Streamline your Business Processes with CRM

22 Jun 2021

Being efficient is all about giving the task to the right person, at the right time, and ensuring they have the right tools to do it. A CRM system is both of those “right tools” and a way to identify the right person AND the right time.

We tend to refer to this kind of undertaking as “streamlining” your business processes. And our MD has just written an article all about why you’d want to do it, how it can help, and how a CRM system like Open CRM can support you while you do it.

This article can be found in the latest issue of Business Comment.

This article has also been published in the latest issues of East Anglia in Business and Business Direction.

When it comes to productivity, it is a well-known fact that the UK’s averages are below other G7 countries and well below where it should be. But there’s no reason your own business can’t buck that trend. Part of it will be about hiring the right people, but that’s not the end of it.

You also have to make sure that they are able to work efficiently and that your business processes are streamlined.

Having streamlined business process is all about ensuring that all those tasks your team carry out are assigned to the right person, to complete at the right time, with the right resources, and without any unnecessary steps to slow things down.

Talking about streamlining processes is much easier than actually doing it.

In reality, it takes close examination of each stage of each process to assess whether it is being done as efficiently as possible. And that’s where your CRM system comes into play.

Once you have identified a step in your processes that is causing a slow down or even an entire process that is just generally clunky, it’s time to find a way to streamline it.

This could involve automating certain steps using your CRM system or just documenting the completion of them better.

It’s probably easier to explain this with an example…

A Messy Sales Process

When new Leads land on your sales team’s desk, let’s assume they are distributed out equally among the team. That sales person sends out an email introducing themselves and plans to call the person within an hour or two to kick off discussions.

If you are carrying this whole process out manually, there are lots of places where it could fall down. The distribution could be uneven, leading some people to be overly busy while others are just twiddling their thumbs…neither being good for your business.

Then sending out the email brings with it the risk of someone sending out the wrong email or just missing out on sending it at all.

And finally, the call…making sure that the call gets made AND notes are recorded? Knowing sales people as I do (hint: I am one), that call will get made 90% of the time. And making sure that call and notes from the call are documented somewhere central? …I wouldn’t hold my breath.

With a CRM system, though, you can automate ever single step and go from a messy process to a streamlined and efficient one.

Streamlining this with a CRM

First off, instead of relying on one person to distribute new Leads or relying on the team as a whole to share, you’d be better off using Round Robin functionality. That way, the Leads are distributed equally, respecting people’s holidays. Now everyone has an equal chance of meeting their target and no one is bored or overly busy.

At the same time, you can automatically send out that initial introduction email without your team having to do anything at all. It’ll will send the right email every time and even send so that it looks as though it comes from whoever the assigned sales person is.

And finally, getting that call scheduled and documented? Again, use your CRM system to automatically schedule the call and set up your mandatory fields to ensure your sales people can’t save it without adding their notes. You could even add a series of custom fields (maybe tickboxes?) to outline your prospect’s requirements. That way you don’t have to rely on your sales team to write up detailed notes. They can just tick the things that apply.

Benefits of Streamlined Business Processes

This is just one example of how you can take a fairly nebulous way of doing things and turn it into a simple, three step process that achieves a set business goal.

By taking the time to examine every part of your business processes and working to streamline them, with a CRM system or something else, you can improve the general efficiency of your business as a whole.

That means your team have more time for the important bits of their job. And that in turn can only improve your profitability.