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CRM Overview Menu
Sage CRM™ Overview
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CRM Overview: Why use CRM?
Why should your company invest in a CRM System and use it as part of your short term and long term operations? Who is best to help you with this?
Please review some of these questions, and note your initial response:
- Do your customers get the service they deserve?
- Do you know your best customers from your worst?
- Do your best customers know the promotions that would benefit them?
- Do your customers feel like a number?
- Is your sales team spending more time on administration than following up on new leads than you would like?
- Is your company working together?
- Do people have the information they need to excel in their jobs?
- Can your departments share information easily?
Some of these questions help answer how CRM can work for you...
A well built CRM system is a technology and methodology which provides seamless integration of every area of business that touches the customer - marketing, sales, customer service support and areas which the customer may not see: finance and accounting integration with your system.
CRM moves the company from a product centric focus to a customer driven focus.
CRM does this through the integration of people, process and technology: using technology to help your people and your customers.
But CRM is more than just technology, it is a business focus to understand your customer, and anticipate their needs.
Whether these are potential new sales, service items that can be proactively addressed or anticipating future needs and better targeting of new clients; a well built CRM system can almost do it all.
When you ask if CRM is right for your company, you have to know how your company is doing. We can help.
CRM implementations do not happen with the installation of a new server and software. They begin with a solid review and analysis
of your business from the bottom up and top down. CRM can dramatically change your business; from providing real time
sales tracking and revenue reporting to providing an almost unfair advantage over your competition.
This does not happen by itself. 21CRM Systems works closely with all of our clients from start to finish to ensure they receive
the best system for their needs.
To conclude... Do you need CRM?
If you have looked at the questions and statements above and thought that your company is not hitting it's goals or performing as
efficiently and effectively as possible, then we should talk.
Your company can benefit from a CRM implementation and use the same tools as
billion dollar corporations. However, unlike those corporations, your company
can implement in under 2 years, and not pay millions for the same competitive
advantage
- Good data in, very important to pre-plan get buy in
- Customization, 21crm systems can customize Sage CRM to allow for a perfect
system according to business processes planned out
- Iron out metadata plan from the start
Advantages of CRM
Advantages to sales people
Proponents claim that sales force automation systems can
improve the productivity of sales personnel. Here are some examples:
- Rather than write-out sales orders, reports, activity
reports, and/or call sheets, sales people can fill-in prepared e-forms. This
saves time.
- Rather than printing out reports and taking them to the
sales manager, sales people can use the company intranet to transmit the
information. This saves time.
- Rather than waiting for paper based product inventory data,
sales prospect lists, and sales support information, they will have access to
the information when they need it. This could be useful in the field when
answering prospects’ questions and objections.
- The additional tools could help improve sales staff morale
if they reduce the amount of record keeping and/or increase the rate of closing.
This could contribute to a virtuous spiral of beneficial and cumulative effects.
- These sales force systems can be used as an effective and
efficient training device. They provide sales staff with product information and
sales technique training without them having to waste time at seminars.
- Better communication and co-operation between sales personnel facilitates successful team selling.
- More and better qualified sales leads could be automatically generated by the software.
- This technology increases the sales person’s ratio of
selling time to non-selling time. Non-selling time includes activities like
report writing, travel time, internal meetings, training, and seminars.
Advantages to the sales manager
Sales force automation systems can also affect sales
management. Here are some examples:
- The sales manager, rather than gathering all the call
sheets from various sales people and tabulating the results, will have the
results automatically presented in easy to understand tables, charts, or graphs.
This saves time for the manager.
- Activity reports, information requests, orders booked, and
other sales information will be sent to the sales manager more frequently,
allowing him/her to respond more directly with advice, product in-stock
verifications, and price discount authorizations. This gives management more
hands-on control of the sales process if they wish to use it.
- The sales manager can configure the system so as to
automatically analyze the information using sophisticated statistical
techniques, and present the results in a user-friendly way. This gives the sales
manager information that is more useful information
- Providing current and useful sales support materials to their sales staff
- Providing marketing research data : demographic, sychographic, behavioural, product acceptance, product problems, detecting
trends
- Providing market research data : industry dynamics, new
competitors, new products from competitors, new promotional campaigns from
competitors, macro-environmental scanning, detecting trends
- Co-ordinate with other parts of the firm, particularly
marketing, production, and finance
- Identifying your most profitable customers, and your problem customers
- Tracking the productivity of their sales force by combining
a number of performance measures such as : revenue per sales person, revenue per
territory, margin by , margin by customer segment, margin by customer, number of
calls per day, time spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call,
entertainment cost per call, ratio of orders to calls, revenue as a percentage
of sales quota, number of new customers per period, number of lost customers per
period, cost of customer acquisition as a percentage of expected lifetime value
of customer, percentage of goods returned, number of customer complaints, and
number of overdue accounts. More complex models like the PAIRS model (by
Parasuraman and Day) and the Call Plan model (by Lodish) can also be used.
filler
Advantages to the marketing manager
It is also claimed to be useful for the marketing manager.
