CRM for Small Business, Enhance productivity

Online CRM for Small Business has enhanced the working scenarios of small companies to a great extent. Sales Force Automation was a major challenge before some decades that is successfully handled by our techno-giants. The entire business community was longing for a system that could control and monitor the track of sales and marketing activities.

Things were getting tougher for an executive or an entrepreneur to manually handle the entire sales process and organizational activities. Moreover, the interaction with the clients was worsened and highly unorganized. The answer to all those worries came in the form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. Sales Force Automation Software basically is another name for Customer Relationship Management Software. Its prime motto is to streamline interaction of organization executives with their customers. The primitive form of Sales Force Automation Software was just for maintaining contacts. But the rapid advancement of technology and rigorous endeavors from the technocrats has made it capable of overpowering the entire sales stage.

The next phase of CRM Software we are looking forward to today is Online CRM Software. Online CRM Software was the result of the millennium’s biggest technical boom-Internet and Web Applications. Online CRM Software encompasses cloud computing technology to perform the sales force automation. From Cloud Computing, we basically mean data to be stored in servers that are remotely located and are connected through network. Cloud Computing uses the SaaS module to provide this technology. SaaS stands for Software-As-A-Service. That means, the software needs not to be installed at the client’s computer. It is hosted from a remote server and its complete package can be accessed from there itself.

Some ways CRM will help to grow your business:

Find Right customers – The company has spent more time and resources on attracting and generating new leads. Time is very precious when you are small and growing fast. Make most of the use of your marketing tools like emails, market automation, and social, by connecting all of them to the CRM platform. Both sales and marketing teams will have a clear view of leads so that they can create and target the engaging communications to convert the leads into customers and reach the key decisions faster.

Improving customer retention – Visibility across all your relationships with your customer can help the team to proactively address at-risk accounts and satisfies the customers with new opportunities at the right moment. With transparency in the customer histories, active campaigns can provide more satisfaction in the purchase, and the experience of services will keep customers coming back to you for more. Invest your time wisely and maintain a strong relationship with the customer.

Build a more sustainable relationship – Developing a deep understanding of the customer’s business- beginning with the complete view of the customer’s history with your company, and build a strong relationship with full trust. CRM system can help the organization to:
- Explore the challenges with the customers
- Engage with relevancy
- Scale your 1-to-1 relationship with the customers

Increase the employee productivity – Adopting the right CRM and the right technology will free your team from processing heavy tasks and give them more time to connect more with the customers. Some manual operations like searching for the contact information and entering the data can be eliminated or automated from customer-related processes. Automation of sales, services, and marketing will free the employees so that they can spend more time with the leads in talking and strengthening the relationship with them.

Online CRM Software has sorted out most of the problems faced by the entrepreneurs handling small to big organizations, including start ups. The easy & cost effective CRM’s usability, portability and anywhere operable flexibility have proved its worth over the previously launched hosted application. Some benefits of Online CRM Software over the premise hosted software are.

No Software required

Premise hosted need to be installed to a computer. Thus it gets system specific. You can’t avail the software once you change the software. On premises software installation restricts employees to be present in the office all the time for any work and create a lot of limitations for sales and marketing team.

With the onset of technology, platform independent software came into the picture which gave birth to online software support system. These software need not have lengthy installation process and policy practices, which enable companies to quickly adapt to this new deak free software support mechanism. CRM software being an all in one support system, needed a flexible software system which can be accessible by different stakeholders at runtime. Cloud based online CRM software can be used anywhere and at anytime with the flexibility of data available at a centralised location.

Read More – What is Cloud Based CRM?

No Capital Investment

On premises software system needed huge amount investment for infrastructure, hardware requirement, manual resources and more. Getting a software install was a huge capital commitment with a lot of risk management and backup restoration requirements.

Online CRM Softwares are cost effective. Here, you pay as you use, and can start with a very low investment with only a few users. Capital investment in online software is only for the software procurement cost, no extra expenditure on backup, hardware or infrastructure is needed.

No IT Infrastructure Cost

There is a lot of extra IT infrastructure needed to successfully run premise hosted application. Whereas online application provide all kinds of functional service on a remote access basis.

More Secure IT Environment

The entire data load in case of premise hosted is upon your system. So, any time, there are chances of data crash and hardware failure. While in the case of cloud computing, the entire data load is upon the server. So your system is always safe from the impending dangers. Also, CRM softwares use security measures of restricted access using role based users and also third party software security services from various vendors to keep our customer data secure and protected over the cloud.

With SalesBabu CRM being implemented, customers need not be worried about how to maintain and secure their personal data at any level.

Automated Analysis and reporting

In on premises system ,manual ways of data tracking and analysis was done through excel sheets and other tedious methods. This would need a lot of manpower and other expenditures to create simple statistics on business workflow.

With the offset of cloud based online software system, every detail of business workflow is stored in a centralised location. Once a report or analysis needs to be generated, users just need to click on a few buttons to generate efficient reports on various parameters and features.

Customer services

Understanding your customer through phone calls and recording every information using excel sheets can be quite inefficient and time consuming. In most of the cases, service agents miss important concerns and queries from customers and end up making repetitive calls to clients. These would indirectly increase overall business cost and distress among the customers due to repetitive questions and unorganised support system.

With the online CRM system, service agents can track every incoming customer complaint through the centralised database and record every minute information about the customer query into a systematic centralised repository. Customer complaints will be assigned to service agent using auto assignment service who will have complete information about the issue and can start working on the ticket immediately without any delay in report cycle.

These organised methods of handling customer issues not only increases the productivity of the team but also create a great customer experience for the client, who can stick along with the firm for better services and also advertise the brand for more incoming customers.

Best Practices for Successful CRM Implementation:

Define Clear Goals: Identify specific objectives to measure success.
Involve Key Stakeholders: Get input from sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
Cleanse and Organize Data: Ensure accurate and up-to-date information.
Train Your Team: Provide comprehensive training to maximize adoption.
Start Small and Iterate: Begin with essential features and gradually add more.
Monitor and Analyze: Track key metrics and make data-driven decisions.

Addressing Common Concerns:

Data Security: Reputable CRM providers employ advanced security measures to protect sensitive data.
Complexity: Modern CRMs are user-friendly and require minimal technical expertise.
Cost: While there are upfront costs, the long-term benefits often outweigh the initial investment.

Conclusion

SalesBabu CRM is a cost effective online software support system to automate salesforce process for a better revenue generating business model.