CRM applications have the potential to maximizing and optimizing nearly every aspect of your business. In short, CRM can drive bottom-line results while improving productivity and sales.

• But what happens when your CRM fails to produce the results everyone expects from CRM?
•  What went wrong?
•  Why isn’t your CRM living up to its potential?

CRM depends upon two factors to enable its success. If either factor is missing or not fully present, then CRM will not live up to your expectations. These two critical factors form the foundation of CRM.

 The first factor we will examine is infrastructure. Infrastructure is all of the computers, servers, and physical hardware that is used to connect your computers into a network. It doesn’t matter if the network is small or large, if the infrastructure doesn’t meet the requirements of the CRM then one of the required elements of your CRM foundation does not exist and your CRM will fail you. The requirements (and cost) of CRM varies greatly. It is important to involve an Information Technology (IT) person that you trust as well as understands your business and constraints. Any computer geek can recommend installing a multi-million dollar system, but a trusted consultant, employee, or partner that understands your business and infrastructure is essential to the successful outcome of your CRM.

Additionally the IT person can also assist to ensure your CRM implementation is configured correctly and aligned to your business needs, providing you with a clear roadmap of future CRM enhancements and infrastructure upgrades necessary to support your future growth.

The second factor essential to your success with CRM is buy-in. Buy-in is defined as the commitment of interested or affected people to a decision that agrees to give their support, often by having been involved in the decision making process. Making sure you involve everyone that will be part of your CRM team is essential, you will be depending upon them to use the system correctly and regularly. If your people are not committed to using your CRM, then your ability to us your CRM as a valuable business tool is hindered before you even begin. After all, they are on the front line every days and closest to your customers and understand why your customers make their purchases. However, ensuring your people understand your limitations and constraints when involving them in your CRM process, will help to ensure the process is accomplished in a timely and cost-effective manner. Needless to say, without buy-in from everyone involved your CRM will fail you.

There you have, the two most critical components to your CRM foundation. However, it is important to note that nothing remains static. After all, wasn’t the purpose of implementing a CRM to grow and optimize your business? It is also just as important to periodically validate your infrastructure as well as refreshing the buy-in from the people using your CRM to ensure your people and CRM are in sync with your business.

When the foundation of your CRM is solid, your CRM grows with your business.

TRY NOW

 What is CRM again?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a delicate balance between mindset, technology and processes. Well, by mindset, I mean taking the first step in realizing that you would not exist without your customers (check out the quote by Gandhi at the end of this article). Secondly, how you employ technology to ensure that your customers are customers for life!

With just the right touch of mindset and technology coupled with common sense processes, you will be on your way to acquiring new customers faster and retaining existing ones for life! So, why is CRM so important? Quite simple – it’s Lights-On for your Business™! CRM will allow you to better track your customers, preferences, history, sales value and other value that will allow you to cater to them by ensuring that every communication between your business and them is done at the optimum level. The net result is action on their part resulting in sales and great satisfaction all around! Sounds like a bunch of business mumbo-jumbo! Fine, let’s look at an example — you own a service business like a flower shop. Your business depends on recurring customers – not just a one-time sale. So, provide the customer with an option of joining a “customer rewards” program. You know what I am talking about. Track their name, their email address and a few basic preferences online and you and your customer are connected.

Let your CRM software do all the work of communicating with your customers whether it may be a monthly coupon, an event based discount (anniversary, birthday, holiday specials, etc.) or cool articles that will engage your customers to you instead of your competition. With CRM, your customers manage their communication preferences with your business. So, with CRM you do not need to have additional employees, no additional paperwork, no additional overhead and no, you don’t need to be a computer Whiz! With a little bit of effort on a weekly basis on the computer and you will be able to automatically communicate with hundreds of your customers in somewhat like the good old days – with a personal touch! CRM is no longer an option for small business – it is a must! So… got CRM? If not, get it today and keep your customers for life!