It gives the marketing manager information that is useful in :
- Understanding the economic structure of your industry
- Identifying segments within your market
- Identifying your target market
- Identifying your best customers in place
- Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, sychographic, and behavioral) of your core customers
- Understanding your competitors and their products
- Developing new products
- Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
- Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
- Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
- Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
- Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
- Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
- Understanding where you want your brands to be in the future, and providing an empirical basis for writing marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
- Providing input into feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process
Strategic advantages
Sales force automation systems can also create competitive
advantage. Here are some examples:
- As mentioned above, productivity will increase. Sales staff will use their time more efficiently and more effectively. The sales manager will also become more efficient and more effective.(see above) This increased
Productivity can create a competitive advantage in three ways: it can reduce costs, it can increase sales revenue, and it can increase market share.
- Field sales staff will send their information more frequently. Typically information will be sent to management after every sales call (rather than once a week). This provides management with current
information, information that they will be able to use while it is still valuable. Management response time will be greatly reduced. The company will become more alert and more agile.
- These systems could increase customer satisfaction if they
are used with wisdom. If the information obtained and analyzed with the system
is used to create a product that matches or exceeds customer expectations, and
the sales staff use the system to service customers more expertly and diligently, then customers should be satisfied with the company. This will
provide a competitive advantage because customer satisfaction leads to increased customer loyalty, reduced customer acquisition costs, reduced price elasticity
of demand, and increased profit margins.
Marketing
Marketing sub module primarily deals with providing functionalities of Long-term planning and Short-term execution of Marketing
related Activities within an organization.
Planning
Long-term Market Plans can be made and Quantitative as well
as Qualitative measures (targets) can be set for a defined period and for
different product groups, geographies etc. These are then monitored based on the
actual performance throughout the defined period.
Campaign management
Short-Term execution includes running Marketing campaigns
via different communication channels targeting a predefined group of potential
buyers with a specific message referring to a product or a group of products.
Lead management
One key objective of the Marketing function is to generate
sales related leads, which finally get converted into Sales Revenues for the
company. Marketing campaigns with the specific objective of generating leads
(Prospective customers who may be interested in a product). Lead management
deals with processing these Leads, carrying out a sanity check, evaluating the
genuineness of the information (Since, there is a lot of information that is
gathered during Marketing Campaigns it becomes necessary to screen these leads),
and finally converting them to Hot Leads or Cold Leads.
Sales
Sales functionalities are focused on helping the Sales team
to execute and manage the presales process better and in an organized manner.
Sales team is responsible for regularly capturing key customer interactions, any
leads or opportunities they are working on etc, in CRM system. The system helps
by processing this data, monitoring against the targets and proactively alerting
the sales person with recommended further actions based on company's sales policy.
Opportunity management
Opportunities help the sales team by organizing all the
relevant data regarding a prospective deal into one place. It is characterized
by the details such as Prospective customer, expected budget, total spending, products interested in, expected closing date, key players in the deal and their
key characteristics, important dates and milestones, etc.
The opportunity has several phases, e.g. initiation, identification, qualification, RFP received, quotation sent, final stage, won or
lost. Of course these phases can be defined based on individual company needs.
A CRM system helps in each phase by "guiding" the sales
representative to carry out certain suggested activities as defined by the
company's sales policy. It creates reminders and planned activities within the
system. For example, if the opportunity has reached "RFP received" stage, and
the deal size is more than, say, US$50,000, the system can prompt the
representative to hold a review discussion with a senior manager. This is often
referred as Guided Sales Methodology.
Opportunities can be directly converted into quotations or
sales orders.
Quotation and sales order management
Opportunities, if they reach a quotation phase, can be
converted to a quotation, and, if won gets converted to a Sales order. Standard
features of creating a "linked" Quotation or sales order from opportunities are provided. These Sales orders then flow to the Back-End (ERP) system for further
execution and Delivery.
Activity management
Activities represent various Sales or Service related
interactions with the customer (meetings, discussions, telephone calls, emails).
Activity management provides a platform to consolidate all the interactions with
customer into a single platform, helping to build a 360 degree view of customer.
Activities can be synchronized to Microsoft Outlook/Lotus
Notes Calendar items (Meetings and Tasks).
Service
Service related functionalities are focused on effectively
managing the customer service (Planned or Unplanned), avoid "leakage" of
Warranty based services, avoid "Penalties" arising due to Non conformity of SLA
(Service Level Agreements), and provide first and Second Level support to
Customers.
Several functionalities are:
- Service Order Management
- Service Contract Management
- Planned Services management
- Warranty Management
- Installed Base (Equipment) Management
- SLA Management
- Resource Planning and Scheduling
- Knowledge Management (FAQs, How to guides)
- Call Center Support
- Resource Planning and Workforce Management
Channels of communication
It is also important to mention here that a CRM system is
capable of executing all the three sub modules via multiple communication
Channels. These channels can be:
- Direct
- Online (Internet)
- Call Center (via Phone/FAX/Email etc)
All the three CRM Sub Modules (Marketing, Sales and
Service) can be executed across these Communication channels. Based on these
criteria, CRM offerings can be further sub divided into following
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