CRM Success

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  • Sales Automation: Close More Deals Faster With CRM

    Today’s business faces many challenges. Executives must ask themselves how they can ensure their firm’s advantage in a highly competitive global market. Amid rising costs, international competition and global economic turmoil, companies must innovate if they are to survive. They must sell more products, improve their services and reach out to more consumers than ever before. Ultimately, a company’s total sales depend on the quality of its products and services and how well it can market them. But in order to develop products and services that consumers want and advertise to them effectively, a company must first know who its customers are, what they want and what their future behaviour might look like. Enter CRM.

    CRM, or customer relationship management, is a powerful concept that can transform any organization from the ground-up. More than just powerful technology, CRM enhances an enterprise’s business strategy, organizational culture and branding. It’s an entire value chain that links a firm’s business intelligence with its sales and marketing strategy, thereby giving that firm a competitive advantage over its rivals. Today, firms can utilize one of the many available marketing CRM software suites to automate their entire sales and marketing strategies. Whether Microsoft, Oracle, Salesboom, Salesforce or others, firms can now use CRM to automate their sales, monitor marketing expenditure in real-time and use a variety of drip marketing strategies to reach new customers.

    Firms that integrate CRM into their business can automate their best sales practices, identify their weaknesses and develop new, more effective strategies for reaching out to their market. With CRM, firms have a system that not only centralizes consumer data, but automates the entire data collection process, thereby increasing efficiency and allowing marketing and sales teams to focus on what they’re good at: marketing and sales!

    Let’s be clear: most companies are well aware of what they do well and what they don’t do so well. With CRM, firms can automate these best practices. This not only ensures consistency, but also ensures that businesses are getting the most out of the tools that have already proven successful. Automating the entire sales strategy enables firms to measure results, identify weaknesses and restructure their marketing practices when needed.

    A firm that invests in CRM solutions is investing in the success of its entire sales and marketing team. By letting your team focus on what it does best—marketing and selling—employees will be better equipped to hit revenue targets. Giving them CRM and training them in its use allows them to effectively manage and automate the entire sales process. This means building stronger customer relationships, closing important deals and transforming leads into business opportunities, all while optimizing productivity, reducing down time and increasing face time with clients.

    CRM does more than automate sales. Automation is merely one feature and represents one of the many ways companies can optimize their sales. By improving planning and management, CRM is an enterprise-level solution that can enhance all operations, from data collection to business intelligence and up to marketing and sales. Let’s face it: a firm’s entire operation is linked to sales. Greater sales lead to more revenue and more revenue means potentially wider profit margins. With CRM, all of this is possible, not to mention the increased productivity that can reduce costs and contribute to that all important profit margin.

    Automating sales ensures that firms close more deals. When automation is part of an overall CRM strategy, any business can transform itself into a winner.

  • Business Intelligence to Marketing: The Power of CRM

    One of the most important questions an executive can ask is, how well do I know my customers? This question naturally leads to the next, how can I know MORE about my customers? If you approach these questions honestly, the answer is likely, not enough. If you don’t know enough about your customers, how can you effectively market to their needs?

    Marketing is a critical part of any successful business. Underlying any successful marketing strategy is (or should be) sound market intelligence—that is, knowing enough about your customers (and the market at large) to allow you to target their needs and interests. Unfortunately, many companies find themselves unable to truly optimize their business intelligence, thus weakening their marketing campaign and diminishing their overall sales.

    What if I told you there was a way your company could transform its entire business strategy, organizational culture and marketing plan? What if I told you there was a way for you to capture more (relevant) information about your customers and centralize that information in an easy-to-use format accessible across your entire business?

    CRM, or customer relationship management, can do all this and more. By combining what we already know about business with the power of IT, CRM can take your enterprise to the next level and ensure that your sales strategy is informed by the best marketing intelligence available anywhere. In this sense, CRM is more than just software—it reflects the next wave of business management and marketing, all while enhancing intra-company and external communications.

    With CRM, there are many ways you can improve your marketing strategy. Through Swiftpage, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Zoho, Salesboom or Salesforce, you can automate your entire sales and marketing efforts. Let’s face it: today’s marketing strategy needs more than just e-mail; it requires on-demand marketing tools, automation and flexibility. This will enable you to develop targeted marketing campaigns based on your customer’s information, execute this strategy through online campaigns and time-sensitive promotions and track your expenditures in real-time. With CRM, drip marketing has never been easier. Whether you’re sending updates to your customers or promoting a product, upcoming event or whitepaper, marketing CRM makes connecting with your market easier than ever, all while enabling you to track your contacts, leads and business opportunities.

