CRM system and a bit of its History
Every business uses a Customer Relationship Management system, but what is CRM exactly?
CRM, the acronym stands for Customer Relationship Management and as it suggests – It is a tool to help manage Customers Data, and is used to plan strategies and business processes.
It started with note and pen registers back in the day that was maintained and had to be studied while planning for the next business jump. And with the involvement of digitalization, these notes were transformed into databases on computers.
And with new business needs the database needed to be used by different departments of a company to complete the complex process. And slowly with the advanced technology of SaaS and Cloud computing the CRM system was built.
Today, CRM is an integral part of every businessman’s daily work schedule. And a common platform that connects all the departments from Sales to Marketing, Custom services to internal Administrations. Providing them with a platform to track everyday activities, notes, reminders and metrics to manage their task requirements.
What is CRM: Custom Relationship Management software?
CRM can be defined as a centralized hub of all data of the clients, customers, employees, higher executives, prospects, and suppliers.
And anyone with permission to access can view the real-time client information. This allows better coordination between multiple departments. It also enables the output reach team to provide a personalized response to any customer queries.
The CRM automatically fetches the customer’s information from the forms they may fill up on the website or any marketing campaign posts. After a few interactions with the follow-up emails or chat more information about the customer requirements can be achieved. And a better approach to providing them with the needed solution can be developed with the help of CRM-tracked data.
And manually added data with every interaction by the sales and marketing teams. CRM has everything at one point making it easy to access and fast pace communication. And ultimately improves customer satisfaction.
Why CRM is needed?
While the company may use CRM for numerous tasks, however, CRM is mostly used to save, track and analyze Sales and Marketing data for Clients/Customer interactions.
To increase sales and provide a better Customer experience.
CRM works best for purchase tracking for Salespeople and helps them maintain the sales funnel as per the need. For Industries like eCommerce, real estate, manufacturing, import & export, accounting businesses, HR firms, Staffing agencies and other services-based agencies CRM provided lots of benefits to simplify managing the data.
A CRM system can be advantageous in the following ways:
⦁ Instead of verbally or in direct communication with your colleague about a project, you can use the CRM module to chat and transfer essential details. Moreover, if the same details are required by another department to work on the project they too can access the data by a permission grant.
⦁ The Salespeople can keep a track of their everyday interactions with their prospects and the senior manager or AE can review the work of any SDR from the CRM. It helps very much when any of the Sales team members are on leave and someone else needs to carry out their tasks for the day. That time the CRM works like magic.
⦁ Having the day-to-day customer history saved can help the customer service representative quickly solve customer problems, which helps build brand trust.
⦁ Managers can track the productivity of the team and lay out workload plans for the team members.
Some advanced features of CRM
Automation has drastically made the CRM software loaded with amazing features like:
Sales Automation:
CRM platform enables salespeople to use Sale Force tools to carry out their sales cycle tasks and record the interactions with prospects and Identify the hotness of the lead to conduct automated follow-ups.
Marketing Automation:
The Data obtained by the sales team is utilized to send auto marketing emails and messages. This helps to plant the seed of your brand dominance into the prospect’s mind and helps them turn into your customer.
Customer Support Automation:
As the CRM stores the history of day to day of conversations from every department with any customer, the Customer support executive can easily understand the gist of the problem any customer may come across and provide quick solutions. Moreover, various tools like Chatbot records the customer request and if it’s a common query then it directly sends the appropriate solutions.
Human Resource Management:
Similarly the HR representative can track the efficiency of the employees and make note of their leaves, tasks, projects responsibilities, and other inputs that benefit the company. And manage the overall workforce better with CRM.
Sales funnel Management
Sales data collected by the SDRs can be studied by the AE of the Sales Manager to lay out the sales plans and target the leads through the tracked data from the CRM.
Geolocation Integrations:
Some CRM can enable the business to use the benefits of GPS and target the locations densely populated with their target audience to run Sales & Marketing Campaigns.
(AI) Artificial Intelligence:
AI technologies built-in CRM can help perform repetitive tasks with a single click and also help you with the analytical insights of the future turnover for various departments of the company.
Project Management:
With CRM you can keep a close watch on the project’s tasks, and objectives, and strategically form solutions paths and risk management.
3rd Party Integrations:
As per your business needs to can integrate CRM with other soft wares like ERP (Enterprise resource planning) or other tools.
Types of CRM
Operational CRM:
A CRM platform that simplifies the main business processes like Sales, Marketing, and product/service purchases. Thus has the Automations for Marketing, Salesforce, Service, etc.
And it is best suitable for companies that have a linear sales cycle and can also automate their workflow for monotonous/repetitive tasks on the administrative side of Small to medium enterprises.
Analytical CRM:
This type of CRM helps with Data collection & gathering to improve customer support services. Moreover, the Data mined can be used to update the sales & marketing plans and draw out new business strategies.
It has tools like Data Mining, Online analytical processing (OLAP) tools, and Data Warehousing.
Collaborative CRM:
It brings together the work process of different departments such as Sales, Marketing, Production, HR, etc. And help improve the synchronization of data and improve the overall workflow management.
Learning about the above types of CRM, the question is why have a Custom CRM built? And how?
Custom CRM system
Though there are ready-to-install and use CRM software available (open source, Cloud-based, on-premises, etc ) from HubSpot, Zoho, Copper, Bitrix24, Pipedrive, NetHunt, and many more providers. Why do businesses choose to build themselves their own Custom CRM software? Because they understand that one-size-fits-solutions are not able to provide more precise and concentrated solutions for their unique requirements as their business grows. And as they need to deal with a much wider audience on a daily basis. Even with several 3rd party integrations. Yes, they must be the best fit for SMEs or startups but medium to growing firms requires to handle much more complex tasks.
Thus, having a specialized designed CRM based on their business requirements provides them many benefits like
⦁ It is built from scratch keeping the unique business requirements in view
⦁ Can have the features of more than two types of CRMs ( for instance Cloud-based & On-Premises)
⦁ Provides more security
⦁ Has the number of custom features that can carry out the smallest to most complex tasks of business processes
⦁ It can be easily modified or saleable as per the need
How do you build a Custom CRM for your Business?
You can partner up with Software development services providers like Esurgent, who can take care of the development part of the software. And stays with you from brainstorming the ideas of your CRM to the actual deployment of the final CRM version approved & tested by your team. For more details, you can read our Software development cycle.
Esurgent also provides you post-launch support for maintenance and fixing any issues that may arise once the CRM is live and in use.
You can also build your own team of software developers or hire a dedicated developer from our team who can work directly with you and help you scale up your current CRM software or develop brand new solutions based on your listed pain areas with the current model.