Why CRM Is A Necessity For Every Growing Enterprise

To start with a brief description of the deployment of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, they have been implemented the most across logistics and financial verticals with 60 percent and 57 percent adoption levels respectively. This is followed by IT, hospitality, real estate, manufacturing and media. CRM is still a new concept among small and medium sized businesses in India. According to a Gartner study on 139 midsize enterprises only 33 percent use an external integrator for CRM services. A higher percentage surveyed, 52 percent, stated that they farm out their CRM services to their CRM software vendors. Overall, the CRM adoption level among the Indian SMEs stands at 25 percent. While as high as 63 percent of Indian mid-sized businesses (100 to 1000 employees) have not adopted CRM solutions, the percentage of non-users further goes up for small sized businesses (less than 100employees). Indian market is slowly shifting its concentration towards the customer-centric model for which the adoption of CRM is considerably going up.

Importance Of CRM For An Organisation

CRM is the strongest and the most efficient approach in maintaining and creating relationships with customers. This helps in strong personal bonding within people. Such type of strong bonding helps drive the business to reach new level of success. After building such strong confidence in customers, it is easier for any organisation to understand the actual needs and requirements of the customers and accordingly serve them in a better way. A recent report from the consultancy Bain & Co. revealed that companies that put more effort into CRM up front get more out of technology. These companies that put a “major effort” into CRM reported a 4.17 satisfaction score on a five-point scale, while those putting in a “limited effort” were only able to achieve a 3.53 score.

CRM forms the bird’s view of all the customers that already are acquired by the company or form the ambitious list that is planned to be acquired. CRM contains complete details of all the prospective customers, hence becomes very easy to track details of customers and further can be used to determine which customer can be more profitable in near future. This method helps in focusing and concentrating on each and every customer separately depending upon the business type they have grouped in and the geographical location they belong too.

The strongest aspect of CRM is that it is very cost-effective. Another advantage of implementing CRM system is the reduced usage of paper and manual work which requires lesser staff to manage and lesser resources to deal with. The technologies used in implementing a CRM system are also very cheap and smooth as compared to the traditional way of business. All the details in CRM system are centralised and available anytime on your fingertips. This reduces the process time and increases productivity. Efficiently dealing with all the customers and providing them what they actually need increases the customer satisfaction. This increases the chance of getting more business which ultimately enhances turnover and profit. If the customer is satisfied they will always be loyal to you and will remain in business forever resulting in increasing customer base and ultimately enhancing net growth of business.

Different Types Of CRM System

The most basic form of CRM is Contact Management. This helps in keeping track of the customer’s information. There will be few systems that will be dedicated only to this. That is followed by the Operational CRM. It helps one who is involved in sales, marketing and as service provider. This system goes one step ahead and records interaction with customers, such as products sold and support calls, and basically helps one to keep a track of day-to-day interactions and plans.

To keep the track on the status of each client, sales person uses Sales Force Automation which helps in tracking leads and recording interactions, if more than one person handles sales for a business. Analytical CRM is primarily for designing and carrying through on targeted marketing campaigns. Suppose, one wants to sell a certain upgrade to all of the customers that bought a product from one in the last year, this data can help one create a marketing campaign.

The system that is similar to Analytical CRM is the Sales Intelligence CRM. This software program is created for focusing more on predicting customer trends and sales performance. This is best suited in the more expensive and robust systems. The subset of Operational and Analytical CRM is Campaign Management - this feature has a narrow focus that includes creating lists of contacts for marketing campaigns. Campaign Management programs can also help track and analyse customer responses.

Collaborative CRM is honestly a bit overkill for most freelancers — it’s a system set up for companies where clients have contact with multiple departments, such as sales and technical support, to make sure that everyone in the company knows how to handle a given client.

The CRM that combines Analytical CRM with geographic information is Geographic CRM by which we can narrow down regional information.

Business Benefits And Plan For CRM By Needs Assessment

With CRM, one can anticipate the needs of a company based on its historic trends and hence pitch and make an effective sale through better timing. CRM also helps in identifying the needs of the customer more effectively and hence can provide the specific customer requirements. CRM helps in cross-selling of other products between established clients, markets, traders, by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements.

CRM acts as a vital tool in identifying the profitable customers and the customers who are undergoing loss. This becomes very important tool to decide who the better customer to make a deal with is. Apart from this it helps in developing better communication channels for business. To create detailed profiles such as customer preferences, CRM becomes a necessary tool. CRM can deliver instant, company-wide access to customer histories. CRM also identifies new selling opportunities.

Planning is the most important aspect when investing in a new software solution and a key part of the planning process is completing a needs assessment. The four key aspects to CRM failure are being over-budget, too little or too much functionality, implementation behind schedule and user adoption. All of this can be avoided by completing a need assessment. Before planning your strategy and implementation of your CRM solution, establish a core team of individuals, including a project manager, to oversee and manage the whole process. A CRM solution is one of the most valuable tools your organisation will have it disposal, therefore allocate time in your dairy to hold a team meeting and complete a need assessment.

Getting the correct system and a professional integration into a business can be a good investment. As the unexpected start-up risks, negative consequences, and administrative impact can be disastrous and bring a business to a halt. Proper implementation and usage of CRM system is critical for both small and large businesses.