3 Types of Businesses that Could Benefit from CRM
Will CRM (Customer Relationship Management) really transform my business, make all my customers happy and improve profitability? Looking at the claims various CRM vendors make might have you wondering if their claims really hold up. CIO contributor David Taber addressed this sentiment in a recent article ; “there isn’t a single lie on any one of those websites.” The software itself is not the transformative element. It’s what the software allows businesses to accomplish that can be transformative.
Taber even goes as far to say: “Buying the best CRM in the world is like buying a Ferrari or Lamborghini. You won’t immediately win any races. In fact, by themselves, these cars won’t make you a better driver”. The industries most popular CRM’s – Dynamics CRM and Salesforce – offer a lot of great benefits, but the real value for your organization is in how it is implemented.
“What will actually change business performance is the behavior changes in your people and the process improvements enabled by the CRM system,” Taber notes.
Below are three types of businesses that could benefit tremendously from properly implementing a CRM.
“We are a Professional Services Firm”
Let’s say your organization, a specialized financial services firm for example, has no titled sales or account managers. Your relationships are long standing and there is no classic sales focus. A CRM system will be applied differently than it would be at a place with dedicated account executives. Here the focus would be on collecting and organizing your customer’s data. You will be able to keep track of emails, contact lists, upcoming events, past attendance and planning documents. Reports will include information on customer and prospects, and activity summaries by segment.
“We are a Manufacturing Company”
Large OEMs, for example, will be focused on renewal and upsell business and will have multi-phase contracts to keep track of. Here the CRM will function as a collaboration tool between sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing and support. The sales cycle is likely to be discrete and clearly defined. Not only will you need organization that comes from CRM, you may be interested in integrating with other systems. One common integration is between CRM and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). This will give you better coordination between the various departments and stages involved in the sales process.
“We are a B2B Company”
If your company focuses on B2B transactions in the electronics, software or high-tech space then high levels of synchronization are needed between sales, marketing and customer service departments. You may have various marketing or support systems running in tandem i.e. you offer two versions of a product an enterprise and a SME version. CRM will offer you the features that the other two types of businesses need in addition to tighter integration. This could mean for example, syncing data from your call center with your CRM. Make sure to plan accordingly in order to find the software that will best fit your needs.
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Thinking about CRM? We specialize in consulting with firms to A.) select the best CRM for their organization, and B.) implement the system using best practices to ensure user adoption and organizational utilization. For a free consultation contact our team today.
