Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broad term for a variety of software solutions which aim to help a business:

• learn more about customer needs and how they behave
• develop stronger relationships with customers
• to acquire more customers and to sell more to current customers
• enhancing relationship with and retaining of customers

When buying a CRM system, there is usually a particular business problem that is being addressed – such as marketing, sales or customer service. The CRM system is designed to enhance and automate the business processes around customer relationships.

Download the free CRM checklist here and clarify the reasons you need CRM to ensure you find a successful solution.

Things to consider in a CRM solution

In addition there are other considerations such as what systems need to exchange data with the CRM system or whether the system is on-site or off-site. Other things that are important in selection a new system include the size of your business, whether the business is large or small, whether it will be used by a large number of people or a discrete group. You can consider buying an all encompassing solution called a suite or you can buy standalone systems to carry out specific  functions. In the main small to medium businesses should consider suites whereas large businesses will consider suites and standalone solutions.

To find out more, based on your needs, you’ll find more information by following links below or via the tabs and menus above or by downloading our free CRM checklist.

Areas of CRM solutions

Marketing

CRM management of marketing resources, segments and lists, campaigns, leads, trade promotions, and marketing analytics.

Sales
Functionality for sales planning and forecasting and the management of territories, accounts, contacts, activities, opportunities, quotations, orders, product configuration, pricing, billing, and contracts.

Service
More effectively manage service orders, contracts, complaints and returns, warranties, resource planning, e-service, and service analytics. Functionality to support call centres, field service, and e-service provides flexible delivery options.

Partner channel management
Improve processes for partner recruitment and management, communications, channel marketing and forecasting, collaborative selling, partner order management, channel service, and analytics for partners and channel managers.

Call Centre

With CRM, a company can maximise customer loyalty, cut costs and boost revenue by transforming interaction center into a strategic delivery channel for marketing, sales, and service.  Effectively handle activities such as telemarketing, telesales, customer service, human resources, IT support, and interaction center management.

Web channel enablement
Increase sales and reduce transaction costs by turning the Internet into a valuable sales, marketing, and service channel for businesses and consumers. Increase profitability and reach new markets with a fully integrated Web channel, including support for e-marketing, e-commerce, e-service, and Web channel analytics.

Analytics
CRM analytics are designed to provide you information as well as data from your CRM system. Analytics add-ons fall into a variety of types such as Business Intelligence, Reporting, Dashboards and Data Mining.

However, the key behind all these is the need to aggregate data in your CRM system to provide management information. This helps marketing people to design, target and run a marketing campaign, or helps a sales manager review his opportunity pipeline.

Mobile
CRM systems can extend their capability out to smartphones  or notebooks with a communications capability. These are usually tailored for mobile ‘field’ staff such as sales people or technicians. They are designed to provide the core application functionality on a small screen. Typical applications are that a sales person can place an order or check product availability; a technician can run diagnostic checks or order spare parts.

Social CRM

Social CRM consists of tools that look into the social networking environment to understand how they affect your business, its reputation and what customers are saying about you. Products like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo are all tools that people connect, converse and communicate through. In the main they may talk about your business but that is not reflected in your customer systems. Social CRM tries to address this by extending traditional CRM platforms to capture this information. There are also a new breed of Social CRM platforms that focus only on capturing these elements and aggregating them.

Discover what basic features every CRM solution needs to help your business perform today!