You think it's time for you to implement CRM, and your company is not ready
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) - speaking literally, it is a system that allows you to manage customer relations (but in fact, a customer can mean both a sales channel and a channel to promote products and services of a company). In a broad sense, this is a certain methodology, a tool that allows you to properly build the company's relationship with the outside world, leading to the desired business results. When viewed from the software point of view, this is an information system that provides storage and management of information, management of the company's relationship with the outside world.
If it is easier to formulate, then with the help of CRM you can store manage and store information about leads, customer interaction history, orders, partners, sales channels, sources of transactions, concluded contracts, sales territories, accounts, and in general about everything that relates to company interaction. with the outside world. In fact, because of such a variety of customer requirements, business models, and there is a huge number of proposals in the market called the CRM system.
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But first of all, when you start a project for choosing a CRM system, you need to understand the processes of your own company and identify those areas of automation that the CRM system should automate.
Why your company may not be ready to implement a CRM system?
A successful automation project means that business processes have already been invented and / or created in a company and will be clothed in software.
If business processes are not established in your company, regulations are not spelled out, then automation can facilitate the work in some way, but rather it will be the appearance that the company has stepped forward in its development. As practice shows, an attempt to automate poorly described, unplanned and undocumented processes leads to sabotage on the ground. Sellers reluctantly drive in information, only so that the manager receives reports on the “sales funnel” at the end of the reporting period, and in their hands CRM becomes not a life-facilitating tool, but, on the contrary, complicates life.
If you try to automate chaos, then you will have just chaos and an automated system.
Automation is needed to track in a convenient format and with time saving data on the work of the sales department, marketing, customer service department, etc., and also to make management decisions .
First of all, it is necessary to realize and describe what processes should be rebuilt, how teams within the company should interact with each other, what reports the information should be reduced to in order to serve the progress in the company, and then start searching for a CRM solution provider.
You also need to understand that you can implement not only the classic version of CRM, which is more an accounting system - it stores a database of potential and real customers and a history of relationships with them, but also a more complex system that is closer in functionality to the BPM system ( we wrote in the article ). Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the possibilities of integrating the client relationship management process with other processes in the company. For example, you can not only track a request from a client, but also automatically bill him, create a contract using a template at a certain stage of the transaction, or control the payment schedule .
In addition, it is worth thinking not only about data accounting, but also about their automatic management. For example, at a certain level of sales to the client, the system automatically transfers the client to new working conditions (an additional discount is provided), or he is assigned a personal manager.
If a new employee has joined your client’s CEO, the system can automatically notify all employees working with documentation and, if necessary, create a task to obtain the necessary documents from the counterparty (for example, approval of a major transaction).
It is also necessary to decide how and where you will place the acquired system. Least:
- You can buy a solution based on the SaaS model (this is usually called a “cloud solution” and mislead potential customers: the cloud is not only what is sold on the SaaS model),
- You can buy a solution for placement on IaaS platforms (for example, in Azure Market Place). And this technologically will also be a cloud solution, in which the infrastructure you give to the provider, and the administration of the application is yours or you can transfer this function to your partner.
- Or you can deploy a private cloud, and put the application there. It will also be a cloud solution - in this case you will have to administer both the infrastructure and the application itself.
“Cloudiness” is characterized by the way the application is hosted and the technology that lies beneath this, and not by the fact that a solution is available from the Internet or not, or you can go there via a web browser, or it is sold using a subscription model.
When choosing an application, you first need to pay attention to how the provider offers a solution (the more the choice, the less potential risks / business sensitive data), whether there is a possibility of migration between the SaaS model and placing the application in a public cloud.
When you need to implement a CRM system
If you can not cope with the data. You are losing deals or you cannot find information on clients or determine the most effective channels of attraction.
Spreadsheets, sticker sheets with notes, notepads, and e-mail will perfectly help you at the stage of an emerging business, but only a flexible automation system can put everything together into a reliable information space that is convenient to use.
When you don’t spend time efficiently on entering the same data into different systems. It will be correct if the data is entered into one system, and then transferred to other systems via the corporate integration bus. When planning the implementation of CRM, it is necessary to clearly distinguish systems that are systems with master data, and to organize integration.
You do not understand how effectively sales managers and your sales team as a whole work. It is important to be able at any minute to obtain data on the team’s performance (process status, sales funnel), regardless of whether the staff is in the office or not.
Employees do not have remote access to customer information. On the road, on a business trip, or from home, you need to have access to any information you need to work.
Employees spend a lot of time organizing e-mail newsletters. The CRM system allows you to segment customers according to various parameters, create intelligent sales territories and organize distribution according to certain rules, which significantly reduces the routine.
Your customer service department does not meet expectations. Deserving customer trust is difficult enough, and if the customer service department is not at the proper level, you will not be able to keep them and increase the customer's life cycle.
Your marketing and sales teams are not working together. These two teams often blame each other, but it is important that they work in tandem to build a business effectively. Management must know how much it costs to attract each client, which transaction it pays for, and which channels are most effective. This data can only be obtained by simultaneous automation of marketing and sales processes.
Your employees spend a lot of time writing reports. Automation allows you to quickly upload reports on a given algorithm and a configured schedule.
