STARTUPs and SMEs are the best emerging business model around the world, but as its rightly said – “ With great power comes great responsibility”.
There are around 150 million startups in the world currently with 50 million new startups launching every year. On average, there are 137,000 startups coming up every day. These are definitely huge numbers by any standards. With these many startups and new ventures starting everyday, we can understand the pressure to perform better and the competition involved for survival of the fittest.
But the important question remains, how many startups tend to survive the violent waves of these technology change and business model transformation? Not Many!!!
Challenges of Small Scale Enterprises
There are numerous challenges being faced by small businesses and startups when taking their baby steps to success. Let’s discuss a few major ones.
- Financial Constraints
Financial management possesses a considerable challenge for small-scale enterprises today. Several startups heavily rely on financial support from banks and private investors. To assure business profitability and repayment, SMEs must cultivate enough profits and create a prompt customer base to maintain their viability.
- Software Constraints
Several startups and SMEs opt for conventional and free software versions to save on expense and resist contractual commitments. Faced with limited software resources, such businesses look for a comprehensive solution that is not only cost-efficient but also versatile in its service capabilities.
- Resource Constraints
Resource limitations are inherent obstacles for small-scale firms. Hardware, software, and human resource constraints mostly affect the optimal performance of startups and SMEs. To overcome such limitations, many are moving towards cloud software implementations, efficiently minimizing their resource requirements.
- Ineffective Management Systems
Even with all the required software in place, a deficiency in clarity in process management can result in a company astray. A successful business needs a robust management system to maintain day-to-day work effectively and steer the company in the right direction.
- Scalability and Cybersecurity Concerns
In the current technology-driven landscape, scalability and cybersecurity are imperative concerns. For growing organizations, a safe and trusted software infrastructure is imperative to safeguard against potential cyber threats and hacking activities.
How can Cloud CRM help?
CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is the buzzword in today’s market of business management and customer relationship handling. Online CRM softwares are customer centric business strategy outlined to optimise revenue, profit and customer satisfaction.
Cloud based CRM enables us to understand and organise our customer base to make it easier to target new prospects and boost our sales.
Let’s understand further on how can an Online CRM help a small and medium enterprise.
1. Customer information
Irrespective of the industry type, business model and size of your organisations, the most important aspect for a business are its customers. An organisation with various tools, high level hardware and software infrastructure and everything possible facility to run a business, still fail due to bad customer management.
Customer management plays a very important role in procuring new clients for the firm and maintaining the old ones. Every customer related data like – contact details, e-mails and past interaction and more should be consolidated in one common location. Various data about the customer like his background details, shopping interest and other inclinations of the customer, preferred products etc should be documented in a cloud based environment which makes it available to every stakeholder to access and use it for better lead categorization and follow-ups.
With complete customer data in hand, wonders can be done to improve your consumer relations and establish a long-term and revenue generating customers.
2. Automation
One of the major reasons for SME failures is due to the outdated management process and manual work environment. In this era of smartphone, gadgets and social media, if we are not automated and updated on technology, we will be way behind in the queue to success. Every step of business management like lead conversion to product delivery need to be automated for a quick and smooth workflow in the organization.
Today’s customers look for online reviews on a product and prefer on the go services which can be only possible with automated softwares. Automated lead tracking mechanism on social media and over the internet help get more interested leads. Also, constant follow ups, data sharing, online discussion with customers, ticket and database updates and many more functionalities can be performed with automated cloud CRM softwares like SalesBabuCRM, which facilitates in seamless business management for many SMEs and startups.
With automated services, online CRM softwares help startups to be always connected to its customers and provide efficient customer experience.
3. Mobility
Mobility in today’s world has become more of a necessity than a luxury. With smartphone and online connectivity, every customer needs flexible facilities for all its software requirements. Startups and small scale firms have many finance and software limitations which might be a major hindrance in providing round the clock services to every customer.
SalesBabuCRM provides cloud based centralised database which can be accessed from any gadget with internet connectivity at anytime, from anywhere around the world. SalesBabuCRM provides omnichannel support to its customers by providing round the clock services on social media, email, web chats and other communication channels.
Mobile Sales app in SalesBabu CRM helps to facilitate sales and marketing team to provide services at any hour of the day with complete knowledge of customer background and interaction detail. Real time presentation sharing, quotation creation, sales order closure and many activities can be done through these mobile sales apps to provide complete software support to all its customers.
4. Process management
With financial restrictions, every SMEs need a one stop solution for all its business management which is not only cost effective but is also versatile in providing support in every aspect of business workflow.
Cloud based CRM softwares provide support on every stage of process management starting from lead management to customer services and after sales services.
Lead management process in an online CRM software help in systematic lead conversion and nurturing with various lead conversion facilities. Also, automated follow ups and reminder alerts can be created to track upcoming customer interactions and sales order discussions with prospective clients. Quotation templates and email services help startups to create various product quotations with minimum human error and rework.
Once the discussion and final sales order are decided, sales reps can create automated sales order which can include various promotional offers, discounts and other offers with few clicks and need not scan through various files to finalise a deal with a client. With these CRM functionalities every business process is so systematically organised that manual intervention is minimized and efficiency is maximised due to templates and easy to process management steps.
Startups and small firms are highly benefited with these processes as they need not invest on too many tools to organise their daily jobs, at the same time the resource requirement for maintaining these software are minimum which a perfect use case for best ROI options.
5. Scalability
Scalability for increasing infrastructure and customer inflow both can be pressing issue for a startup and small scale enterprises. With a cloud CRM software support, SMEs need not worry about any software and hardware scalability restrictions. Cloud based CRM software like SalesBabuCRM will host every data on a centralised cloud database which will be taken care of by cloud service providers. Every data stored and added the database is secured with numerous encryption softwares and firewall system to provide a completely cyber safe environment to store vital customer information.
6. Customization
Today’s customers are very particular in their needs and preferences. Every customer needs a software which is flexible to customise according to his preferences and add features which can be more beneficial for his own needs.
Startups and small scale industries need to customise a lot of its features as per customer’s business and his personal preferences. Also, as a growing firm they need to adapt to many trends in the changing market which can be useful for them in the longer run. A CRM system should be customizable/configurable enough to accommodate SMEs flexible business model without affecting normal business processes. SalesBabu CRM provide many flexible software features to create user specific dashboards, analytics report on his day-to-day jobs, user specific templates and many more. These features are very helpful in creating quick quotations and sales orders thereby closing more customer deals.
6. Customer support
Customer centric environment is the main key to success in today’s world of economic market. A SME which can be flexible to customer’s need and understand its issues and concerns by providing efficient customer support will be one shooting star in a bunch of mediocracy businesses.
SalesBabu CRM customer care system facilitates efficient support for customers using mobile sales apps and other multi channel communication support system. Customers are also given options to access product demos, knowledge base documents, blogs and many other documents to provide a clear understanding of company and product of his interest.
Also, constant update and follow up sessions from sales reps through mobile sales apps, can help customers to discuss issues freely and get faster and smarter solutions for their issues.
Conclusion
CRM softwares are cloud based software which is easily scalable and easy to use, this make them the right fit for any small scale business to use and leverage the benefit of a one stop solution for all their business needs.
