Partner Article

What is CRM? And What Can a CRM System Do For Me?

These are two completely different questions. I have made the assumption that anyone reading this will be familiar with the overall concept of CRM, or could at least hazard a guess at what it entails by its very name, Customer Relationship Management. The subject is well documented, however it essentially pertains to the process of understanding and interacting with customer(s) throughout the customer lifecycle with the aim of proactively maintaining and increasing income and profit wherever possible.

I apologise to anyone who is actually researching the concept of CRM but this post focuses more on the question: ‘What can a CRM System do for an organisation?’ rather than answering the question ‘What is CRM?’ (If you are researching the concept of CRM – wait until you reach ‘Post-Modern Marketing’, ‘Tribal Marketing’ and ‘Marketing Automation’ – you’re in for a treat!)

My reason for writing this blog is that CRM systems have evolved far beyond their initial purpose and CRM is now just one part of the functionality offered by these solutions. In fact, approximately half of the CRM systems I have sold have not been utilised to address a core CRM Process. Instead they have been used for example to automate internal processes, manage memberships to organisations and provide user support for volunteers to charities.

With this in mind, the term CRM can often be off putting to a business or organisation who could really benefit from a CRM system but perhaps not for a customer focused purpose.

When speaking with someone I always try to discuss their overall processes and try to establish if there is an area which could be automated or streamlined at all to prevent duplication of work, human error or simply wasted resources.

There are 4 main areas we normally address with a CRM System, most of our customers use a combination of these elements throughout their organisation

1. Contact Management

Note this is not customer management. This is quite simply the ability to centralise all contacts your business or organisation deals with. Standardise the information gathered about them and ensure that communications can be managed effectively by a team or individual perspective.

If implemented properly it can empower you to easily segment your database of contacts based on any criteria you see fit and provide tailored communications specific to certain groups of people. This can be sales prospects, members, existing customers or anyone at all affiliated with your organisation.

All of the systems we sell provide this functionality with varying levels of automation. ACT!, Sage CRM, NetSuite CRM+ and SalesLogix.

2. Enquiry/Opportunity Management

Due to the aforementioned preconceptions of CRM Systems this is often classed as sales pipeline management. It does provide extremely useful off-the-shelf functionality for traditional pipeline management.

However this is also a great tool to allow a business/organisation to track anything which goes through several stages of a process. E.g. a membership based organisation can track:

1. Application Issued.

2. Application Received.

3. Submitted for Board Approval.

4. Approved.

5. Membership Issued.

This enables easy reporting and forecasting on number of items, enquiries or opportunities at any stage of your specific process.

This functionality is again available within any of the systems we offer with varying levels of configuration and automation. ACT!, Sage CRM, NetSuite CRM+ and SalesLogix.

3. Case & Issue Management

This is a particularly strong area of CRM systems which can be applied to pretty much any organisation. As with the above opportunity management this functionality can be tailored to suit various processes for different businesses.

At Eureka Solutions we use this area of the system as it was intended – for our customer support. Customers can log calls for issues with their software and our support team then work through a predefined workflow to resolve the issue and close the call.

This functionality however has been customised on a number of our client sites to include: job management for field based staff; product returns management for wholesale companies; testing procedures for paternity/DNA tests (each case is created as a ticket and progressed through a specific workflow for each stage of the process.)

As above, this area of the system can be tailored to suit anyone who has a set process involving a few different entities which need to be managed and reported on.

This functionality is available only within Sage CRM, NetSuite CRM+ or SalesLogix.

4. Marketing/Communication

Once your database has been setup to capture the information you require about customers, prospects, clients, users, contacts, members…(insert relevant term here) – the system can be used as a platform to communicate tailored messages to specific groups of contacts with great ease.

Easily create mail merges from your system using Microsoft Word or Outlook, or even use an e-marketing tool such as Swiftpage to create attractive emails and track the response rate through the one system.

From a CRM perspective this functionality was introduced to send promotional sales information to prospects and customers however it can easily be tailored to send newsletters and updates to anyone involved with your organisation rather than simply working as a sales tool.

Available through all offerings: ACT!, Sage CRM, NetSuite CRM+.

The above are just a few of the main features available as standard within CRM systems. As you may have gathered – I could go on (and on) about different applications and how we have helped businesses improve their processes.

I guess the main message should be, rather than asking what a CRM System can do for you, ask, what processes in my organisation would I change and what would I need to do that – I’ll bet a CRM system is a good starting point.

Stephen Murray is an account manager at Eureka Solutions.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Blueprint Media .