Are You Choosing the Right CRM For Your Business?

Choosing the right CRM for your business can be quite a daunting task with so many options available. CRM was designed to help businesses maintain and build relationships with existing customers.

As CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management – it tracks your relationship with customers so that you stay in complete control of your sales and marketing efforts.

Most available CRM’s are more than a spreadsheet. The software helps in tracking sales, analyzing patterns, and managing communications across multiple channels. Good CRM will help in marketing, sales, and customer service. Most CRM’s guide research teams to keep their eyes on customers efficiently. 

Why do you need to invest in the right CRM for your business?                                                                  

If you cannot keep up with the lead flow – it is time to integrate with the CRM system. An intelligent CRM system will prioritize and sort your leads so that your team can respond efficiently. Besides, if you are unaware of the sales team job – the system allows you to track what’s going on with your sales and other business tasks.

With CRM – you will have a single and central source of customer data that drives success rates and increases customer retention. In addition, CRM system helps you manage your valuable accounts and maintain a relationship with your account even if the contact has moved on.

A CRM system provides easy data flow and accurate analysis if your reporting process takes a longer time. The system can overcome many business challenges as your company evolves, and it can handle a potential rush of new business.

If you’re ready to choose a CRM solution for your business, here are some essential things to consider as you dive into the options available. After which, it will be easier to identify the ideal CRM that fits your business needs.

1. Know about your business goals

It becomes easy to know the kind of problem you’re trying to solve with CRM software. You need to know about all your business goals according to the importance and priority of a task.

• Tracking of the lead activities
• Tracking different business opportunities and closing rates
• Tracking the customer base for sales
• Managing customer relationships
• Offering connectivity between other teams
• Generating customized reports
• Organizing different business operations
• Increasing the productivity at work
• Increasing profitability

With a list of goals you see above – figure out the goals relevant to your business. And based on goals, you can choose a feasible CRM software for your business needs. 

2. Understand the dynamics of implementation

When you integrate with new software – you will need to implement it properly to give you results. In many cases, you might require a consultant who heads up the whole deployment process of the software. Going further, you may need testing or a training period to know about system bugs and the best tools.

So, if there is no implementation cost involved, there might be added costs involved for educating your team on the implementation process. Also, implementation can incur substantial charges that will take time away from your team’s obligations. 

3. Study different types of CRM

CRM provides a common platform for marketing, sales, and support units. That said, you may have to address the difficulty of finding customer data since all three divisions will use one centralized database.

With functional CRM software – you will be able to leverage three capabilities – Salesforce automation, Marketing automation, and Service automation.

Salesforce automation helps analyze lead to customer cycle, marketing automation streamlines the marketing processes, and service automation manages customer support. 

4. Make sure the system integrates with applications

Integration is one of the significant factors for choosing the right CRM. CRM is not software that you’ll use for a specific task. The system helps streamline your business operations, so you will need to make sure it integrates accordingly.

Besides the need, the CRM software you choose should integrate with ERP or accounting software, HR software, billing software, or E-com platforms to register different transactions.

Moreover, you need to make sure that you can migrate existing contacts into the new CRM you use. Also, most CRM software allows you to import data from different sources. Moreover, check whether you can export information from the CRM. 

5. Understand the product mobility

Mobility is another vital factor for CRM integration. Your sales team will use different devices like – mobile, laptop, and tablet to access the CRM services. Therefore, while choosing CRM software – you must look for a tool to help the teams access web-enabled services from different devices.

Also, as most salespeople adopt technology faster, you will need to look for constant updates in the new CRM software you use. 

6. Layout the process and review compatibility

Most CRM tools come with a multitude of business processes. Therefore, your CRM must be completely compatible to handle all your business needs. And, if you want CRM that will adapt to changing environments, your choice should be specific.

However, compatibility with different systems is not an issue anymore as most applications are connected through API. But you will need to make sure that your CRM system integrates with all other applications you already have in place. Moreover, if you need to connect the system using API, look for third-party platforms that can assimilate to streamline your company data. 

7. Look into product demo and features

While choosing CRM for your business, make sure you check all the features and product demonstrations. Then, try breaking the demo to test if the system works fine. By doing this, you can know about the strengths and weaknesses of your business needs.

Once you know about the functionality of CRM, check product reporting capabilities to help outdo your competition. Moreover, it is essential to ensure that your sales team does not shy away from using correct customer data in determining products, services, pricing, and other business delivery requirements. 

8. Check if customization is available

Salesforce CRM offers customized solutions and training. A CRM solution should complement your business and reflect your sales process, customer service, and marketing strategy. Choosing a system that is easy to configure will save time.

Besides the customization option, training is also an essential factor for seamless CRM adoption. The process should be ongoing and user-specific so that your team knows to use the software.

Customization and training will increase business efficiency, which is an advantage. In addition, training helps the company work towards a common goal. 

9. Pay attention to user experience

User experience lets you experience what you feel about the CRM software. Does the software help you in all the business-related tasks? Is it intuitive and easy to integrate with other applications? Is there an issue, which slows down the system?

While watching a demo or testing out a CRM system, make sure you evaluate the interface. In addition, most employees in the company believe that user-friendliness is the essential factor in choosing a CRM. As ease of use affects CRM adoption, it shouldn’t be ignored. 

10. Consider the costing

Before choosing the right CRM software for your business, consider the cost. Mostly, the cost of the software depends on deployment ways and subscription plans. However, cloud-based CRM that works as SaaS is affordable.

Smaller companies choose free CRM software and upgrade once their get familiar with the features of the software. You can select a CRM software based on your business needs, but customized software may cost more. 

Settle on the best choice

There are four main factors for choosing the right CRM for your business needs – the problem, information search, the choices available, and the purchase decision. No matter the size of your company, it is also good to chart out requirements and budget.

At first, your business may not need all the features CRM offers. But as your business grows – your business will need advanced functionality offered by the software.

Choosing a CRM can be a time-consuming process – so you will need to have that patience. However, once you decide and adopt CRM as a business model – it will play an instrumental role in your company’s growth.