Your CRM should be a long-term investment in your business, and for this reason settling on a platform that can grow with you and adapt to your changing needs is of vital importance. I use the term 'platform' in conjunction with CRM as there is a distinct difference between CRM software available on the market today. Some CRM software performs basic CRM-type duties and have basic configurability options but fall short of what is considered as a true 'platform.'
A platform will allow you to truly be flexible, to build on-top of what is already available and extend your solution to meet your business needs. Platforms like SugarCRM fit the bill of a 'platform.' They all have extensive configuration studios, strong reporting engines, and are designed to be agile and grow with you.
Planning is important when implementing any new system. However, it's also important to keep your planning relatively simple to start off with as there is sometimes the tendency to 'over-plan' and over complicate your rollout. Rather, map out the big picture at a high level but plan in phases, keep it simple and start small.
The benefit of starting small and gradually introducing new CRM processes into your business is that it's a much more effective way of ensuring your staff are on-boarded well and avoid information overload. Throughout the process it's also a great idea to keep staff involved and informed on the key areas you're focusing on and how this will benefit them.
This approach is a more 'agile' approach and means you can iterate quicker, and gain the quick wins you need, before expanding your use cases.
One of the very many great benefits of a good CRM system is the ability to automate repetitive processes and save time. Many good CRMs will include Business Process Automation engines/modules and logic layers which allow you to automate your processes. Now although CRM is all about 'Customer Relationship Management,' the automation aspect means your team will spend less time on admin work, and spend more time with customers, where relationships, listening and consulting is time much better spent. Examples of processes you might want to automate could include document generation (proposals, contracts, NDA's, Quotes), billing, reminder notifications, email marketing automation, and more.
Integrating your customer-centric business applications is another area you may want to consider. Is there going to be any upside of integrating your ticketing system with your CRM? Can you replace your current ticketing system with an off-the-shelf app that already integrates with your CRM? These are just examples of questions you might also want to consider. There are certainly a lot of upsides to centralised customer information - shared information across all departments, a better ability to make more informed decisions, and much more.
There is a very famous saying that goes something like this: "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it" - Peter Drucker, renowned management thinker.
Any good CRM system will have a more than decent reporting module that will allow you to report on any data that you capture. By putting your reporting requirements at the forefront of your CRM journey, this will allow you to think about the inputs you'll need to consider and the best way to get this information. Do you need to understand how long it takes to win a deal? If so, it will be important to configure in a field that measures time from qualified to time to deal won so that you can report on this, and understand which of your staff are statistically more consistent. Do you need to know what the most common reason for losing a deal is? If so, perhaps it's worth defining a list of values that a sales person can select from, and start reporting on this.
Reporting is also a great way to build healthy internal competition. Why not set-up a dashboard with everyone's sales performance clearly highlighted?
Exploring new ideas and keeping an open-mind is important. It also doesn't need to be a constant process - a quarterly or half-yearly review of where you are at, what is working and what can be improved is generally a good start. It's the practice of continual improvement, making those small changes to both affect your internal efficiency, and the outward affect your customers will experience as a part of doing business with you. Can you turn around quotes quicker? Can you provide more relevant content to better engage your customers and add more value to their lives? Can your contact center solve service cases faster?
At the end of the day, CRM is about the journey - a journey of improvement, of better servicing your customers.
If you find value in this article, I'd ask that you share it with your colleagues. I also invite you to comment on your own CRM journey and the various things that have worked well in your business.
