CRM software is not only beneficial for large scale business but has also touched the small and medium businesses. It not only deepens the customer-organization relationship but also in various other business functions like sales, marketing, business policies, etc and leads to operational efficiency.
The journey of small and medium business (SMB) from its start to expansion and further ahead throws a lot of challenges which needs to be identified and conquered in time. The success of any business lies in its foundation. Growth is directly proportional to its foundation and fundamentals.
As the company grows, its priority should be to increase the revenue and at the same time cut down on input costs of the raw materials by negotiations or finding a cheaper supplier while maintaining the quality at the same time. Optimize the resources and man power so as to increase productivity. Research and innovation in business techniques and policies go a long way to keep the business relevant.
Attract and retain customers Customer Relationship Management or CRM software aids the SMBs in managing the customers along with the company’s other business functions. CRM thereby helps in making apt decisions for the company in times of complex situations necessary for its growth.
Advantages of customer relationship management system:
Common problems that CRM solves for SMBs:
- Organization-Consumer gap.
- Lack of measures to analyze sales team performance.
- Difficulty in forecasting revenue.
- Difficulty to get leads.
- Unorganized communication at different organizational levels.
- Difficult to pinpoint the flaws to a specific department.
- Difficulty in performance evaluation because of lack of accurate reports.
- Lack of internal coordination.
- No seamless connectivity between individual departments.
- Pending customer queries.
How CRM can be beneficial to small and medium business?
Let’s find out what how CRM can be advantageous especially to the SMBs in terms of growth and profitability.
1. Tracking the leads that has potential to convert:
The CRM highlights the likes, dislikes and feedbacks of the customers, so the Marketing and Advertising departments can easily identify which customer group can be targeted for a particular product for sale. Likewise, the customers can be filtered and prioritized before approaching anyone randomly wasting time and money. Different features of CRM like generating auto e-mails, meeting reminders, auto follow ups etc eradicates the human need to manually keep track of the customers. Nowadays social media marketing is taking a hike where the customer profiles are studied and accordingly targeted which enhances the accuracy of lead conversion.
2. Team co-ordination:
CRM software encourages team management by uniting them together by building interactions. Output of one team becomes the input for another and thereby organized flow of such information aids in growing of the organization ultimately. CRM ensures the data is stored systematically and not in a messy manner so that the data is provided in time before the customers run away. Even the business becomes transparent intra departments.
3. Customer-organization relationship:
One of the main reasons for installing CRM, is to bridge the gap between customer and the organization. CRM helps in managing the customers by behaving as a repository for customer data like his contact details, his feedbacks, the transaction history, the order status, the pending grievances, etc. CRM highlights the customer issues and thereby solving their grievances by just looking at the dashboard and sometimes even pro-actively which ensures retaining them for a long time.
By understanding the needs of the customer, the organization can cultivate a deep relationship with their customers. The customer is the bread and butter of any business, so by being onboard 24*7 to solve their grievances as early possible, serves as a blessing as they feel important part of your company. By interacting with the customers regularly, and identifying their likes and dislikes and feedbacks, you become pro-active and accordingly provide quick solution to their demands making them a permanent customer.
Customer service is an essential part of any successful company as it retains the customer.
4. Performance evaluation by performance reports:
CRM software provides reports which can be used to analyze the departmental performances to aid in identifying the flaws and take timely decisions. Moreover complex cross department reports can prove to be very helpful in carving the role of each department without any ambiguity. When decisions are taken timely, and the loopholes are filled in, the growth will double in no time.
5. Seamless business transaction:
When every transaction is cut down and written in detail, highlighting the status of each of the dealings, running the business becomes easier. The sales forecast team can accurately forecast the numbers based on the records from CRM. Which makes the jobs of production team easier and the sales team can simultaneously track the leads to match the forecast.
6. Satisfied customers lead to more customers:
CRM provides with sales forecast reports, using which sales teams work on their selling strategy. Sales representatives can see the status of sales at any given point against the forecast and take appropriate decisions if it varies significantly.
Consider the job of a sales representative without CRM.
The sales representative manually goes from corner to corner to find leads and notes the potential leads into an excel sheet with their details. He manually takes the follow up with each customer and asks for her feedback and again manually updates the sheet. Again, he filters the most potential out of the lot and sets up a meeting with the customer and so on. Imagine if this is to be done for thousands of customers every day as the company starts flourishing! It becomes next to impossible for going through this process and manually keep tracking them all. CRM can simplify this process by becoming a repository of data from various fields and unifying them all. It also automates a lot of functions as sending e-mails to customers and the follow ups. CRM reduces the waiting time to draw essential data, enabling on to take decisions in time.
7. Accurate sales forecasting:
CRM provides with sales forecast reports, using which sales teams work on their selling strategy. Sales representatives can see the status of sales at any given point against the forecast and take appropriate decisions if it varies significantly.
Consider the job of a sales representative without CRM.
The sales representative manually goes from corner to corner to find leads and notes the potential leads into an excel sheet with their details. He manually takes the follow up with each customer and asks for her feedback and again manually updates the sheet. Again, he filters the most potential out of the lot and sets up a meeting with the customer and so on. Imagine if this is to be done for thousands of customers every day as the company starts flourishing! It becomes next to impossible for going through this process and manually keep tracking them all. CRM can simplify this process by becoming a repository of data from various fields and unifying them all. It also automates a lot of functions as sending e-mails to customers and the follow ups. CRM reduces the waiting time to draw essential data, enabling on to take decisions in time.
8. Improves product quality:
With lots of data and feedback on board by the customers, the employees, the potential customers, the organization can find out the current product is lacking and focus all the attention on experimenting by research and creative designs so that it matches the taste of everyone.
9. Operation from anywhere anytime:
Cloud based CRM means where the CRM software and tools along with the data is deposited in a cloud (on a remote server) which can be retrieved and accessed at anytime from anywhere. It is a cost-efficient means of installing cloud CRM instead of on-premise CRM software.
Cloud CRM is particularly helpful for small and medium enterprises as it does not require investment in large amount of money. This eliminates the need for software maintenance issues backup updates which is associated with on premise CRM instalment.
Concluding Note:
CRM not only retains your customers but provides a great working environment for the employees too. The ability to organize and easily access customer information makes it easier for the staff to work on routine issues which drag them down. So, now they can focus on more imperative matters which actually would be beneficial for the company. As their performance provides results, they feel good in themselves and become loyal to the company if their efforts are appreciated. As the bond between the departments grows, they come together to solve an existing problem and not try to blame each other.
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