“Products” are the items or services an organization sells its customers. Products can be tangible such as your day-to-day commodities or intangible services such as services.
When there is a business, then sale of a product or service is done. If we have to define a product, then it can be tangible or intangible-service. But commonly mentioned product or service, which is the main process in the business and which is being sold to the customers and in return the benefits of the same as a sale revenue is calculated into the business.
A tangible product means the physical stuff which can be touched and seen. It can be consumables, non consumables, machinery, vehicle, medical equipment, renewable energy products, etc. Intangible products are considered as service. Likewise insurance, repairing of any tools or products, freight and forwarding, consultation provided by the consultants, software’s, education, brokerage, health care related, etc.
There are many types of products and different types of product classified. They are as product lines, product type, product category and sub category, etc.
The line of products can be mentioned as a single class of product line, for example – cars used passenger vehicles – then cars and models of the car. But if the cars are categorised in different types or series – Mercedes C, E class.
Then it is considered as Category and sub-category. Here the products are categorized and sub-categorized. Thereafter the Models are mentioned. If we want to categorize the Machinery products then – The gensets are diesel, hybrid, etc. It can be classified – Gensets as Category, diesel, hybrid, subcategory and finally the product name with model numbers.
When the classification of service, which is intangible and most of the form of service are considered as process. Usually it is just categorized as service and product service name for the operational purpose.
Product Role in the CRM
The majority of the companies are into product manufacturing and sales, others are into product sales and services. The companies who manufacture the products are considered Principal companies.
Manufactured products are sold directly to the end users or distributed to the stockist, distributors, and dealers who are promoting and selling the products in the market. To acquire customers from the market the products are sold to the end users and the objective is to achieve revenue in the business.
Product status can be tracked in the Inventory Management System, which enables the information on the inventory of the product orders placed by the customers and the availability of the quantity in the inventory.
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What is Product Management?
Product Management – is a process of organising and managing details of each product that an organisation sells to its customers. While an organisation deals in multiple products, it becomes mandatory to streamline the process of keeping the complete product information in detail. The information should be easily retrieved, so it has to be maintained centralized and in a structured way.
In the CRM the product management is the key module and all the products dealt in the company as a saleable are configured into the CRM – Product management module. In the CRM, products are able to be categorized and sub categorized. Multiple principals can be configured and under each principals, products can be categorized and sub categorized.
CRM for Product Management
In an organisation, ERP usage by each department – Sales, Service, Manufacturing, Product Planning, procurement, purchase planning etc needs an efficient, detailed product information storage and retrieval system. Information management facilitates healthy communication & coordination among all departments required also the similar information for their strategic use.
How product managers use CRM tool for product management
Product development
By tracking the actions and conversations of your customer base, the direction of an individual feature will become very clear, and you will be able to develop a strategic roadmap. On top of this, you can present the product by building your story in a way that shows your understanding of the market and your clients. Managing customer feedback can fast-track product initiatives.
Conversion tracking
The sales team works on the ground directly with every client on a confidential level and track conversations inside CRM. They will hear a lot of the delights of your customers and what they are asking for to improve in the product. By keeping an eye on those communications, product managers can assess the value of a specific feature request across your customer base.
Customer segmentation
The majority of the companies are into product manufacturing and sales, others are into product sales and services. The companies who manufacture the products are considered Principal companies.
Manufactured products are sold directly to the end users or distributed to the stockist, distributors, and dealers who are promoting and selling the products in the market. To acquire customers from the market the products are sold to the end users and the objective is to achieve revenue in the business.
Product status can be tracked in the Inventory Management System, which enables the information on the inventory of the product orders placed by the customers and the availability of the quantity in the inventory.
Empowering Sales Team with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Product Management
CRM for a sales team is to get the information on the potential customers, what product they are interested in and how early the closure can be expected. To get the product wise sales pipeline of the customers, by filtering options in the CRM – product wise, principal wise, category wise. In the CRM, product wise or principal wise filtered and which provides the monthly expected cases and even future dates expected customers. This is empowering the level of knowledge to the sales team and helping to increase their sales projection.
In the CRM companies can have the analysis of past products performance, present sales done and expected order in line. CRM helps to check the present and past products sales, so that it can have the prediction of the future sales growth. CRM is having the intuitive tools to analyze and forecast, which is helping the Sales team, production team to manage the inventory.
Management requires the top products sold by each salesperson and how it is movement. Moreover the sales pipelines required. In the CRM analytics MIS is available which helps the management to review the sales performances
- Centralized Product Masters: CRM brings forth a very robust & dynamic product management module. You need to setup & configure item details, only once and you are ready with a structure of capturing the information in the system.
- Organize Product’s Details : One can configure by an easy excel upload and can organize data of the products on the basis of principal, category ,sub category, Ref ID, Tariff heading, purchase price etc.
- Handling of Multiple Line of Products : Product module has provision of maintaining hundreds of products with unique ref ID’s(Alphanumeric).
- Define Multiple Units of Measurements : An organisation can associate other important information like product specifications, multiple units measurement.
- Pricing in Multiple Currencies : If an organisation is dealing with multiple currencies like in export companies ,then currency wise product price can also be configured
- Control over Product View Access : The access levels can also be defined in the product master that means that the concerned manager can only have the access to view the product and if allowed make changes (pricing, specifications etc) to it.
- Segregation of Products- Executive wise : Organisation has this facility, while configuring any product into the masters, it can assign it to any executive in the sales team, who will be responsible to get sales number for product.
Key Features of Product Management Software
Configuration of Product – Product configuration is configuring a product master into the CRM to meet the needs of the customers and helping the salesperson to work around easily on the said products.
- Principal wise
- Category Wise
- Sub-Category Wise
Search Filters on the basis – In the CRM the product filtering option is to filter products reference code, barcode and availability. Helping the person wherein they do not waste time in search from the product SKUs.
- Reference Code
- Bar Codes
- Availability according to Active or Inactive Status
Provision of the defined currency, UOM and quantity minimum, helping the targeted groups to have the specific details.
- Multiple Currencies
- Multiple UOM
- Freezing of minimum quantity
Product Wise MIS & Reports available in CRM helping the managers to evaluate sales business processes. Which is the benefit for the management to get appropriate MIS reports about product enquiries received, quotations sent, and expected sales closures.
- Enquiries
- Quotations
- Sales Closures
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Benefits of product management?
- Time saving information retrieval according to needs.
- Defined principal, categories & subcategories.
- Easy information capturing, with minimum possible errors.
- Reduce duplicate record keeping.
- In selling any product it is mandatory to know, at what units of measurement it needs to be placed into the market, like; in Quantity, KG, Metes etc. This Process helps in doing the same.
- Opportunity to make effective product specifications, for future use.
Conclusion :
In SalesBabu CRM the Product management is a module that is made easier in configuring the products principal wise, category and sub category wise. This is helping in the filtering process – quickly and efficiently by the users.
This feature is helping to narrow the search of a product of employees choices and purpose, while using the CRM. Helping in search of the details of multiple vendors product details. It helps in the product analytics search by the Sales, Service management, Operations, Production teams and provide insight of the products
