rep can very easily view detailed notes and account activity captured by the CIrrus tool to seamlessly maintain account/sales momentum.

Benefits:

Cirrus makes my job a lot easier. Specifically involving recording things to SFDC.

Drawbacks:

Sometimes it logs me out and I have to re authorize.

In sum:

I like it and will continue to be a champion for this product to our team.