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Why Invest in CRM?
CRM or Customer Relationship Management is strictly a business management application. It's how you leverage the technology to solve key business issues within your organization that will make the difference.
CRM's standard functionality includes Sales Force Automation, Marketing and Customer Service. But the design of the application allows you to go far beyond the standard functionality and implement your organization's most critical business application.
Immediate Benefits of Implementing a CRM System
- Gain Control and Ownership of your Data – pull data off external laptops and devices
- Centralized customer data and intelligence accessible anywhere to your people when they need it
- Better and more robust reporting on consolidated data - facilitates analysis
- Standardize on a business process – increase efficiency and provide a similar customer experience
- Engage the wider organization, suppliers, resellers, donors, franchisees, members, customers and more...
- Motivate, develop, continuously improve on customer- centric culture
- Eliminate disparate systems – centralize data and business process in one place
Long-Term Benefits of Implementing a CRM System
- Increased Revenues – Provide a more convenient product/service, obtain more satisfied customers; Higher loyalty, better margins
- Lower Costs - Less "wasted effort” through increased efficiency on Sales, Marketing and Customer Service efforts
- Greater speed of business generation
- Higher success rates and less work to achieve the success
- The ability to train Marketing, Sales and Customer Service personnel on a standard process ensuring an consistent customer experience
- The ability to define the customer/sales lifecycle in a way that all who participate in it, understand their part in it
- Advertising is subject to diminishing returns over time. Good CRM relationships continually receive feedback from the customer and are able to cross-sell, discover profitable new lines, and continually evolve the business. The greater the quantity and depth of 1 to 1 marketing, the greater the feedback loop and evolution
- Customer Loyalty - If customers remain loyal: competitive discounts will have less appeal; customer acquisition budgets won't be so large and the cost of serving a loyal customer is lower
- Differentiation within your Industry through the above successes
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