Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a strategy that involves merging your business processes, people and technology to maximise profitable client relationships.

It is often an exercise in examining (and challenging) how you currently work, the systems that support that work, and the expectations of your clients or business partners.

How do most companies articulate their CRM need?

Drive measurable improvements across all customer management processes

In today's complex business world, competitive advantage is harder to achieve-and even more difficult to maintain-than it has ever been before. In a time of instant global communication and ubiquitous information, the ability to develop a deep understanding of your customers and your markets is critical.

Success ultimately depends on whether your organisation can respond with speed, knowledge, and confidence to the ever-shifting needs of your customers and the ever-changing strategies of your business competitors.

A good CRM solution gives the Company all of the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers from first contact through purchase and post-sales.

Marketing: Better decision-making and a clear view of your Customers

In today's information-driven economy, most companies are awash in customer data. Success requires the ability to transform that information into clear, actionable knowledge and respond more quickly to changing customer needs and preferences.

With CRM, your sales and marketing organisations will have instant access to complete customer information no matter where it is stored, along with the tools needed to turn that information into action.

Marketing can:

• Create a single view of each customer based on every piece of information your company collects, all stored in a single location that is accessible across sales, marketing and customer services organisations.
• Focus your marketing efforts using intelligent list and segmentation tools to reach prospective customers more effectively.

Sales: Creating demand and generating new business

No matter how complex your company’s sales processes are, a CRM solution,  provides easy-to-use features and capabilities to improve the way your sales and marketing organisation targets new customers, manages marketing campaigns, and drives sales activities.

Sales, Business Development and Account Managers can:

• Increase your sales pipeline with qualified sales leads and opportunities. Take advantage of analytics and embedded coaching to maximise opportunities to cross-sell products and services.
• Help your sales force arrive prepared for important customer meetings by accessing sales opportunities and service histories for each customer.
• Unify customer e-mail and responses by automatically capturing discussion threads as part of each customer's history record.

Service: Provide more value to your Customers

Every time someone in your organisation interacts with a customer, it is an opportunity to strengthen that customer's loyalty to your company by providing high levels of personalised service. Because it can help you offer your customers targeted, relevant information about the products and services that they are interested in, a CRM solution can help you take advantage of opportunities to enhance customer relationships while giving your company the ability to maximise both up-sell and cross-sell.

Customer Service & Scheduling staff can:

• Respond faster to service issues by delivering the right answers to customers in real-time. Take advantage of the integrated CRM knowledge base for instant access to manuals, frequently asked questions, and troubleshooting tips.
• Resolve customer issues according to desired service levels. CRM will include features for automatic escalation and routing ensures that service requests are sent to the appropriate people.
• Schedule and dispatch service resources using CRM features that make it easy to find professionals who can deliver the right services. Use a centralised scheduling and dispatching to manage resources and coordinate services.

How to Start with CRM

Generally we recommend a phased approach.

Many clients are frustrated with disparate data silos and need a centralised, reliable source of basic client information. This can be a good place to begin. It is also essential to ensure the data is cleaned before loading into the new CRM solution, so you need to consider where your existing data resides, the quality of that data and how much of it you need to use in the new system.

Gather your data requirements then gather and document your functional requirements (how the system should work for your staff and managers).

Click here to request our Preparing for CRM template documents

Use your documented requirements as the basis for the scoping exercise which helps you and your implementation partner to determine how many days the project will take to implement. Expect the scoping phase to last a few days and involve some interviews or workshops with your staff.

Preparing for your CRM implementation

This three-page report by Nucleus Research looks at how the adoption of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution can be a disappointing experience-or it can exceed even the most aggressive goals. The outcome depends, in part, on the thoroughness of the implementation plan and the clarity of the business goals.

The report presents some practical and helpful ways to prepare for a successful CRM implementation. Tips in the paper include:

• Get your team to agree on the top five benefits of implementing CRM.
• Keep your objectives simple.
• Research vendors and implementation partners; drill down on the technology.
• Have well-rounded training and adoption efforts that motivate your sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

Click here for a FREE " Preparing for your CRM implementation Guide"