    With marketing CRM, you’re only a click away from monitoring your sales records. Information is updated in real-time through an automated workflow process, which enables you to edit your marketing schedule whenever you need to. Best of all, CRM technology enables you to understand your company’s strengths and weaknesses and develop strategies for improving on your marketing shortfalls.

    In order to grow your business, you need to do more than attract customers—you need to keep them long after the first sale. To do so, you need to collect important information about them and analyze that information to predict their future behaviour. With CRM, analyzing your market has never been easier. CRM will enable you to identify your customers’ buying habits, interests and demographic information, which will allow you to predict their future buying habits. With this business intelligence in hand, you will be ready to develop a marketing strategy that aligns with the behaviour you predicted. Whether online, through television or print, you can effectively apply what you learned. CRM ensures that this entire process is coordinated, sophisticated and accessible on-demand.

    So the next time you ask yourself about how much you really know about your customers, remember that, without CRM, you will never know enough.

  • Fill the Revenue Gap: The CRM Project Plan

    CRM, or customer relationship management, is more than just software. It’s a business strategy, workflow process, and organizational pathway that gives your company all the tools it needs to succeed. CRM is the next wave of successful business management—a paradigm shift that combines what we already know about business with the power of technology, thereby enabling your business to communicate more effectively and develop the market intelligence it needs to not only attract customers, but keep them.

    CRM enables all this and more. By reducing critical information shortfalls about the tastes, preferences and buying habits of your clients, your company can avoid the revenue gap facing most companies today. The revenue gap is the difference in revenue your company could make if your sales team had access to optimal information about your customers. The greatest competitive advantage a business can have is knowledge about its customers—their preferences, buying habits and, ultimately, what they expect to get out of their transactions. While most companies understand this, they have not taken the necessary steps to implement a system that can optimize their collection of valuable customer information. Without this vital information, businesses lack the market intelligence necessary to compete in a global economy that is bombarding consumers with more choices than they know what to do with. This is where CRM can truly transform your business.

    With a sound CRM system in place, your company can enhance its productivity, efficiency and communications, all while retaining more valuable information about your market. This naturally improves your company’s decision-making process, reduces the sales cycle and, above all, enhances customer satisfaction. Let’s face it: running a successful business is all about the customer. By enhancing the customer experience, whether through faster services or products that better meet their needs, you ensure that your customer keeps coming back.

    While all of this may seem like a complex undertaking, all it takes is seven steps. That’s right. Your company is a mere seven steps away from unlocking all of the benefits that CRM has to offer. With this project plan in hand, you can implement a sound CRM strategy that can leapfrog you over your competitors and start filling that revenue gap almost right away.

    Once you choose your vendor, whether Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Netsuite or any other, implementation requires only seven steps. Work with your vendor each step of the way to ensure that the implementation is smooth and successful.

    1. Automate your business processes

    • We know that manual tasks are time-consuming, cumbersome and are prone to human error. By automating your businesses processes, you’re well on your way to enhancing productivity, improving data quality and reducing costs. There are several examples of automation. Some examples include inputting data from online forms, flagging sales opportunities, call scripting for telemarketing and workflow. The types of processes your business already uses will ultimately be what you decide to automate.

    2. Choose a location for your database

    • Depending on your vendor, you will likely have one of three locations for storing your data: on-premise, hosted or online.

    3. Identify security guidelines

    • Who will access the CRM database? Will users be allowed to export data? Are there sensitive data that need to be hidden? Is an authentication code required to access the database? These are some of the questions you will have to answer before implementing your CRM system.

    4. Integrate CRM with the rest of your system

    • CRM can be optimized only by linking it with other software packages currently in use, including e-mail systems, product databases, Sharepoint, ERP or other data sources.

    5. Work with your vendor to ensure that your IT infrastructure can support CRM integration

    • Naturally, a business cannot enjoy the benefits of CRM if its underlying IT infrastructure is out of date or cannot support the CRM application. Ensure that the CRM system you choose can be supported internally.

    6. Keep it simple

    • If you’re reading this, you likely haven’t integrated CRM or perhaps tried to at one point but didn’t succeed. In the beginning, keep the system simple and give access to only a small group of users before expanding use to the rest of the company.

    7. Train your staff

    • A well trained staff can make all the difference in the world whether your CRM implementation succeeds or not. If you are willing to invest in CRM, you should be willing to go a step further to ensure that staff is capable of using the software optimally.