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Sundip R. Doshi, CEO, Surado CRM

Online Lights-On for your Business™

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A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so. — Mahatma Gandhi

CRM  DEFINED…

CRM is first and foremost a strategy and corporate philosophy that puts the customer at the center of business operations so as to increase profits by improving customer acquisition and retention.

It involves identifying high-value customers and automating processes so that sales, marketing, and service efforts will be more efficient and effective.

In its complete form, CRM provides a 360-degree view of the customer and integrates all necessary information about the customer at every touch point – be it traditional voice, Internet-based, or wireless.

A CRM software solution is the vehicle that enables the 360-degree view. The major integrated system components that make up a CRM system include account and contact management, sales automation, marketing automation, customer care (service and support), and integration with back-office applications.

Better Manage Your Business -CRM 1080

Have you ever been frustrated because you can’t find your agreements?       Or don’t know which of your employees last spoke to a client?    Or which one of your sales brochure is the latest version?         

Or why don’t your employees realize that “Bob” is your high valued customer that requires special attention?      

 If this sounds familiar, you are in dire need of CRM. When implemented successfully, a CRM initiative will transform your muddled, messy, mis-managed and disorganized business into a lean, mean, tech-savvy machine!         

Although there are many ways how CRM Software can help you better manage your business, I have limited our discussions to some of the popular ones below:         

1. No More Messy Desk – Track & Manage Information in One Place. Stop buying post-it notes for reminders. All your contact information and reminders will be available in your CRM System.         

2. No More Lost Documents, Contracts, Images, Music, etc. CRM Software will allow you to attach documents, images, etc. to each contact. So, to review a document, simply bring up the contact and look at the document attachments.         

3. Don’t Waste Time Looking for Past E-Mails. Because e-mails are synchronized automatically, your history folder will always be repository of past e-mails sent/received to a particular individual. No more having to search through tons of e-mail for a particular attachment.         

4. Leverage Individual Expertise through Knowledge Management. Every organization has a few individuals who know a lot about the business. CRM software allows you to track various information, documents, brochures, etc. in a knowledge management area. Because this is a searchable knowledge base, anyone in your business will be able to search and access policies, brochures, industry information, business documents, HR documents and more.         

5. Automate Business Processes to Set Action into Play. So, you want to make sure that when your sales reps complete an introductory call, they get a reminder to send a thank you e-mail. Or how about sending a “friendly reminder” to your contacts one day prior to your appointment to make sure that all parties show up for the meeting. Automated business rules, when done right will save you time, money and lots of frustration.          

6. Know Which Marketing Campaign is Bringing in Results. You spend hard earned dollars to advertise in the Yellow Pages, local Newspaper, Direct Mail, Internet, etc, but do you have a clue as to which campaign is really working? CRM will change all this. You will be able to focus your marketing dollars on campaigns that clearly provide the results you are looking for – sales!         

7. Improve, Automate and Be on Top of Sales. Standardize your sales process with automated reminders, to-do’s, follow-ups, best practices that you know work. Review and be on top of activity logs, top opportunities, forecasting, quota and much more. CRM’s sales force automation features will help your sales team excel to new heights.         

8. Track & Provide High Levels of Customer ServiceGood service is no longer memorable. Great service makes all the difference. With CRM, you will be able to track each and every customer service call and the steps taken to resolve them in a timely fashion. With Automation, Knowledge Base and standard processes, your customers will be rewarded with Great service which will result in return visits and referrals.           

9. Use Dashboards to gauge Key Performance Indicators. So, you have 5 minutes before you dash off. But how is your business doing? Meetings? Sales? Marketing? Customer Service? With CRM, you can create customized Dashboards that will give you a quick graphical overview of all the things that are important to you and your business. Dashboards can also be extended for all your employees so that they can better focus in their area of specialty.         

