CRM implementation goals: do I need it?

As the number of clients grows, so does the amount of work. After all, it's one thing to process 10 new requests, and quite another to process 100. In order not to drown in the operating system and the number of new tasks, changes are needed. When familiar Word and Excel, which saved yesterday, no longer work, executives pay attention to the CRM. We tell why companies implement the system and when it is really necessary. Also, don`t forget that you can always turn to flexible crm for moving companies.

CRM what it is

If we decipher the abbreviation CRM, we get Customer Relationship Management, which translates as Customer Relationship Management. The fact that it would be good not just to sell people the goods, but to do it competently, under control and without unnecessary costs, thought long ago. But only in 1993 came the first more or less modern computer CRM-system - Siebel Sales Information System, which helped automate accounting in sales.

Now the choice of CRM-software is huge: there are desktop systems, and cloud, and universal, and industry. But the point is the same: they help automate the interaction with customers, store information about them, record the chronology of communication in order to further analyze this data and optimize the sales process.Screenshot of Siebel Sales Information System. The early systems looked a bit scary, but the goals and objectives of CRM with their help were met.

It sounds quite complicated, but in practice it looks much easier. Let's see what the purpose of CRM system for a real company with its problems and objectives.

What a businessman wants from CRM: goals and objectives

Every company owner has his own pains and his own expectations of CRM systems. As a rule, these are improved service and control over employees, as well as increased sales.

Goal #1. Improve control over managersResults of a study by the popular technology portal Tech News World.

Identify slackers, find mistakes, stop disrupting deadlines.

A frequent pain of managers who only pretend to get things done. It would seem that all is well in the reports written by employees, but profits are not. This is where CRM helps. In it you can see in a couple of clicks who is really working, and who is sitting in social networks.

As soon as an employee misses a task, CRM sends a notification to his supervisor. In addition, you can monitor online the full statistics of meetings held, cold calls and processed requests - and all of this on the visual charts and graphs.

All deals of each manager can be displayed on one board and it is possible to assess how many loads he has, at what stages his clients "get stuck", how many deals are lost. All sales are collected by stages of the funnel, so you can immediately see how things go for each employee.In S2 CRM you can see the tasks of each manager and their status.

Objective #2. Work through one window

Another important goal of implementing a CRM system is to make the work more technically comfortable. Usually one program makes calls, another sends letters, the third is responsible for accounting, the fourth summarizes sales reports, the fifth stores customer data, and then there are messengers, scripts in Word, and a lot of headaches.

CRM allows you to store customer data, there are also sales reports, scripts for managers, call records, letters, etc. This is possible not only through its own functions of CRM-systems, but also through integration with third-party services: IP-telephony, mail, SMS-mailing services.

Objective #3. To systematize information about customers

Competently collect and store information about the client and interaction with him.

Let's imagine that a manager quit, and a great offer appeared for the old customer base. But without that employee, how do you figure out who they were working with, what they were buying, what their needs are? Calling the fired manager is not an option.

But the CRM does not forget anything and can always share the necessary information. The program stores not only customer contacts, but the entire chronology of work with them: documents, letters, call records, purchase history, invoices and payments, as well as the tasks and notes of managers. You can segment the customer base in two clicks and find those who are interested in a new service or product.

Goal #4. Not to lose new clientsCustomer's card in CRM.

 

Automatically collect requests from different sources in one place.

Many companies have more than one or even two sources of requests. Customers can leave requests on the site, mail, call by phone, write to social networks. All of these requests need to be quickly collected, processed, and added to the database. Sometimes managers do not have time to keep track of all the sources and miss new customers.

CRM automatically collects new requests from different sources: mail, telephone, website, social networks and messengers. Not a single request from a client is lost due to human error.

Objective #5. Introduce uniform sales standards

Eliminate the chaos of working with clients and make it easier to train newcomers.

Situation one: you have recruited new employees, and you need to train everyone quickly and en masse. Trainings, evaluations, and scripts are good, but it takes time for the theory to bear fruit in practice.

Situation two: when analyzing losses, you found out that managers work "as they please": there is no single sales funnel, no single scripts, no single standard of service. How do you quickly introduce new principles of work?

In both cases, a CRM-system comes in handy, because it helps manage sales:

• Firstly, it is a single sales funnel: each client has to go through the same stages of the funnel, and at each moment the manager clearly understands what he has to do to make the client take the next step.
• Secondly, these are scripts and checklists that CRM displays directly in the deal card, as well as tasks that the software automatically set the manager as he works with the client: when it is time to make a call, when to send a commercial offer, when to remind about the payment, etc.

 Checklist in CRM with the mandatory questions that the manager must ask the client.

Goal #6. See visual analytics in the here and now

Manage based on numbers and always know how things are going.

Seeing sales reports once a month is often not enough to see results immediately and quickly correct errors. Excel spreadsheets are our everything, of course, but they are time-consuming, not visual and can contain errors.

Instead, CRM-system automatically analyzes all the statistical data online about customers, employees, applications and sales and displays them in a nice and clear form: how many deals were performed and how much money, how many calls made by managers and how many of them led to sales, from which advertising sources come the most "expensive" customers, etc. CRM visualizes the sales funnel and helps to see the bottlenecks and mistakes of salespeople.

Goal #7. Free up time for important tasks

Focus on important tasks and earn more.

Managers spend about three hours a day on routine tasks: writing a commercial proposal and sending it to the client, manually entering details into the contract template and coordinating with lawyers, etc. But the main duty of a manager is to communicate with customers and sales.

CRM helps automate routine tasks. It itself can:

• set managers tasks for new requests and control deadlines;
• prepare commercial offers, invoices, and certificates by pulling in a template the details from the client card;
• send SMS-notifications and emails to customers.

The manager has more time to meet with clients, and this increases the company's profits.

What CRM can't do

Let's discover an amazing secret: CRM can't do... anything. At least not without you. CRM-system will not make decisions for you, it has no magic buttons "to do well" and "sell a lot. It's like a smart fridge - it won't make money for you and buy products with it. And if you don't look in it, the food will go bad. 

And so the CRM can capture a client's application from the site, assign a manager, set him the task of contacting the client. But if the manager doesn't do his job well, it won't work.

The goal of CRM is to help you make your customers more loyal, your employees more efficient, and your profits bigger. But all this is only possible if you choose a good program and work with it competently.