CRM

FAQ

What is CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management and most often is used in the context of customer relationship management software. CRM software is software designed to help you manage your day to day interactions with customers (or valued business relationships of all types... more later) such as contact details, emails, phone calls, follow-up actions, marketing campaigns, press campaigns and forecasts.

Who needs a CRM solution?

Anyone who has important business relationships to manage. This includes a lot more that the obvious i.e. sales people, so for instance marketing teams, event organisers, charities, journalists, press offices and small businesses of all sorts.

Reasons to have a CRM system. Isn't it just an expensive address book?

  • Yes, but the these contacts are a key asset for any organisation. For instance, like your organisation's intellectual property, your business relationships can be an influencing factor when it comes to a company valuation.
  • Campaigns/Events. Easier to organise and more effective.
  • Forecasting. You need to understand what is in the sales pipeline, not just what hard business is already committed. Once again, it's important for investors to see the progress being made.
  • Sales & marketing campaign metrics
  • How are opportunities split by sales person, region & market?
  • Where’s the growth?
  • Where’s the stagnation?
  • Need to understand the sales cycle.
  • How long from suspect to order?
  • At what stage are most sales lost & why?
  • Resource Allocation.
  • Where does support focus need to be?
  • Where might you need to put in place more/better sales channels?

Things that you may wish to consider when purchasing a CRM solution...

  • Do you want an onsite or offsite (hosted) system? Nowadays many popular CRM systems are hosted for you. So your data is stored by the CRM software company who are responsible for managing it, backing it up and making sure the system is always available. Typically you access the system through your web-browser and a secure login.
  • Should you go for a point solution that is cheap, but has limited upgrade capability? Or do you go for a high-end solution that will still be good when you are a $1B company... but costs an arm & a leg now?
  • How good a fit is the system for your application? For instance, some systems are aimed more at telesales and selling high volumes of cheap products... not low volume, high value sales.
  • How much configuration (if any) will it need? Can you use something "off the shelf" or will it need customising to make it useful to you?
  • Open-source or proprietary? In the same way that there is now open-source operating systems (e.g. Linux), open-source web-browsers (e.g. FireFox) and open-source office software (e.g. OpenOffice) there are now open-source CRM solutions. These can offer great value, but there is no such thing as a free lunch and you may need to think carefully about how you would be supported.

How Real Life Consulting can help help you implement a CRM solution...

  • Now is a great time to put a CRM system in place. The sooner you install a CRM systems, the better. It can be very difficult to impose a new way of doing things on a large organisation that has established operating procedures (or no procedures). In such situations it can be a bit like herding cats.
  • Real Life Consulting has experience of CRM going back 20 years.
  • The first CRM system we used ran under DOS.
  • We wrote our second system ourselves using Microsoft Access.
  • We have evaluated, selected, installed and configured CRM solutions for start-up companies, charities and press offices.
  • We have championed, specified and rolled-out CRM solutions with up to 100 seat users.
  • We can work with you to understand your requirements in details.
  • What you are trying to do.
  • What your long term plans are.
  • How many users you will have.
  • How the system may need to integrate with your existing computer systems.
  • Implementation. Then we will help you...
  • Select the most appropriate system.
  • Purchase or lease it.
  • Install it.
  • Configure it.
  • Train your team

The next step?

If you are interested in implementing a CRM solution drop us a line at sales@reallifeconsulting.co.uk and we will be very happy to have an initial discussion with you to see how we may be able to help.