    That’s it—a CRM project implementation plan in seven easy steps. If committed, you will find that the biggest hurdle was making the decision to invest in a software upgrade in the first place. The upside is that CRM is much more than just software. With the right support, staff participation and willingness to consolidate your business processes under one system, you can truly transform your business. Luckily, your vendor will be there every step of the way to ensure smooth transition and tackle any challenges you may encounter.

  • CRM Workflow: Define Your Industry’s Best Practices

    In recent years the concept of best practice has permeated business discussions in every sector of the economy. This buzzword is important because it answers the following questions: what method has consistently shown superior results than those achieved through other means?What are the best methods my company can use to ensure success on a consistent basis? While the concept of best practice may be overly general and somewhat simplified, there is reason to believe that every industry has a set of guiding principles that can maximize success.

    Regardless of which industry your company operates in, one thing is clear: in a global digital economy, technology is the leverage to success. Without technology—namely, advanced technology—your company will find itself unable to tread the floods of global competition. So what is the key to developing best practice? For starters, integrating a system that provides your company with the necessary business intelligence to access new markets, attract customers and retain them is absolutely essential. This is where the power of CRM comes into play.

    CRM, or customer relationship management, represents a paradigm shift in how businesses operate, communicate and market their products and services. CRM is a full-scale management strategy that combines the power of IT with the creativity of marketing, thus enabling your company to manage the simplest relationships to the most complex, all through an attractive, easy-to-use interface.

    Let’s be clear: today’s business environment is rapidly changing. In a global marketplace, new tastes and consumption trends abound daily. With so many options out there, consumers have very little incentive to remain loyal to your brand. At the same time, attracting a customer some of the time isn’t enough to keep your business thriving. In order to truly succeed, you must not only attract that customer, but retain them as well. This may seem like a great challenge, but with CRM, it has never made more sense. Below is a simple CRM workflow that can give your company the market intelligence it needs to not only attract customers, but keep them for life.

    1. Collect customer information

    • Collecting information on your customers is vital, but this isn’t limited to their name, age, gender, or transaction data. Although this information is important, so too is asking the questions why or how. Why did a customer do business with you? How are they using your products and services? Asking these questions allows you to develop the business intelligence you’ll need to lock them in for life.

    2. Analyze your customer’s information to predict future behaviour

    • We’ve already established that you need to retain your customers if you want to grow a profitable business. By analyzing your customer’s data, you can identify patterns, interests and habits, which can allow you to predict future behaviour or develop products and services that are relevant to them.

    3. Apply the results of your analysis: market your product

    • With information about your customers and their preferences in hand, you can now test your hypothesis by marketing your products and services. After all, you want to grab your customers’ attention by tapping into their interests. Whether through television, newspapers, e-mail, internet or some other means, apply what you learned about your customers through a targeted marketing campaign.

    4. Measure your results and repeat the workflow process

    • Was your hypothesis correct? Did you meet your sales targets? Why or why not? Evaluate the effects of your marketing strategy and revisit each step of the workflow. Where necessary, re-visit your hypothesis and be prepared to ask your customers different questions if the results weren’t what you expected or hoped for.

    All of this may seem like a lot of work, and it very well might be, but forming relationships with your customers and managing those relationships in an organized way is essential to long-term success. Luckily, there are many—and we mean many—savvy software programs out there that can make this process much more manageable. Whether you choose Microsoft, Salesforce, Netsuite, Oracle or any other vendor, the tools are out there to put this workflow into action.

    A sound CRM workflow powered by advanced technology has the potential to revitalize your business and transform your company’s marketing strategy. Be part of the revolution. Integrate CRM into your business and educate your employees on its potential. It could very well be the smartest investment your company ever makes.

    The next time you think about industry best practice, ask yourself if it includes utilizing advanced technology to create an organized workflow that helps you better understand your customers. If it doesn’t, perhaps we need a new buzzword.

  • Bridging the CRM Skills Gap: Strategies and Solutions

    One of the biggest challenges facing the IT industry in Canada and the United States is the pervasive shortages of trained IT professionals. Industry forecasts show that over the next three years Canadian employers will need to hire more than 80,000 IT professionals in traditional IT occupations alone just to meet employment growth and replacement demand. In the U.S., trends are similar, with as many as 1.4 million IT professionals needed by 2018 and only 400,000 new grads to fill them. At the same time, enrolments in IT programs in colleges and universities are down, signalling that youth are becoming less interested in pursuing a career in IT. As enterprises across the economy aim to streamline process, increase efficiency and bolster their business intelligence, these shortages threaten to limit growth in an already unstable economy.

