Clients tell us that when they initially deployed CRM, they were laser focused on a few key outcomes to achieve, maybe three tops. Although they vaguely remember that there were more ways to use their CRM, they hadn’t taken the time to re-evaluate the additional functionality because ‘if it’s not broke….’ But CRM has been with us for the best part of 25 years, and it’s come a long way from being just a tool to get more sales.
While clients tell us that their top three uses of CRM are still sales automation, lead generation, and customer service and support (in that order); they also tell us that there are eight less typical uses (see below), another six reporting uses (also below) and eight other program functions being enhanced by CRM.
Clients are using sales automation plug-ins to make the most of every lead and marketing automation plug-ins to run, develop and control their marketing campaigns; tracking their results and adjusting their processes as they go. Clients tell us that their customer service and support has evolved as well, improving their customer retention, loyalty and also increasing future sales with those customers.
Less typically, clients are asking for CRM to be configured as call centers, field service, help desks, human resource management, web self-service, knowledge management, live chat, and sales engagement, the eight less typical uses.
The additional reporting clients most often ask for are business analytics and reporting, forecasting, activity management, workflow automations and sales mapping as well as dashboards in order to see critical items at a glance.
Other program functions clients tell us that they need are to tie in their social media, e-commerce, and website. Clearly getting their pipeline data management right is about more than just integration capabilities, mobile access, geolocation technology and business intelligence.
Does your company really need all of this CRM functionality? Of course not, the point is to know what functionality is possible and how to integrate the functions your company needs into the system you already have, if possible. Why the system you have and how to evaluate the potential investment? Simple, really: most companies are already trying to get specific desired outcomes manually. They have a rough idea of what the man hours are to accomplish those outcomes and the results they are getting.
A rough ROI on getting those results is: man hours, times base hourly wage, plus 30% fringe, equals the cost of a specific manual result. So if a team member earning $25 an hour is producing a complex quarterly sales forecast manually, which takes 20 hours each quarter to prepare, the company is spending $2600 annually to get that information, every year; maybe more if that team member also works on the company’s budgeting and other forecasting or purchasing reports. Ideally, if you can buy or write a report/ program that will easily give you those results it’s a great investment because the company is incurring the cost just once, and not every quarter of every year going forward. Plus, the team member can be reassigned to other, more critical tasks that potentially earn even more money for the company… it’s a win-win. Computer programs are always better, faster, and overall cheaper at doing repetitive tasks. Humans on the other hand are better at quantifying and evaluating results, in spite of what you hear about AI… and yes, I’m a fan of AI; but it’s better at some things than others. If you’re a fan as well, watch for a future blog about AI and what our clients tell us has worked best for them.
Until next time, enjoy your CRM system, and never stop thinking about how to get ‘the best solution’ from the system you already have!
Need more info or have other questions? Check out our other blog posts or reach out to Rich Novia at rnovia@thebestsolution.com it would be my honor to assist!