The company significantly increases the staff. Managing processes becomes more difficult, the transparency of activities is reduced. Scaling up is easier when the management model is “compact,” simple, and scalable.
BE FLEXBBY!
If it is easier to formulate, then with the help of CRM you can store manage and store information about leads, customer interaction history, orders, partners, sales channels, sources of transactions, concluded contracts, sales territories, accounts, and in general about everything that relates to company interaction. with the outside world. In fact, because of such a variety of customer requirements, business models, and there is a huge number of proposals in the market called the CRM system.
')
But first of all, when you start a project for choosing a CRM system, you need to understand the processes of your own company and identify those areas of automation that the CRM system should automate.
Why your company may not be ready to implement a CRM system?
A successful automation project means that business processes have already been invented and / or created in a company and will be clothed in software.
If business processes are not established in your company, regulations are not spelled out, then automation can facilitate the work in some way, but rather it will be the appearance that the company has stepped forward in its development. As practice shows, an attempt to automate poorly described, unplanned and undocumented processes leads to sabotage on the ground. Sellers reluctantly drive in information, only so that the manager receives reports on the “sales funnel” at the end of the reporting period, and in their hands CRM becomes not a life-facilitating tool, but, on the contrary, complicates life.
If you try to automate chaos, then you will have just chaos and an automated system.
Automation is needed to track in a convenient format and with time saving data on the work of the sales department, marketing, customer service department, etc., and also to make management decisions .
First of all, it is necessary to realize and describe what processes should be rebuilt, how teams within the company should interact with each other, what reports the information should be reduced to in order to serve the progress in the company, and then start searching for a CRM solution provider.
You also need to understand that you can implement not only the classic version of CRM, which is more an accounting system - it stores a database of potential and real customers and a history of relationships with them, but also a more complex system that is closer in functionality to the BPM system ( we wrote in the article ). Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the possibilities of integrating the client relationship management process with other processes in the company. For example, you can not only track a request from a client, but also automatically bill him, create a contract using a template at a certain stage of the transaction, or control the payment schedule .
In addition, it is worth thinking not only about data accounting, but also about their automatic management. For example, at a certain level of sales to the client, the system automatically transfers the client to new working conditions (an additional discount is provided), or he is assigned a personal manager.
If a new employee has joined your client’s CEO, the system can automatically notify all employees working with documentation and, if necessary, create a task to obtain the necessary documents from the counterparty (for example, approval of a major transaction).
It is also necessary to decide how and where you will place the acquired system. Least:
- You can buy a solution based on the SaaS model (this is usually called a “cloud solution” and mislead potential customers: the cloud is not only what is sold on the SaaS model),
- You can buy a solution for placement on IaaS platforms (for example, in Azure Market Place). And this technologically will also be a cloud solution, in which the infrastructure you give to the provider, and the administration of the application is yours or you can transfer this function to your partner.
- Or you can deploy a private cloud, and put the application there. It will also be a cloud solution - in this case you will have to administer both the infrastructure and the application itself.
“Cloudiness” is characterized by the way the application is hosted and the technology that lies beneath this, and not by the fact that a solution is available from the Internet or not, or you can go there via a web browser, or it is sold using a subscription model.
When choosing an application, you first need to pay attention to how the provider offers a solution (the more the choice, the less potential risks / business sensitive data), whether there is a possibility of migration between the SaaS model and placing the application in a public cloud.
When you need to implement a CRM system
If you can not cope with the data. You are losing deals or you cannot find information on clients or determine the most effective channels of attraction.
Spreadsheets, sticker sheets with notes, notepads, and e-mail will perfectly help you at the stage of an emerging business, but only a flexible automation system can put everything together into a reliable information space that is convenient to use.
When you don’t spend time efficiently on entering the same data into different systems. It will be correct if the data is entered into one system, and then transferred to other systems via the corporate integration bus. When planning the implementation of CRM, it is necessary to clearly distinguish systems that are systems with master data, and to organize integration.
You do not understand how effectively sales managers and your sales team as a whole work. It is important to be able at any minute to obtain data on the team’s performance (process status, sales funnel), regardless of whether the staff is in the office or not.
Employees do not have remote access to customer information. On the road, on a business trip, or from home, you need to have access to any information you need to work.
Employees spend a lot of time organizing e-mail newsletters. The CRM system allows you to segment customers according to various parameters, create intelligent sales territories and organize distribution according to certain rules, which significantly reduces the routine.
Your customer service department does not meet expectations. Deserving customer trust is difficult enough, and if the customer service department is not at the proper level, you will not be able to keep them and increase the customer's life cycle.
Your marketing and sales teams are not working together. These two teams often blame each other, but it is important that they work in tandem to build a business effectively. Management must know how much it costs to attract each client, which transaction it pays for, and which channels are most effective. This data can only be obtained by simultaneous automation of marketing and sales processes.
Your employees spend a lot of time writing reports. Automation allows you to quickly upload reports on a given algorithm and a configured schedule.
The company significantly increases the staff. Managing processes becomes more difficult, the transparency of activities is reduced. Scaling up is easier when the management model is “compact,” simple, and scalable.
BE FLEXBBY!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337134/
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