10. Consolidated all your various database silos into your CRM solution. Most small business have several different databases – all have name, address and telephone numbers of your customers, vendors, prospects, etc. Over time, frustration begins to set in as you realize that one database telephone number was updated and the rest were not. Before too long, people are calling the wrong number and accounting is sending invoices to the wrong addresses and you know the rest. The point here is that you can consolidate all disparate databases into your CRM software.       

Most people confuse CRM Software with a contact organizer – If you are one of them, don’t feel too bad. Because of the tremendous success of CRM software, most contact management or contact organizers advertise themselves as “CRM” in one form or another just because they may have part of what a complete CRM software delivers.   

There is a vast difference between Contact Organizer or Contact Manager Software and a CRM Software. Contact Managers are geared towards individuals with features limited to the needs of a single professional.   

 For small and growing businesses, Contact Organizers will not be able to handle the needs of a team – workgroup features, speed, security, storage, limited features for sales automation, workflow, marketing automation, customer services, integration to other products and the list goes on and on. Some Contact Managers are available for small groups of users. However, why go with Contact Manager Software when you can achieve so much more with CRM Software at a price you can afford.   

The key message here is, if you use Microsoft Outlook or other e-mail systems to do e-mail and track information about your contacts and schedules, that is NOT CRM. Yes, you are better off than not having any kind of an electronic system to track your customers but you are way behind in what you can do with CRM in place.   

A true CRM Software solution provides complete front office automation for Account and Contact Management, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Back-Office Integration.   

Contact Organizer Software versus CRM Software-CRM1080

Contact Organizers are great for Single Professionals   

With Limited Needs While   

CRM Software provides a Full-Featured   

Team Solution for Growing Companies   

CRM Horror Stories - CRM1080

There have been CRM failures for more than one reason. The better prepared you are, the less likely you will have to deal with it. Here are some questions and points that should be addressed prior to making the leap:  

1. What if you are unable to migrate your current system data to your CRM system?  

2. What if the solution does not solve your business problem? How will it impact your existing operations?  

3. Lack of ability to integrate seamlessly with 3rd party applications.  

4. Lack of ability to create custom screens, fields and automated business rules that are specific to the way you do business.  

5. Employee perception is not addressed and employees are unwilling to use system.  

6. Lack of service received to implement the solution successfully. Services include configuring the system the way you do business and receiving sufficient end-user and manager training to be self-sufficient and not completely rely on the vendor for every minor adjustment.  

7. Does your current computer system meet the minimum system requirements for yourCRM software?  

8. Can you afford for your CRM system to go down? If not, how will operations proceed?  

9. How easy is it to move to another vendor? Can you export your entire database? Can you upgrade your application to an enterprise level product without too much inconvenience and cost?  

10. System security – this may not be a concern when you are small but as you grow, it will come to play.  

Go evaluate and ask !

Today more than ever, companies are seeking to ensure that they will realize a valuable return on investment from their CRM system. To best achieve this, companies must first have a clear understanding of what information they want to gather and how the CRM system will be used to capture and analyze data to make further improvements in customer service.  

 Most companies understand at some level that CRM is not really about “managing” customers but rather about putting the customer at the center of the organization. And in providing additional value to customers, customer loyalty increases and business benefits accrue in many tangible ways, from increased sales to customer longevity. 

Choosing a Business Solution - CRM1080

Companies should seek a comprehensive overview of how CRM can benefit the corporation, including how it interrelates with other initiatives. The planning and installation processes of a CRM system are of critical importance. All customer touch points and their supporting business processes should be incorporated into the system. This involves not only linking with the call center but also integrating with other applications, such as e-business and back office applications including financials, production, shipping, logistics, and corporate databases. Integrating with other applications provides the opportunity to leverage existing technology investments while promoting a true 360-degree view of customer interactions across the entire organization. 

In selecting a solution, serious consideration should be given to how quickly, easily, and seamlessly integration with other applications can be achieved. Some CRM systems provide an easy means of integrating third-party back-office applications through an integration module. By using the module, integration time can be reduced by as much as 80 percent. 

