CRM: Not Just For Personal Productivity

Our guest expert today is Chris Farias. Chris is an expert in solving difficult manufacturing and professional services problems. Bio.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is not software like Word or Excel, which create individual productivity. 

The true scope of CRM is far larger and much more impactful, as it boosts efficiency and productivity throughout an entire company. That said, it becomes imperative to have a successful implementation to achieve these results.

The typical CRM is implemented for the sales team to improve their performance. But the impact is felt in every part of the organization, even those who do not use the CRM.

Successful CRM Impacts Every Company Function

Let’s review a successful CRM implementation for the sales team of a hypothetical manufacturing company that leads to an increase in sales. 

This success puts increased demands on Customer Service and Operations as well as the entire production line and supply chain.

C Suite

Accurate Sales forecasts and Performance Dashboards are available in real-time. 

Whenever the team sends reports, or the C Suite accesses the CRM, current data is available to plan for forecasted sales. This improves productivity because there is proactive action instead of a reactive activity. The net effect is improved margins.

It also gives important information about customer trends and behavior, which helps the rest of the company plan.

Sales

CRM helps sales leadership leverage what is working and what isn’t, who is working and who isn’t. 

Having this information in a central database ensures that your sales team can respond quickly when an opportunity arises.

Marketing

Marketing benefits as the CRM allows for a more targeted and cost-efficient marketing program. 

By understanding prospects' needs and behavior, marketing will be able to identify the best time to promote and share relevant promotions. Marketing is often the second company function integrated with a CRM.

Customer Service

Customer Service in CRM can be used to improve customer relationships and gives Customer Service the ability to respond quickly to issues before they become a larger problem. It provides for upsell and cross-sell opportunities and generates leads on customer needs immediately funneled to sales.

A CRM system maintains all the business contacts and important information in one place, making it easier to access anyone in the company.

Obtaining insight into customer trends, such as support requests and returns, allows you to optimize your operating process and make the most of your sales leads.

Customer service takes many forms, and many solutions are designed to meet those needs.  

Purchasing

CRM enables more accurate sales forecasting and helps identify customers' key buying trends. This, in turn, allows organizations to make better inventory decisions to reduce wastage and improve their inventory requirements. 

Real-time dashboards help measure utilization against baselines through the central storage of current and historical records.

Manufacturing

The CRM system provides features that allow for managing complex distribution processes. Your team leaders can access the CRM and use the data stored to provide input to better assess maintenance downtime and overtime, ensuring that machines and labor are ready and available.

By being adaptable and working smarter, organizations can get products to market before their competitors, thus gaining a competitive edge.

Finance

With CRM software, finance can work ahead to predict and manage cash flow and secure capital for capital and inventory investments to meet production demands. 

Your finance team will see lower compliance costs and an enhanced ability to provide accurate responses. You will also see cost savings from less creation, storage, and handling of paper records as the CRM enables digital transformation.

Boost Company Performance

If adopted and used correctly, CRM will boost the performance of your sales team and the entire company!

When people are proactive, performing tasks takes less time and no stress. This translates to more output, increased margins, and more employee satisfaction, which is a sure sign that the CRM has succeeded in doing what it was supposed to do!

Guest Author: Chris Farias

Chris is a technology expert who solves difficult manufacturing and professional services problems by using cloud solutions to drive productivity, profitability, market share, and revenue. His area of focus is operational productivity, sales, marketing, and customer service. He’s the trusted Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner you seek to drive the business results you want.

Visit EBS to learn how a CRM can help your business.