More and more, businesses rely on a range of tools to help them get more meaningfully acquainted with their customers, gain valuable insights about them, and ultimately drive their business transactions into a successful future. Customer relationship management software (CRM) is one such tool.
What is CRM?
CRM is a centralized, data-driven software solution that spans different customer management systems (i.e. sales, service and marketing), allowing them to work in tandem, harmoniously. It allows you to manage, track and store information pertaining to current and potential customers alike. Thanks to its centralized system, business teams have immediate access to the insights they need.
Quality CRM software streamlines your business processes and draws customer data connections to help you build stronger relationships, boost productivity and vastly improve customer engagement. Without an integrated CRM solution in today’s relentless marketplace, your company could very well miss out on opportunities for growth and lose potential revenue.
What can you do with CRM software?
Once upon a time, companies tracked their customer data with spreadsheets, emails and highly limited paper-based solutions. A general lack of integration and automation were the status quo, and as a result, information-sharing and campaign creation processes were far less efficient. The pursuit of new sales leads, and overall customer service was also much slower. Modern-day CRM systems, however, automatically collect any and all data on current and would-be customers, integrate it, and generate consolidated profiles to be shared with the right teams at the right time.
Here are just a few of the things you can do with modern-day CRM software:
- Monitor every opportunity: Track lead-oriented data through the funnel—complete with insights—so your sales and marketing teams can stay on top of where in the sales process every lead happens to be, and who has worked on it. The result? More opportunities, more sales.
- Access real-time data: You can connect performance data to your CRM solution of choice to provide an accurate, real-time rendering of sales. This way, you’ll always have advanced notice of any slowdowns, roadblocks or major victories!
- Always stay a step ahead: Thanks to the insights brought to you by AI and built-in intelligence, you can rapidly identify top priorities and settle on the best ways to optimize your team’s efforts. Sales teams, for instance, can easily identify which leads require follow-up and which ones can be handed off.
- Streamline workflows: Thanks to automation capabilities, your processes can be easily optimized. You might generate sales quotes, collect customer feedback and send email campaigns, all via task automation. Ultimately, CRM software can help eliminate repetitive or redundant tasks so your team can focus on high-impact, big-picture ones instead.
- Track customer behavior: Being able to monitor customer interactions can go a long way toward helping you make a greater impact. CRM solutions include features that offer a glimpse into the very heart of customer behavior, helping to clarify engagement across multiple touchpoints.
- Stay connected across platforms: Be it via live chat, calls, email or other social interactions, CRM software solutions can help connect you with customers—wherever they happen to be—offering an enhanced engagement experience that builds trust and loyalty in the long-term.
- Stay ahead of the competition: Secure, scalable, and integrated CRM software solutions allow you to meet the ever-evolving needs of your business and your industry. With an accelerated ability to launch campaigns and e-commerce, and deliver rapid responses when they’re most needed, you’re perfectly poised to gain a competitive advantage!
Benefits of CRM software
Companies both large and small can benefit from CRM software. The tangible benefits (superpowers) CRM solutions can offer your business include the following:
- Do customer engagement right: Predictive insight helps you to identify, target and attract the right potential customers, before turning them into actual customers. Plus, the ability to track the customer journey allows you to know where in your sales lifecycle a customer is at any given moment, ultimately helping you to hone campaigns for well-aimed, high-level engagement.
- Improve the customer journey. From multichannel marketing campaigns to sales-ready leads with targeted buyer experiences, to the ability to align your teams with advance planning and real-time tracking tools, your customers will see themselves represented in your curated marketing strategies. And with your entire sales team knowing a customer’s purchasing history, attentive service catered to the individual is your new baseline.
- Win more deals: With improved visibility and optimized processes comes the ability to focus more on what matters most, which, in turn, leads to higher team productivity—and ultimately, more deals and improved profitability. Comprehensive project planning capabilities and intuitive dashboards allow you to easily view costs and revenue so you can better anticipate demands, determine resource capacity, and forecast future profitability.
CRM software options
When choosing a CRM platform, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every business needs to determine which features and functionalities they need to get the most out of their software solution. While the options are many, here are a few worth considering:
Nimble is a CRM designed for small businesses—especially those too small to have their own IT department. It’s user-friendly, affordable, and offers excellent social media integration, as well as stellar integration with Microsoft 365.
Zoho offers versions for SMBs and large enterprises alike, and you pay for only the features and applications you need with multiple pricing plans available. It’s easy to use, super customizable, and offers strong automation and process management tools.
Dynamics 365 offers improvements over Microsoft’s traditional Dynamics CRM. It offers seven components, including sales, service, marketing, operations (formerly known as Dynamics AX), project service automation, field service and customer insights. In short, a flexible and customizable solution suited to a range of business requirements.
Learn more about CRM with an expert partner
Want to learn about using or reselling CRM solutions? As an award-winning Microsoft partner, Sherweb can help! Our experts know Dynamics 365 inside and out. We also have a P2P network of Dynamics providers who are happy to share knowledge and contribute to complex projects. Reach out to learn more, or check out our Partner Guide for more information about how we can help your business grow.
