Over recent months consumers have become more and more careful with their spending, Increasingly they are keen to ensure that they are getting the right product to suit their needs. Not only this, but they have realised that companies are willing to do more and more in order to secure a sale and this means that competition has increased. However competition has not only increased in this country, but the internet means that competition is increasingly coming from abroad. As a result of the increased competition and the fact that consumers are increasingly looking for a good deal, it has become more important than ever to build good relationships with customers in order to make customers loyal, after all if a customer trusts a company and gets a good service from them, it is more likely that they will become loyal. This is where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions come in.

So what is CRM?

Customer relationship management is a way of improving business efficiency. It’s all about attracting new customers at the same time as retaining existing clients. CRM facilitates this, as it provides a central location to store all information relating to customers, prospects and suppliers alike. This ensures that staff have access to all the information they need to provide an excellent level of service. Customer Relationship Management also streamlines internal processes and, so it reduces duplication of effort and silos of information. However, these benefits will only be felt if the project is approached in the correct manner.

Where to start

When considering implementing a CRM solution, it is important that you have thought about what issue you want the CRM system to address, whether that is eliminating the silos of information within an organisation or improving the level of customer service. If you haven’t thought about this, it will be difficult for any company to recommend the best solution for your organisation, because there are so many CRM systems on the market with varying levels of functionality. Once you have a list of the issues which you need the CRM system to address it will be much easier to find a the solution which best meets the requirements of your organisation.

Having created the list of requirements, the next thing to do is to find a CRM business partner. These are companies which have accreditations for specific products and the expertise to implement, configure and customise them. There are lots of CRM businesses partners, however, the best recommendation is to find an independent CRM specialists. Independent CRM specialist will supply a number of different CRM solutions, therefore they will be more interested in finding the solutions which best fits the requirements of your organisation, than simply box shifting. Although product specific business partners will also be interested in your requirements, they may try to shoe-horn a product into fitting your requirements as they may just want to secure the sale.

Having selected a business partner which you believe understands the needs of your organisation, the next step is to have a meeting to define the requirements of the project. For this meeting the people who will be using the system should be involved as they will be able to explain how they currently perform a process and this will make it easier for the CRM specialist to understand.

Another key decision which will need to be made is if the solution is going to be a cloud solution or on-premise. With the cloud solution your data will be held off site in a secure data centre. Effectively, you will rent a space on a server and your data will be held on this. With the hosted solution you can be up and running quickly as, as soon as you have bought your license you can use the solution. What’s more the cost of getting the solution running will be less as there will be no need to purchase any additional hardware. However on the other hand, you will never actually own the solution and when you stop making the monthly payment the system will no longer work. On-Premise solutions however are where your data is held on your own site on your own server. This may mean that to get up and running you will need to purchase additional hardware, making it slightly more expensive to install. However, with the On-Premise solution, once you have made your payment you own the whole solution and this will mean that you can do with it what you like – after a year for example you may decide you want another company to support you. What’s more, because you own the solution the customisation potential is vast.

Although there are advantages and disadvantages to both hosting alternatives, it isn’t a case of one being better than the other, it is purely down to which hosting platform best suits the requirements of the organisation.

Having decided on the business partner and the hosting platform you then need to decide on a solution your business partner will be best placed to provide you with advice on this.

Once implemented the system should rapidly deliver a return on investment providing that staff have had the right level of training and they have access to a support team – which will usually be supplied by the business partner for an additional cost.

However, the key thing to remember is that implementing a CRM solution is not just a case of purchasing some software and away you go. In order to be successful, there needs to be a complete cultural shift in the organisation. However, providing staff have the right attitude and training the benefits really will speak for themself.

Author Bio: Rebecca works for Concentrix, providing CRM software including Microsoft CRM, Microsoft CRM Online and Sage CRM

Category: Business
Keywords: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage CRM, CRM Business Partner, Customer Relationship Management