Choosing The Right CRM Software Solutions For Your Business Needs
Choosing the right CRM software or custom CRM software to run your business is usually a head breaking process for you. You may find many professional CRM developers who boast about their CRM features and its advantages. But the truth is that you only need a few features out of the lot and we call it as custom CRM. Without knowing these, you adopt it and start sharing data even with your competitors. It’s all part of a game, and you will have to compromise your business workflow with your newly purchased CRM. Are you sure your CRM is a competitive tool against your competitors? If not sure, how can you win them? Does your CRM fit your business module? Are you really enjoying the benefits of CRM?
Below are the five most important reasons to stick on to custom CRM development rather than to follow the packaged CRM which you proudly purchased for your company. If not, you will definitely lose your business advantage in this competitive world.
Custom Database
A database is a place where your data are kept safe. Database should be well structured to store and access your business data. It connects parent-child tables if structured well. But most CRM vendors provides multi-tenant database. This is nothing but a common database designed for all including your competitors. Sometimes this common database or multi-tenant database will make your data hard to access and understand, as it is not specially designed for your needs. Some CRM vendors provide custom databases, as they know adding of additional fields is not enough to make your CRM work better. It should be designed for your business only, as you know, although your competitors are doing the same business, the workflow of a company differs from another. A custom database is flexible enough to incorporate all your business functions, and helps you to become successful at streamlining the workflow that differentiates your company.
Custom Workflows
A workflow is defined as a sequence of related activities which you follow in your company to perform a task. If you are selling products, you follow some steps for your marketing, your sales method, delivery and customer support. But if you are using a multi-tenant database, and same CRM which your competitor follows then what is the difference between your workflow and your competitors? How can you stand out from them? Packaged CRMs will have the same workflow which won’t allow you to incorporate all the upstream and downstream processes in your business. This will result in relying on other alternatives like spreadsheets or some other software package. And of course, after some time, you will change your workflow to adjust with newly applied solutions which may irritate your employees because they don’t know why they should do all these and of what benefit it is to them. But if your CRM software is customised to match with your current workflows, it will save you time and money and also make your employees happy. Professional CRM software vendors can increase your business efficiency by providing unique CRM with streamlined process which really automates your workflow and helps you stand out from all your tough competitors.
The Right Level of Automation
Automation is a technique or method used to do some task automatically without manual interference. For eg: scheduling marketing emails for a week, it will send to clients automatically. No reminders and no more manual sending. CRM automation increases your productivity and saves your time. Most CRM vendors normally include some level of automation into their system. These automation levels are based on the feedback of customers. And often, the vendors opt for more automation rather than less so they can market their CRM as efficient and time saving. Automation is cool, as you are just clicking a button and letting the system to do a particular task. But just think if the provided CRM doesn’t automate your task as planned? So while choosing CRM, try to know what they provide and what you actually want. Because meaningless automation not only make you lose your money, but also results in decreasing your efficiency. But if you work with a good CRM vendor who would provide a perfect CRM which can really automate your business flow and adopt the changing business methods, you are definitely going to be a master among your competitors. Choosing a CRM doesn’t matter, but choosing a right one or developing the right one for your business does.
Easier to Use
Based on customer feedback, most CRM vendors set up their CRM – the navigation, the screen layouts, quick links, etc. But if it is not clearly mentioned to your CRM vendor, you have to dig down ten screens to find the data you need. You have to play with your computer or device to find out your key work flows by minimising and maximising. No wonder you feel it is better to follow the staff manually than following these tiresome steps. While working with your CRM vendor, you can share the thoughts on how easy it is for you to use if he/she sets up the navigation and screen layouts to match your custom data model and workflows. None other than you know your business and its challenges; so stick to your business problems and insist that your expectations about the CRM software are these. The screens in your CRM should be set up in the same way or even better than you currently run your business. To cut it short, it should run like your business runs.
Killer Analytics
Many CRM vendors have case studies with flashy graphics and dashboards and many successful stories of clients too. But always keep in mind that their stories are not yours and yours’ is different. So make sure you can rely on them, and ask them to dictate what matrices are most important to your business. And opt for delivering customised reports rather than canned reports. Your success can only be measured by the real reports based on the transaction data. So always choose dashboards which can track your workforce and how they are doing in the terms that motivate them the most. If you measure your business the way that you run your business, you will be able to make the decisions you need to grow and outperform your competition.
Need custom CRM software for your business? Request a consultation… ISH Technologies will help you to run your business by providing perfect custom CRM solutions! We are custom CRM software development company in Brisbane providing CRM software for small businesses too.