A CRM Upgrade: 5 Signs Your Business Begs for It

What do you think any business needs to strive for: balance or harmony? These are 2 completely different terms that either lead to the development or death of your company. Balance is constant movement, a never-ending hunt for new challenges, more ambitious goals and projects. That’s what progress looks like. Despite being seemingly a positive word, harmony doesn't lead to anything good. If you feel you’ve managed to achieve it, nothing stimulates you to search for better ways. Especially if we talk about companies and how to control them. There are always better mechanisms that come with new technologies.

Today a CRM system is an ultimate tool to find and maintain balanced management that leads to growth and profit. Being a powerful weapon, it takes aim at everything that drags you down. And allows you to acknowledge minor and bigger problems, as well as work them through and detect the most optimal solution. If you feel that your organization has the potential to be more productive, if you want to transform endless efforts into visible results, if you want to move forward, then you at least need to consider implementing a CRM system.

5 Symptoms You Need a CRM Cure 

Data is anywhere but at hand

Where do you keep info on your customers? No one says that spreadsheets, email, and notebooks are useless. They served well in the past and drove many businesses forward. But just as horses ceased to be a perfect transportation means and were replaced by ships, planes, and cars, so will old data management models stay in the past forever.

Fast and logical decision-making is only possible when you have all the information right at your fingertips. Take off a blindfold and get better visibility of client interactions. A CRM program creates a unified database, which collects information automatically or manually. The results are not hard to predict: better sales and customer retention figures.

Processing of leads is as ineffective as it can be

Even if you’re fortunate enough to have a rich flow of clients, you’ll most likely struggle and try to load a lot of work on your staff. However, working more rarely means high-quality results. Your employees won’t keep up with such a workload. And mistakes will inevitably spoil all the efforts you’ve put in to attract customers.

Smart CRM software creates order, saves time, and sets clear priorities to manage leads most effectively. Just stop fussing around and apply pointwise methods. A bright example of how CRM does its optimization magic is a simple bot. User-friendly and helpful on the outside, it is a complex algorithm of overarching scripts and sequences that automatically give answers and guide clients to resolve issues. Directing a significant amount of customer traffic to an AI-driven virtual assistant will definitely relieve your managers from a good few of monotonous tasks. Only to give them time to come up with creative and bright ideas in the spheres where it is crucial. Besides, it’s easily integrated with social networks and serves as an additional generator of leads.

Risky dependence on individual employees

Why is it important to always know what your team members are doing? Of course, the first thought is to watch their productivity and avoid busywork. But total control and constant monitoring demotivate rather than encourage performing better. No, the primary goal once again focuses on data accessibility.

A CRM platform tracks everything that happens at different stages of working with clients. You can check the progression and allocate additional resources to speed them up if necessary. Besides, if your employee has sick leave, the case doesn’t freeze. It’s just assigned to someone else.

Living in the dark: no forecasting instruments

Relying on hunches when navigating a company is like trying to predict the weather with country sayings. Sometimes they work, but most often these are just folk nonsense.

The market is in a constant ebbing and flowing mode. It resembles weather at some point: very hard to predict. But there are high-tech tools that monitor tendencies and generate forecasting that is very close to the truth. A CRM program does it with built-in analyzing and reporting instruments. With all that information at hand, it converts it into clear dashboards, infographics, and tables. Logical conclusions and decisions are yours to make. But at least you see straightforward patterns that shed light on current weak points, help you avoid expensive mistakes, and nudge in the right direction. And as always when it gets to automation, you save on your employees' time and increase their efficiency.

Many apps, many worries

Accounting, research, marketing, sales, promoting, internal communications, etc. All these aspects of business management can’t be left unattended. If you don’t have a CRM system, then you probably use several apps to cover the company’s needs. Isn’t it annoying to lose precious seconds, which gradually grow into minutes and hours, when switching between these programs? Or on trying to draft a report based on data from different platforms? It’s true agony.

Integration. A magic word that helps you get out of this administrative hell. Most modern CRM systems have almost limitless opportunities of bringing third-party apps under one roof. Fast, convenient, and definitely beneficial for internal and external working processes.

3 Core Qualities to Seek for in a CRM System of Your Dream

Any transformation is an investment of finances, time, and efforts. Software implementation includes several stages. The most defining one is probably initial workflow analysis. It’ll show your company both from a bird’s eye view and under a microscope to actually outline your priorities. But there are 3 universal qualities to pay attention to when scouting for a perfect CRM system.

1. Adaptability

Even if you’re small now, you’ll inevitably scale up later. So must your CRM program. You’ll need more powerful features to cope with more data, processes, and demanding challenges. Most entrepreneurs don’t take this matter seriously and struggle when they have to deal with the lack of functionality. A perfect platform is designed to be extended later when the business matures. And trust us, kids do grow up so fast...

2. Automation

Yes, it is one of the basic features, a must-have in any platform. It is impossible to respond to hundreds and thousands of customer requests using only human resources. Unfortunately, some vendors exaggerate their products' capabilities and offer a tiny portion of everything your business craves for. Just be on guard and test demo versions to see everything with your own eyes.

3. Usability 

Never waste your time on poorly designed systems. If you think that the way the interface looks is the least important issue, time to reconsider this approach. Keep in mind that your employees will interact with it every day. Don’t expect high productivity rates if it is too complicated, confusing, and simply insupportable.

Let Smart Solutions Drive You Forward

Many businesses keep everything in notebooks and paper sheets. Plus Excel capabilities may seem high-tech and simple enough to manage data and make necessary reports. Yes, it takes time. But it works, right? So why change anything?

Consider this: you need to saw up some trees. Will you take a traditional saw or a chainsaw? The result will be the same in any case: 2 piles of log pieces. But their sizes will differ dramatically. As well as the time you’ll spend and the efforts you’ll make.

Don’t hold on to outdated management strategies. Fine-tune your business processes with both pinpoint and 360-degree CRM tools. And when everything screams of changes, don’t turn a deaf ear to it.