Why Invest In A CRM?
27 Oct 2015
Is investing in a CRM worth it?
There are many companies who have never invested in a CRM system, with the decision makers wanting to know if the investment, both in time and money, is really worth it?
For me, the answer to that question is a no-brainer (but then I may be a little biased).
There are so many reasons why this investment should be made and why a CRM system is most definitely worth every penny.
There always are ‘pain points’ with potential customers so I’d like to outline just a few of these and how we have been able to alleviate these concerns. Then you can decide for yourself if CRM is worth it.
Is your customer data stored in multiple places and in many formats?
When your customer data is disorganised and scattered all over the place, it often results in costly inefficiencies and missed revenue opportunities.
A CRM system collates all customer information and makes it accessible to all staff within your business. Of course, this is if you wish them to have access to it. With OpenCRM’s permission levels, you have the tools to choose which members of your team see which data.
This means that no one spends extra time searching for information or wastes your customers’ time asking questions they already have an answer to, but that has been lost.
Does your management team have minimal visibility of sales pipeline figures and information?
Trying to gain this information from your sales team members can be like pulling teeth. It usually consists of sales managers trawling through various spreadsheets trying to compile the information into something a little more coherent. It’s never quite the information you need or, if it is, it isn’t presented in a useful or meaningful way.
With a CRM, you can centralise your sales pipeline and, by creating reports and views, check on the progress of sales at any stage in the process. It also allows you to track the probability of hitting those all-important targets.
Is the customer service you deliver slower that you would like?
Without a structured way of dealing with customer complaints and queries, customers can be left in the dark waiting for a response to their questions.
Our CRM solution gives you the ability to easily keep track of every request and even change the way you respond. No matter how many queries are received, they are all collated in one single area (HelpDesk) as Tickets, responding to those with the highest priority with the most urgency. From here all customer issues can be attended to and resolved as part of a collaboration with multiple staff members or individually by a single support team member. Tickets can be isolated into specific queues and assigned to the relevant department within your company based on the ticket type.
Does your marketing department march to its own tune?
Your marketing team generate leads, but these are not passed on with any great urgency. The marketing department receive no feedback on campaigns to show how successful they have been, so are left in the dark on a regular basis.
Some CRMs, like OpenCRM, have built in marketing functions and lead management options. All new leads can be fed into the CRM system manually, in bulk via CSV import or automatically from a web based enquiry form, they can then be reassigned to members of the sales team.
The progress of all leads can be recorded, monitored and reported on throughout the entire sales process allowing the marketing team a view of their most effective campaigns. Within OpenCRM the Campaigns module also allows the marketing team to view success benchmarks, such as the number of successful emails and click through rates on individual campaigns.
If you can answer yes to any of the above questions or would like further information on OpenCRM and how it can help evolve your business, just give me or any member of the OpenCRM Sales Team a call. We’ll listen to the pain points you’ve currently got and suggest ways OpenCRM can help alleviate these.
