Should I deploy a CRM system

The itch to implement a CRM system, first on a small scale and then build on it is strong with many managements. The reason being the myriad purported benefits of CRM and the easy availability of hosted solutions, some open source options are free of cost. However, before deciding upon which CRM solution to purchase, one needs to answer the question whether a company actually needs a CRM solution in place.

One way of finding out is to calculating the ROI over a given period of time; the other is to assess current practices in order to find out if they are providing sufficient information on customer needs and preferences and if the business has mechanisms in place for taking advantage of that information. For a customer-oriented business to succeed, it is important that the sales and operations departments have access to the most current customer data so that short term trends can be spotted and decisions taken accordingly.

Customer opinions should be worked upon and the marketing department should have data that allows them to cover different customer segments through targeted marketing. Employee remunerations and customer satisfaction should be tied together. If a company is failing to do the above mentioned things in a consistent manner then perhaps it does need to implement a CRM system. The key to success with a CRM implementation is to have a customer-centric philosophy without which all the information provided by a CRM implementation may come to naught if the desire to serve the customer is not present in the company.

An investment in CRM can help companies achieve significant cost savings. The savings occur from improvements in internal processes, order handling getting automated results in reduced sales cycle time, transactions gets executed faster and customer queries can be replied to quickly. Information made available from the CRM database is an invaluable asset for the marketing department that can carry out targeted marketing which is not only more effective but also cheaper with a low expense to revenue ratio.

The data in a CRM system when used in conjunction with back end systems that manage stocks can help salespeople to cross-sell and up-sell to customers, thereby increasing revenue. Customers who are regular spenders can gradually be moved up the profit chain by gaining an understanding of their likes and dislikes. CRM also enables marketing departments to respond more efficiently to the information thrown up by their targeted marketing campaigns. An important aspect of CRM is that it helps in retaining customers; this is a big money saver over the years because it is much easier to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one. For companies that are faced with the problem of employee turnover, CRM can be of great help.

Often, it is easier for contact centers to add a CRM system that helps improve employee performance rather than go for a wholesale systems change. A CRM solution that integrates with the already present multi-vendor back-end systems helps to save costs and enables a company to fully realize the ROI from existing investments. The prime function of CRM is to enable a company to take better care of its customers and in the process it improves customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and increases the customer-orientation of the staff. Also, by deploying a CRM solution, a company can continue to serve its customers even if the customer-service staff has a high turnover.

This is an important benefit of CRM that helps to make a company more systems-dependent rather than people dependent. It is not very easy to justify a CRM deployment purely in terms of ROI; the focus should be on improving the customer’s experience with the company as this will ultimately result in increased revenue. A company needs to assess its readiness for CRM before deploying it, it needs to set down strategic and tactical achievements to be accomplished by CRM, there should be a consensus on the way forward between the senior management, and key measurable metrics should be defined for tracking the performance of the CRM system.