A module also allows system administrators to not only view information from third-party or custom applications, but also to create and modify records from these databases directly into the CRM system. A few simple steps are required – links are created by logging on to a database, choosing the unique fields (such as account numbers) that will be the same in both systems, and selecting the fields that users will see in custom folder tabs. Data can then be viewed and manipulated in real time, avoiding the need for cumbersome import and export routines or other costly and time consuming custom solutions. 

By enabling the seamless linkage between applications and the CRM system, employees can click a folder tab to access information from integrated back-office applications such as order management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, financials, logistics, or other verticals. In addition, automated data set updates to back-office applications greatly reduce unnecessary duplicate data entry and facilitate data consistency with disparate applications throughout the enterprise. 

The tight integration and real-time access to information has many benefits, from reducing data redundancy, user account management, and end-user training on multiple applications to increasing data integrity and improving efficiency, including decreased usage licensing costs for integrated applications. 

Whether your customer service and support representatives are courteous, responsive, and accurate will influence not only your customers’ decision of whether to buy from you in the future but also the feedback and recommendations they provide to their friends and business associates. Every customer interaction is important and impacts customer attitudes toward your company and resulting buying decisions, so it is important to enable your employees to be knowledge-workers, providing the best customer service possible. 

In order to be embraced by employees, the CRM system must make operational sense, fitting in with sales and customer care staff tasks and processes rather than requiring meaningless external predetermined business processes. However, CRM initiatives provide an excellent opportunity to step back and evaluate business goals, objectives, and the business processes that support them and to implement important changes to better meet your company’s changing needs. 

Selecting a CRM vendor requires a clear vision and key metrics of what needs to be accomplished through a CRM initiative. Although not the only approach, an integrated CRM suite provided by one vendor will definitely help reduce the chaos of implementing multiple vendors with disparate solutions. Regardless of which approach is taken, an implementation comprised of well-integrated CRM components will best achieve the promises of a customer relationship management initiative. 

Welcome to another week of Fun and Excitement!

What Will Make My CRM Deployment A Success? - CRM1080

As the economy continues to limp by, you realize your business requires efficiencies.  You need to better compete and you want to do more with less.  So, you do some research, verify with business associates and come to the conclusion that you need a new system to help streamline and automate operations.   Yes, you have been introduced to Customer Relationship Management — a combination of strategy and software solutions may take your business to the next level.   Caution!  It is a serious move that requires a serious investment — both time and money.

You are now ready to start reviewing the many different vendors and options relating to your deployment.   It is somewhat overwhelming but with the help of the internet and perhaps a consultant, you start your review.  Once you have narrowed it down to the last 3 vendors, it is time to make a decision.   Right before you do this, perhaps asking some Common Sense Questions may be prudent:

• Does the Solution Deliver Business Objectives
  Not just general business objectives but objectives unique to your organization or your small business.  The specific way your Sales team works.   The unique marketing methodologies you utilize.  The outsourced customer service company that you use.   Or perhaps, something as simple as the various internet devices utilized by your business to get the job done.
   
• What is the Programs Long Term Value
  Is this a permanent Hosted (SaaS) model where you subscribe to the service or is the solution an on-premise solution where you require the right IT staff to deploy and maintain the system.   Or better still,  is there flexibility — can you move between Hosted or On-Premise?   As your business requirements change, does the solution grow with you or will you be going to this entire process again in 3 years?   So, what is the ROI again?
   
• Cost
  Many a time, you look at the cost of the software license (if it is an on-premise solution) or monthly subscription cost (if it is an online hosted solution) and you make your decision based on that.  Wait a minute!  There is more.   What about the cost of training your staff, on-going maintenance and additional services not part of the “package” ? 
   
