CRM System Implementation-Improve Performance By Automating
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software is used to contact, but also to help and support customers, to help maintain contact and connection with prospects, help structure your sales team and their goals and projects, and a lot more. But in order to benefit from all those advantages from this exciting technology you have to know how to implement a CRM tool, so how do you do that? Keep on reading, and you’ll find all of our tips and tricks on implementation and also on the opportunities that a CRM software offers.
Does My Organization Qualify for a CRM System?
If your company deals with customers or prospects, has meetings with them, sends bills or invoices, or has a marketing, sales or billing staff then a CRM system is for you. A CRM puts all of the essential data that you need in one place, making important decisions easier to make. You’ll no longer need to rummage your email looking for key details about prospects and customers.
What Role Should Your CRM Software Play in Your Organization?
Customer Databases
One of the main functions of a database, for sales, is to store contact information of prospects. Even though you could, hypothetically, do this with an Excel spreadsheet, it would take ages and be extremely tedious. With CRM software, you can easily find a potential customer’s contact information, and furthermore the last time you contacted them and by what channel, what product the customer was interested in, etc., all in one click.
However, one important thing to keep in mind is that your CRM system is only as good as the data you put in it. To fully benefit from the entirety of the advantages that a system like this offers, you have to put a multitude of data into it, including qualitative, quantitative, identity and descriptive, all about the customer.
Organizational Impact
In addition to the informational aspect of CRM software, it can also play a key role in the strategic and organizational part of your activity. A CRM software can plan out your employees days, with agenda modules, and then automatically sync that agenda with your databases. Saving you time on tedious things, and allowing you to focus on more important stuff like your company's strategy. Implementing a CRM is also linked to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, successfully integrating a CRM into your business is directly correlated with an increase in customer orientation.
Better Customer Relations
Using a CRM software will make your sales team more efficient and productive, but this could also trickle down to how you deal with customers. Using a CRM will allow you to offer more precise and tailored solutions to your customers which, in return will lead to a higher customer experience and satisfaction. You can even put in place a system of virtual tickets, where a customer asks you a question and they can follow their request or question online by typing in their ticket number.
First Steps of Deployment
A CRM For YOU
A CRM software program allows not only to be more efficient and produce higher quality work, but also to improve your relationship with your customers. However, depending on the CRM system results can vary, there’s no best CRM software per say, it depends on the activity and structure of your company.
Identify Your Current Needs
Before choosing or deploying a CRM, you should consider the current situation of your sales team, and your general expectations from a CRM software. These are some ideas to think about when considering integrating a CRM program to your company’s activity:
- What you’re specifically focused on right now, how to improve it, and which CRM software would help you the most
- What you don’t do today, due to lack of resources, time, etc., but would like to do
Do You Need an Industry-Specific CRM System
Obviously, different industries have different needs, a company selling technology has different needs than a construction company. However, this doesn’t really apply to a CRM system. Despite what industry you’re in, you’re probably dealing with the same thing as most other companies are, customers. All of the best CRM systems allow you to maintain and improve your connections with existing customers and prospects, and contribute to your overall commercial development.
Automate- Modernize and Improve Your Marketing Operations
In today’s world more and more things are becoming automated, if your company really wants to be competitive in today’s market, you’re going to need to automate. For example, if your company sends out newsletters to customers, and you’re still sending them out manually, there’s a problem. Marketing automation software saves you time and money by doing tasks that you used to do manually, like sending out newsletters, all you have to worry about is programming the software to send out the kind of message you want, text, email, etc.
Other Options For Deployment
Bring in an Expert
Sometimes implementing new things into a company can be difficult, especially a new CRM system. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this by yourself, you can always call in an expert or consultant. A consultant or expert will help you make a road map of what you need to implement and how to implement it. This is the perfect time to highlight your processes that are useful and which are counterproductive to focus on what really matters and to improve it.
Adoption
The next step is to gather all the relevant data and to plug it into the CRM system of your choice. In Software as a Service (SaaS) everything is up and running in under 48 hours, but in order for a software to work the majority of the company, in key areas and departments, have to know how to use it. Teaching and training your team in it can be fairly easy though, employees can learn how to use it from demo videos online.
Implementing a CRM system isn’t very complicated, it’s simple and fast to implement, it has a relatively low cost and rarely has any negative aspects. Another good option for deployment and adoption is, for example, getting the manager to run training courses for employees, so they adjust to this new change, the success of the system depends on the set of employees you have. However, the most important thing to keep in mind is identifying the specific needs of your business. You shouldn’t neglect this important part, as it plays an extremely important role in the decision making process that comes after.