Where does the manual work around Cirqll usually sit?

Cirqll is the system where you keep track of customers, contacts, deals, appointments, tasks, assignments and contracts. The manual work rarely sits inside Cirqll itself, but at the edges: where information has to go into or out of the CRM. In practice we keep seeing the same places:

  • Retyping data. A request comes in through the web form or by email and someone enters it into Cirqll by hand.
  • Remembering follow-up steps. A deal moves to the next stage and then all sorts of things need to happen: a confirmation, an internal handover, scheduling. Right now that depends on who remembers.
  • Keeping data twice. A won assignment also has to go into accounting, planning or the project system. The same customer details end up in three places, and after a year they no longer match everywhere.
  • Watching dates. Contracts that expire, quotes nobody responds to, customers nobody has spoken to in months.
  • Putting reports together. Every month an export to Excel, some cutting and pasting and an overview for the meeting.

Not all of that work has to go. But it is the list you choose from.

Which tasks should you automate first?

Go through your list with four questions. The more often you answer "yes", the higher the task goes on the list.

  1. Does it happen often? A task that comes back ten times a week pays off more than one that happens once a quarter, even if the latter is more annoying.
  2. Does it always follow the same rules? "When a deal reaches Verbal agreement, we create an assignment" can be automated. "When the customer feels important, we give them a call" cannot.
  3. Does it currently get delayed or go wrong? A lead sitting in an inbox for three days or a contract that renews silently costs money. Saving time is nice; preventing mistakes is often worth more.
  4. Is the data you need good enough? An automation that relies on an empty or messy field mainly does the wrong thing quickly. If the information is not yet properly in Cirqll, that is step one.

If you are torn between two tasks, pick the smallest and best-defined one. A first automation that runs reliably after two weeks builds confidence for the next. More on this way of choosing, independent of Cirqll, in workflow automation: 7 processes to automate first.

What can Cirqll already do by itself, without an extra tool?

Before you build anything, it pays to check what Cirqll already offers. A few things that are often overlooked:

  • The daily task email. Cirqll can send you a morning email with your open tasks. For "forgot to follow up" that is sometimes enough, provided tasks are created consistently.
  • Your own deal stages. You name the stages of a deal yourself, such as "Proposal sent" or "In negotiation". Clear stages are the basis for almost every automation that follows, because a stage change is the moment you want something to happen.
  • Custom fields. If a piece of information is missing, such as a contract type or a region, record it in a custom field rather than in a note. An automation can work with a field; with free text, much less so.
  • Import and export. For a one-off clean-up or moving an existing list across, you do not need to build anything.
  • Existing integrations. Cirqll itself lists integrations with, among others, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KVK), Outlook and Google. Check first whether they already remove some of the retyping.

Only when the work sits between Cirqll and another system, or consists of several steps with conditions, do you need an automation platform.

Zapier or Make: which tool fits which task?

Cirqll has its own app in Zapier, with triggers on events around deals, appointments, tasks and contracts, among others, and actions to create, update or find data. Cirqll also has a REST API and webhooks, which you use from Make or a custom solution. A rough split:

  • Zapier is handy for short "if this, then that" steps: a new customer in Cirqll adds a contact to your mailing tool, or a form creates a task.
  • Make suits workflows with several steps, conditions and error handling better: first check whether a customer already exists, then create or update it, then pick the right colleague, and send an alert if something goes wrong. In Make you work with the Cirqll API through webhook and HTTP modules; the five scenarios we set up first are covered in Cirqll and Make.com: 5 automations.
  • Power BI is not an automation tool, but it does remove the monthly cut-and-paste work for reports. How that works is explained in Connecting Cirqll to Power BI.

Torn between Make and n8n as a platform? Make vs n8n will help.

Example: a consultancy makes its list

A fictional example to make it concrete. A consultancy with eight employees has been using Cirqll for a few years. Everyone feels there is "too much admin", but nobody can say exactly where. An hour around the table produces this list:

  1. Retyping website requests into Cirqll: about ten times a week, fixed rules, sometimes sits for days.
  2. After "Verbal agreement", creating an assignment and informing the project lead: a few times a week, fixed rules, regularly goes wrong.
  3. Copying won assignments into accounting: a few times a week, fixed rules, but customer numbers differ per system.
  4. Looking up expiring contracts: once a month, fixed rules, and once too late last year.
  5. Preparing the monthly report for the meeting: once a month, takes half a day.
  6. "Giving a quick call" to key customers: no fixed rules, stays manual.

The order becomes: tasks 1 and 2 first, because they happen often, follow fixed rules and currently go wrong. Task 4 is small and quick to build, so it comes along. Task 3 waits until the customer numbers between Cirqll and accounting have been aligned, otherwise you automate the mess as well. Task 5 becomes a dashboard rather than an automation. And task 6 stays human work, but with a task in Cirqll as a reminder.

Step by step: automating Cirqll in five steps

  1. Make the list. Ask everyone who works with Cirqll to note for one week which work they do twice or by hand. A shared document is enough.
  2. Rank it with the four questions. How often, which fixed rules, what goes wrong now, is the data good enough. Pick two or three to start with.
  3. Clean up the data you need. Merge duplicate customers, make deal stages unambiguous, fill empty fields. Decide how you recognise an existing customer.
  4. Pick the tool per task. What Cirqll can do itself, you configure there. Short steps through Zapier, multi-step workflows through Make or the API, reports in Power BI.
  5. Build, test and document. Test with real cases, make sure there is an alert when a step fails and write down which automations are running and who owns them. Only then move on to the next task.

Where does automating Cirqll go wrong?

  • Wanting everything at once. Ten automations in one month means ten things that can break at the same time. Start small and expand.
  • Automating on messy data. If the same customer is in there three times, an automation will happily add a fourth.
  • An integration through a personal account. Use a separate user with only the permissions the integration needs. Otherwise everything stops as soon as that colleague leaves or changes their password.
  • No error alert. An automation that fails silently is worse than no automation, because everyone assumes the work has been done.
  • Automating away the human part. An automatic "thanks for your request" email is fine. An automatic follow-up to a customer you just had a difficult conversation with is not. Keep a person in charge where the contact is personal.

Help with automating Cirqll

Want to automate Cirqll without working with APIs, webhooks and tokens yourself? We help you make the list, pick the right tool for each task and build the automations with error handling and documentation. See what we do in workflow automation, read more about our Cirqll integration with Power BI or browse all integrations.