Harness customer data to fuel your growth potential

What is a CRM?

At its most basic, a CRM facilitates the collection, organisation, and management of customer information. Importantly though, this is not just from one source (such as the recording of a sale). Instead, CRM software can track, record, and manage every communication between your business and a customer or prospective customer in a holistic way.

For example, imagine that a potential customer interacts with some advertising from your business. They download a brochure from your website by submitting their email. A month later, they purchase an item from you. Two weeks after that, the customer contacts your customer service department on social media to discuss a potential issue. That’s three separate interactions, to three separate departments (marketing, sales, and customer service), on three separate channels.

A well-built CRM will be able to pull together all of those communications into one single database that can be accessed quickly and easily by any department. So, the marketing team can see past purchases and what marketing efforts worked, sales can see what pain points the customer has experienced, and customer services can view the customer’s owned products.

As we mentioned above, this kind of system would traditionally have required significant investment and a small army of in-house IT specialists to implement successfully.

Fortunately, this is no longer the case.

Today an SME, with the support of a quality IT partner, can implement a cutting edge CRM system, such as Sage 200cloud, quickly and with minimum fuss. And, once embedded into your business, that CRM can lead to a step-change in the way your company works.

Five key benefits of a CRM

Build better customer relationships

No matter where your customer is on their journey with your business, a real-time view of their challenges and preferences will enable you to build stronger, more long-lasting relationships with them.

Rather than bombarding them with marketing messages or suggesting advice that’s not relevant, you can ensure that every time you communicate with a customer, you are strengthening your relationship.

Unleash the potential of your employees

Your marketing, sales, and customer service teams will always hit a ceiling in their capabilities when operating in silos.

The 360-degree customer view provided by a CRM means that your teams can gain precious insight and information on each one of your customers. That means team members will be able to utilise data from across the business to really raise their game.

Maximise on your marketing and sales spends

Generally speaking, marketing and sales budgeting can be something of a dark art. With a CRM system in place, you’ll be far better positioned to see precisely how your spend is performing.

Over time, you’ll also be better equipped to forecast required budgets for future product launches and marketing activity. It’ll put an end to ‘finger in the air’ guesswork and gut-instinct sales practices.

Get better business insight

When customer data from various departments of your business is pulled together into a single report, it can provide a valuable snapshot of overall business performance.

Without a CRM, trawling through the separate data sets would cost time and money, making insight difficult. Once a CRM is implemented, you can easily dive into this data and pull reports as and when you need them. And that same insight can guide your business forward with laser precision.

Improve customer satisfaction

Through the systematic tracking and organisation of individual sales and service data, every contact you make with each of your customers will provide value and lead to better customer satisfaction.

Say, for example, a customer recently experienced an issue with one of your products. By pulling up their file on your CRM system, you’d be able to instantly see that this customer spends significantly more than the average. Therefore, offering a discount on any future purchase will be a worthwhile investment for you and a welcome gift for them.

That simple exchange has likely helped secure future income for your business and encouraged brand loyalty from the customer.

In summary

There can be little doubt that a solid, well-structured CRM system built by a respected IT partner can be a transformative tool for your business. And, today, that option is no longer only accessible by large multinationals with deep pockets. Consider adding a new layer of intelligence to your company with a CRM system for superior customer relations that drive your SME forward.

If you want to find out how a CRM system could propel your business forward, Contact Gary McKnight (Sage team member) or contact James Peel (Head of SAP) today.