CRM comes from a simple core business philosophy. It’s a simple concept – it’s all about organizing and analyzing the information a company needs to build stronger, more profitable customer relationships.
In practice, however, today’s businesses will gather this information from more sources than ever before – and they need to deploy this information in many different ways, for the benefit of different users, at different times and places.
Greater reach across departments; better data visibility:
An effective CRM solution gathers relevant information from a wide range of resources, such as multiple departments within an organization as well as from across multiple partner and customer channels.
Consider a typical example: the field service representatives who handle a company’s repair and IT support calls. These front-line employees come into close contact with customers and have a unique understanding of their needs. In these situations, field service staff with access to a CRM solution can record and share everything they observe during a call – including potential new business opportunities.
Better yet, a CRM solution, in turn, will arm them with the information they need to anticipate a customer’s unique needs. Several clients of ours will gather valuable insights from these customer site visits and by having a CRM system to save this intelligence and then share it, they enhance the connection to the customer by everyone.
Enabling additional users and lines of business:
Sales may be the first link in the CRM information chain, but it is not the only link. A company’s marketing, customer service, support, accounting, manufacturing, and executive management teams can contribute to – and benefit from – a CRM solution that give them a complete 360-degree view of each customer. More – on business issues solved with CRM across a business.
Enabling new functionality:
An effective CRM solution ensures that the right users within a business get precisely the right mix of features and the information to suit their needs. While both a sales team and a support organization can benefit from CRM, each group requires a different view of the customer. In order to enable an effective cross-functional approach to CRM, a decision-maker should look for a solution that provides functionality in three important areas:
Business Intelligence Tools: Today’s best-in-class CRM solutions should offer integrated and comprehensive reporting, business intelligence and analytics capabilities.
E-marketing tools: As more businesses discover the benefits of e-marketing and marketing automation, they are turning to CRM solutions that offer these capabilities either as native functionality or via seamless integration with a best-of-breed integrated web service.
Business Process Automation: One of the greatest benefits a CRM solution offers is the ability to standardize and automate processes across an organization. Effective workflow tools facilitate automation, standardization, and collaboration at every step of customer lifecycle processes.
CRM related benefits by your role and responsibilites, here.
Over the years we find that our clients will need to satisfy all of these operational requirements today; others can address them over time, as they grow. Either way, a successful CRM solution will scale effectively, enabling, new lines of business and functionality, when and where it is required – either on-premise or on-demand.
P.S. The key is finding a solution that can grow with your business and help take it to the Next Level. One that supports new users, processes and roles that reach far beyond the sales organization. Consider other stakeholders in the business who benefit from knowing more about the customer as your business acquires, develops and retains those profitable customers.
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