At CRM Switch, being true to our brand, we mainly cover topics around switching from a legacy CRM system to a new one.
However, many companies have never implemented any CRM system. People at these companies wonder why their company should invest in CRM for the first time.
Here are five common organizational problems and a description of how CRM can solve these problems.
Scattered prospect and customer data
Within companies that don’t have a CRM system, prospect and customer information can be found on business cards, notepads, Post-its, emails, documents, and spreadsheets. And worst of all, essential data is often only stored in peoples’ brains.
CRM consolidates all this disparate information and makes it globally accessible within an organization (of course, data records can be secured so that people only have access to what they should see).
Management has limited visibility to sales pipeline information
Without a CRM system, pipeline data can be a weekly information extraction and compilation exercise. Salespeople must be repeatedly reminded to email a spreadsheet of potential deals and then an administrator manually consolidates the information for management.
With a CRM system, a company has a centralized, Web-based system where salespeople can maintain their pipeline of sales opportunities. Management can pull reports on-demand or reports can be automatically emailed.
Will some salespeople still have to be reminded to update their deals? Of course.
Customer service response is too slow
If a company does not have a structured, shared system for fielding customer service issues and collaborating on issue resolution, client problems can languish.
Sometimes, an important customer issue can be lost sight of completely.
A CRM system can provide customers with multiple options for issue submission.
Requests from all channels are funneled into a single shared repository of Tickets or Cases. From there, issues can be resolved collaboratively.
Automatic Ticket assignments based on issue type and automatic escalations based on defined parameters are possible within CRM.
Marketing operates on an island
Marketing does its job of generating leads, but new leads are not distributed in a timely fashion.
The marketing department receives no metrics as to which marketing efforts have been the most effective, which means that marketers “fly blind” on an ongoing basis.
A CRM system integrates marketing functions into the sales department’s operations. New leads can be fed into a CRM system and automatically assigned to the right salesperson.
Since the progress of leads can be followed through the entire sales process, the marketing department can understand which campaigns are the most effective and better focus its future efforts.
Internal collaboration involves a lot of email
Internal communication and collaboration are accomplished in many organizations by copying many people on many emails.
Staff becomes overwhelmed with email, and people often overlook critical information since they don’t have time to process the relentless flow of information.
Specific CRM systems now incorporate collaboration features that can be a substitute for an over-reliance on email.
A CRM system can be a repository of quotation templates, customer email templates, and presentation templates.
There can be internal conversation threads that are similar to those found on social media sites, which is becoming a more natural way for a group of people to communicate electronically.
These are just a few of the reasons that companies invest in CRM.