    This reality comes at a critical juncture for enterprises, which are implementing wide scale customer relationship management (CRM) systems to improve their communications, respond to the needs of their customers and get a better handle of the demands of the marketplace. Combining information technology and marketing in a user-friendly interface, CRM is a powerful tool that enables companies to grow their business opportunities and retain customers long-term. As this technology proliferates, demand for professionals trained in its use will also grow. However, the shortages affecting the IT industry as a whole also means that trained professionals in CRM automation, strategy, business analysis and development are sorely lacking. How do we ensure that enterprises both large and small have the trained CRM staff they need? How do we ensure that vendors have capable talent that can monitor the full-scale automation, security and implementation of custom CRM systems? What is needed is a proactive strategy targeted at youth and experienced professionals to ensure that the industry has a steady pipeline of talent capable of addressing the relationship management needs of the marketplace.

    The IT industry has a bigger role to play. It must invigorate interest in technology among our nation’s youth so that we have the talent we need in future years. More importantly, industry must show young people entering colleges and universities that a career in IT doesn’t merely involve writing code or providing back-office support, but rather is an exciting arena that combines innovation, business and marketing. These three pillars just so happen to be the tenants of CRM technology. CRM combines IT innovation and business and opens the doors to market-based opportunities. Youth need not be dissuaded by out-dated perceptions of what it means to be an IT professional. Instead, introducing them to the synergies between technology, creativity and business will ensure that they develop a keen interest in entering an IT profession in the future.

    What about now? Although essential, a strategy aimed at youth may take years to materialize. Businesses need professionals who understand customer management today. They need professionals who can design, develop, implement and train in CRM technology today. They need strategy experts and business analysts well-honed in the CRM environment today.

    North American businesses have several options for meeting these needs, from up-skilling existing staff to outsourcing their CRM operations to reliable providers like Oracle or Salesforce. Bridging the gap between the demand and supply is possible, but not without sound investment and training. Enterprises must be willing to invest in their existing IT staff, including their business analysts, and offer training in CRM technology. Luckily, there are many CRM training and certification courses offered by Microsoft, Salesforce and colleges and universities. Pursuing one of these avenues ensures that your company is on the right footing when it comes to integrating customer management internally and across organizational boundaries.

    As the need for CRM continues to grow, enterprises across the economy will feel the talent crunch as the market sorts out the supply and demand. Once adoption catches up to the innovation curve and businesses understand their CRM needs, the market will respond to those needs. In the interim, up-skilling, training and outsourcing provide suitable alternatives to tackling the CRM talent crunch.

  • CRM: The Greener Pastures are on This Side of the Ocean

    Customer relationship management (or CRM) has been a staple of business for as long as people have been exchanging goods and services for money. The goal of selling your product and keeping the customer after the sale remains one of the most important tenants of a successful business. Although the goal of retention hasn’t changed over the years, the information technology and sophistication surrounding customer relationship management has evolved leaps and bounds over previous generations. Today, CRM requires its own strategy. By combining marketing efforts with technology, CRM enhances business intelligence and helps manage the simplest relationships to the most complex. But in order to truly optimize their CRM, businesses need to be aware of the implementation pitfalls.

    Research conducted by Gartner shows that more than half of all CRM implementations fail and a survey by the National Retail Federation in the U.S. showed that only 30% of companies are getting the most out of their CRM. Most enterprises simply don’t have the time, resources or knowledge to fully operate and integrate their CRM services. Some businesses may be strong on the technology side and others may be equally as strong in marketing, but striking the balance between IT and marketing while involving a large database of names and getting employees to buy-in is a much more difficult task. Luckily, North America is a hot-bed of world class companies specializing in CRM management, implementation and support.

    North American service giants like Oracle and Salesforce provide full scale automation of sales, marketing, customer services and remote support. At the same time, Salesforce and other cloud providers are revolutionizing the business environment through cloud provision and, more specifically, software as a service (SaaS). Through the cloud, businesses can have their CRM up and running at reduced costs; start-ups and small firms can implement CRM with very little up-front costs or infrastructure requirements. Simply plug-in and purchase a basic CRM subscription through one of North America’s emerging cloud providers—be it Salesforce, Rackspace Hosting or the rest of the emerging market that is opening the doors to cloud-based CRM and other IT services.

