To CRM or Not To CRM?

To CRM or Not To CRM?

 Author:  Alisa Walser

Is your business like most businesses struggling with making the decision to invest in a Customer Relationship Management System?  In difficult times, making the decision to invest in a CRM typically gets put on hold until the decision reaches a business critical situation.  Companies tend to endorse the “go with the flow” and “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality.  They feel that the pain of implementing a CRM is by far above something they can tolerate.  It doesn’t have to be.

The following questions may help you identify the reasons and justify the need for a CRM.  If you don’t have the answers, ask your executive staff to weigh in on the following questions:

• Are you investing in Trade Shows and leaving viable leads in a shoebox?
• Are you investing in lead generation but not contacting the responders?
• Do you invest in training your sales and customer service reps?
• Do you currently communicate frequently to your customers/clients?
• Do you currently communicate regularly to your vendors/suppliers?
• Do you have a way to capture all your current client information?
• Do you have all the client information available to up-sell or cross-sell for products that are currently in your pipeline?
• Is your organization prone to sales personnel turnover?

If any of the answers to these questions are yes, you have the basis for taking the step toward identifying and implementing a CRM.

Once you have identified that obtaining a CRM would be an option for you, make sure you ask for participation from all functional areas of your organization.  Many hands make light work and help to create a strong blueprint and foundation upon which to build your CRM. 

The foundation or blueprint is just like a house foundation, it is the most important part to critique when you are looking at the options to choose from for your CRM.  Make sure you consider a CRM provider that has the ability to easily expand your foundation.  The foundation should be able to be altered to fit your ever-changing business requirements, without loosing or jeopardizing information that you currently store.

Understand that support is a very important factor in the success of your CRM implementation.  Support from your IT/IS team is paramount to the success of the project.  In addition to the technical support, your organization should understand the merits of a good training program that includes a follow-up program a few months after implementation. 

For further information on the selection and implementation of a CRM, please continue to follow PeakVizn for future postings!