• Staffing Requirements
  Time and time again a deployment has gone south just because the appropriate level of staffing to deploy a CRM initiative successfully was completely neglected.   The sooner you realize that this is NOT just like installing a new version of MS WORD, the better!   The CRM system will force everyone in your organization to work a certain way!  So, not Configuring it correctly can be disastrous!  It is absolutely critical that the CRM solution works the way you do business and not the other way!   This requires appropriate levels of staffing to review, coordinate and get trainned.   It will take time of your managers, your executives, your line staff, your…  you get the message — it touches everyone in your organization.  So, all staff must be trained on it.  Make sure that you have allocated and accounted for the time.
   
• Risk
  Last but certainly not least — the Risk.  What if you do not meet the timeline for deployment? What if the CRM initiative is a Failure?  Yes, what if it is?  How will it impact your business.   Answering these two questions will avoid any undesirable consequences to the health of your business should you have to face them.   Having said this, CRM industry has come a long way since the late 1990 and your chances of success is almost a guarantee — of-course, you must follow best practices.

In addition to the above questions, there are best practices that can help ensure a successful CRM deployment.  I encourage you to visit our Resource Links.    But as always, feel free to ask a question and we will utilize our vast experience to put you on the path to success.

Have a great business week!
The CEO

Why CRM, Why Now? CRM1080

What almost seemed like a fad in the mid 90s is now a way of life… or is it?   If you read some of the recent pundit analysis on CRM usage, you will find that most companies have not completely adopted CRM — and those that have, not all of them have done it successfully (which is a whole different subject for another time).   

So, for those on the sidelines, why CRM and Why Now?  Here is the simple answer:   

Why CRM?  CRM technology, when combined with Strategic Execution has proven to increase Sales/Revenue, Reduce Customer Service Costs, Increase Efficiencies, Improve Customer Loyalty, Increase Retention, Standardize processes and the list goes on and on…   

Why Now? Now… this is an interesting question…   My first thought was, if you have been educated about the value of CRM, then why not now?   It’s like saying,  “I am going to wait because I don’t need all that CRM offers.” So, that in itself should be enough.  But just incase you are not convinced, let’s add a few more reasons:   

• The Current State:  Heck why not?  Everyone is talking about how the economy and its negative impact on their business.  So, why would you not invest in changing the state of your business for the better? Small price to pay and perhaps…. just perhaps the key to keep your business alive!
   
• Affordability:  The common excuse: I simply can’t afford it.  Well my friend, you can.  CRM is no longer for the big boys – the playing field is now level — you too can utilize automation to provide the best value for your customers.  Credible CRM software are available for as low as $40 per user per month.   Like the old saying goes — you pay for what you get.  So remember not to be sucked into Free solutions or Fire-sales!
   
• Reach:  I remember doing business with companies within 50 miles of my business.   With the Internet, the entire world is within 50 miles of my business.  The proof is in the pudding — just sold to a company in Estonia, Saudi Arabia, Ireland and in talks with a company in Madagascar.   Wow!  Madagascar — never thought that the movie I so much enjoy watching with my kids would actually be a place that could use my products and services!  
   
• Easy Deployment: I want to do it but I don’t have the technical know-how.   Okay, we have heard that one too…   So, do you use Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo Mail?  In many ways, you can start using CRM — like opening up a new Gmail account.   (I am just talking about opening the account — don’t forget the strategy side of things).   With Online CRM, securely hosted somewhere else in the Internet Cloud, you can start using CRM today without hiring a full-time IT person or consultant.  Just find the solution that is right for you (another topic for another day), and get cranking!  Hey the best part about online CRM is that you won’t have to worry about Software purchase, installation, maintenance, upgrades and backups because all reputable online vendors include these features as part of the monthly cost.  

As Winston Churchill put it so well, If you mean to profit, learn to please.   Learning to please in today’s world requires the right tools.   So, what are you waiting for? Search for “Small Business CRM” or “Online CRM” or “CRM Software” and start looking at the many solutions available to help take your business to the next level.     

Regards,
The CEO