    Oracle, Salesforce and Microsoft are all headquartered in North America, with well established footprints in communities from coast-to-coast. North of the border, Canadian owned and operated Salesboom has emerged as a dominant global player, now offering its services to 159 countries. So why go elsewhere with your CRM needs when the best is right here at home? With the growth of cloud computing applications, your CRM needs are also available in a delocalized environment, on-demand and scalable to your needs. So as your business grows, so too does your CRM interface.

    We’ve all heard about the benefits of outsourcing your IT internationally, but does this apply to CRM in the same way it applies to call centres? CRM software and applications host sensitive information about an enterprise’s contacts, the nature of their relationships and, ultimately, valuable business intelligence. Outsourcing your CRM functions to a part of the globe that may not share similar security standards leaves a company’s privileged client information exposed. This is a critical point, given the premium businesses place on security. Cyber insecurity poses a significant threat to organizations operating in every sector. This is why investing in a CRM vendor with world-class security infrastructure, like those offered by Canadian and U.S.-based vendors, is as important a decision as implementing CRM in the first place. By investing in a home-based solution, customer information enjoys physical security, unsurpassed network perimeters, data encryption and user-based authentication.

    In addition to the heightened security standards of North American service providers, emerging technologies like cloud computing, digital platforms and mobile apps are all being driven by the North American market. As these emerging techs proliferate, they will interact with customer management software and provide businesses with limitless opportunities for staying ahead of the curve.

    The choice of which vendor to allocate its CRM functions to, if at all, ultimately resides with the enterprise itself. Given the implementation challenges much of the enterprise market faces, doing-it-yourself is one headache companies should avoid if they are prudential about enhancing their business intelligence. Given these realities, enterprises operating in Canada and the U.S. can take comfort in knowing that they have a reliable CRM provider in Oracle. Those wishing to integrate emerging platforms and slash their operating costs have the option of the world’s largest cloud provider in Salesforce. As international businesses look to Canada and the U.S. for CRM solutions, the greener pastures are on this side of ocean.

  • Why Use CRM Customer Relationship Management Systems

    CRM: The Public and Private Solution

    As a management strategy, customer relationship management (CRM) combines information technology and marketing, thus enabling enterprises and governments to manage their exchange with customers and clientele. Why use CRM? One of the biggest challenges facing Canadian businesses and government departments is communication. How do we optimize communication between parties to ensure ever-lasting relationships that are profitable to the enterprise and efficient to the government?

    Today’s business environment is rapidly changing. The growth and widespread adoption of information technology has created new tastes, options and spending habits among consumers. With so many options to choose from, customers have very little incentive to remain loyal to a particular brand or company. In order for a business to remain competitive today, expanding its market share is no longer enough. If the business truly seeks long-term growth and profitability, it must focus on customer retention. A customer’s true value can only be realized on a long-term basis. By retaining its customers, the business earns a bigger share of the consumer wallet, thus ensuring steady revenues and, ultimately, profitability. To keep customers coming back, Canadian businesses need to establish closer relationships with their market and offer products consumers really want. Enter CRM.

    CRM enables a digital media entrepreneur in Vancouver to keep tabs on the emerging trends and changing tastes of tech savvy clients. CRM allows large financial firms in Toronto to keep tabs on their clients’ use of mobile technology, which enables them to develop apps and services that cater to their specific needs. Organizations from coast-to-coast can truly transform their business practices with an organized, centralized interface that links past exchanges with the present. With CRM systems, this has never been easier.

    In the public sector CRM can bring governments up to speed in the digital economy. By enabling government departments to transition from outdated information technology toward a dynamic management system, governments can keep pace with the needs of their citizens and track the use of their services. Through CRM, governments at the local, provincial and national levels can serve their citizens more effectively. The technology enables cross-departmental collaboration at all levels and promotes the use of more efficient e-services, which serve to enhance organizational performance while reducing costs. At the same time, CRM provides governments with more resources for enhancing their business intelligence, allowing them to track information and respond more quickly to the needs of citizens. A government that can respond to the needs of its citizens more effectively while reducing the burden on the public purse is sure to be met enthusiastically. Indeed, there is much to gain from digitizing and centralizing the government management system.

    Embedding CRM into your business environment ensures seamless integration and access to information, regardless of who is currently employed in your organization. Businesses no longer have to worry about losing customers when employees move on; governments no longer have to deal with information asymmetries once bureaucrats shift departments or retire. The information is captured in detail, like a thread, seamlessly integrating the past with the current and providing opportunities for the future.

    Canada’s digital advantage lies in the business intelligence made possible through relationship management. Governments, businesses and the public at large all benefit through the integration of CRM.