CRM is a quite long-term strategy, when it comes to the field of communication, with the primary focus on customers. The main goal of CRM is to primarily focus on better understanding of the customer needs and identifying their specific needs. Taking this significance of CRM into consideration, eWay-CRM was incepted to provide the best in class CRM solutions.
In an interview with Insights Success, Jan Lalinsky the CEO and Co-founder & Roman Stefko, CTO and Cofounder share valuable insights which eventually paved the way of success for the organization.
Below are the highlights of the interview.
Kindly take us through a detailed overview of eWay- CRM.
We are a team of determined professionals from all around the world sitting in Prague and Kansas City.
We focus only on eWay-CRM, a CRM tool for Microsoft Outlook. For more than 10 years, we have been helping companies in managing their sales, projects and customers. Our strong focus gives us the opportunity to do one thing and do it well.
We have thousands of users from individuals to multinational corporations. We are not industry oriented and such a broad range of various kinds of clients helps us get the best from different areas and offer a flexible product. Our customers come from different parts of the world. Mainly from the United States and Canada, but also from European countries such as United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, etc. We have clients in Asia and Australia too, but we tend to keep our focus on the North American and European market.
This orientation forces us to work in different time zones in order to make sure that all customer requests are being properly handled.
Our product was originally created in our parent company MEMOS Software as a custom-made software for an international team of lawyers. They needed to keep their matters under control and sort all communication history. As they work with Outlook, they insisted to keep the software as an Outlook addin. This is how eWay-CRM 1.0 was born. Soon, our parent company realized the potential of such a product and they turned it into a complex CRM software.
Could you throw some light on your mission and vision statement?
eWay-CRM® helps companies worldwide be truly effective. We have been determined in following this mission for more than 10 years.
That is also why eWay-CRM® is embedded straight into Microsoft Outlook. This way, we are able to transform the well-known Outlook environment into a full-featured CRM tool for managing clients, sales, and projects. Moreover, you can create professional bulk e-mails.
How do you diversify your company’s offerings to target the audience?
Our product is integrated right within Microsoft Outlook. There are plenty of great web-based competitors, but we believe, that people need one great and effective tool. Since most companies use Microsoft Outlook, we decided to embed eWay-CRM right into it.
What innovative measures has eWay-CRM undertaken to stay ahead of its competition?
We understand that every business is unique. Often, two CEOs of different companies from the same industry run their businesses differently. We believe that a software should adjust to company needs and not the opposite. This is why we made eWay-CRM extremely flexible.
With the level of customizations, we are able to compete biggest players at a reasonable price. We provide large database of tutorials and if customers don’t have time to set up eWay-CRM by themselves, we provide a team of highly experienced consultants who do it for them.
How is eWay-CRM upgrading itself with the volatile technological advancement in order to offer disruptive products or services?
We focus on customers who want a CRM that works and not the most modern geeky gadget. If somebody wants a shiny nice-looking product, they go somewhere else. We are chosen by professionals who know what they want and look for, i.e. something that will help them keep their agenda under control. Therefore, we carefully consider what new features we implement and what technologies we use.
At the same time, we listen to our customers, to their needs, and try to stay on top of new challenges. We understand these days sales reps and project managers work differently, they need to work from anywhere and from any device that is by hand. This is why eWay-CRM comes with mobile apps for Androids and iOS. Also, we are working hard on a web-based interface. We want to deliver a user friendly and accessible platform.
Being a leading CRM solution provider, what has been the company’s contribution in this ever evolving sector?
The market is full of single purpose web CRMs that are easy to use but can’t grow with you. eWay-CRM is different. eWay-CRM can grow with you. Since we have experience with individuals along with multinational corporations, we know what challenges a company faces when growing. We decided to make a product that is simple to use if you are a small business, yet complex when you need it. This is what makes us unique.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.
The biggest lesson learned is that your time is limited, and we can’t meet everyone’s requirements. As a small start-up, we very often used to build customized features one or two customers could benefit from. We got the deal, but our developers got stuck with – let’s be honest – not that great features. As a result, we couldn’t focus on something that everybody could benefit.
One day, we woke up 10 years later and realized that we spent too much time working on useless things and working with not the right people. We got out of our way. We had to take a couple of unpleasant steps and make painful decisions, but we were able to get back to our track.
The lesson learned is – keep your vision, trust yourself and don’t step aside. Your time is limited. Every second matters.
About the Leaders
Jan Lalinsky is the company CEO and co-founder. His role is to form the vision and overall direction along with making it come true. He focusses on the business development, marketing and people management. He makes sure that heads of all departments are on the same page and on track in order to deliver healthy and sustainable company growth.
Roman Stefko is the company CTO and co-founder. He is responsible for the product development and all other technical challenges (incl. eWay-Cloud, security, internal infrastructure and much more). As a former developer, he has deep knowledge of IT which helps him challenge anything.