Factors That Need To Be Considered While Choosing Small Business CRM

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Well we have got the bad news for you – choosing a right CRM specially for small business can be a confusing task .

When comparing in respect to of the impact of CRM on revenue growth , you would probably get the best decision output . Some of the factors are listed below considering which you will more likely to take more informed decision .

How Fast Your Team Will Adopt CRM

Most of the CRM initiative in the company fails as the company employees fails to adopt it . They may be don’t want to upgrade their existing technology or find a CRM solution a little tidy job . This all will result in CRM investment go down as your employees are actually not using it .

Again if you are thinking of forcefully implementing it in your organisation , it will result in none other than poor quality data , which will ultimately result in downgrade of business leads which you were expecting .

For this a CRM software should be easy enough to be understandable and easy to use as their everyday consumers software .

The best way to overcome with this challenge is :

Choose widely used CRM – Design and user experience attract user to use the CRM solution . If CRM solution is not easy , it will hamper your employee daily routine and familiarity .

Choose all in one CRM solution – Look for the tailor made solution that do the most of the task automatically . Right from sending automated email to easy follow ups , it should be done by the CRM rather than manual taking of process .

Total Cost Of CRM Ownership

Some of the biggest cost while implementing of CRM solution in any organisation is the total cost is not visible at once , but it will be shown up from time to time thus forcing you pay for the CRM and loosing your pockets . Apart from the license fees or one time investment of the CRM , there are actually two other important factors that need to be taken care of :

Cost Of Implementation 

The cost of implementation depends on the vendor you are choosing from . Vendors may be of two types , mass vendors who are providing ready to use CRM solution on monthly renewal basis on the basis of number of user , and secondly the vendors who are offering you custom CRM development solution  in which you have to pay a large amount all at once . Well both the CRM providers are well equipped with tools that helps you get started with setting up the system and start using it .

Cost Of Maintenance And Support

In order to keep the CRM upto date and keep in tailoring according to your needs , you need to necessarily hire a full time CRM system administrator which will cost twice the cost of the licence of the CRM on annual basis . While the custom CRM solution might lake a little lesser .

Scale : Will It be Scalable With You ?

It is another important factor and this factor should be taken care of . Suppose right now your organisation is dealing with only 2-3 staff . What if it scaled up to more than 10 staff . Will your CRM system will be able to provide viable solution at reasonable cost ? You must move forward with a CRM that is ready to scale up with you for the next 3-5 years . Your CRM must have the capability of allowing user to see specific data in CRM , should have advance reporting module with automation module that helps organisation to minimise the most cumbersome task and hard followups . Also your CRM should be flexible enough in case you want to integrate it with other IT systems .

Also Read : Quick Checklist for CRM Software Reliability

Clear Outcome – What Is Your Expectation ?

We are really surprised to know that most of the business organisation are ignoring this step . They choose the CRM vendor without even seeing the output of the CRM implementation practically .

Yes is a critical software which helps you to maintain sales and customer relationship , without which your company pillars will stand nowhere in the marketplace . Setting clear goals and targets is the key to success for any business organisation .

The more specific your goal is , the better decision you will be able to take which means a better outcome . Are you planning to expand your business . They you may be in need of more leads to be materialised in order to increase a win rate , which can be achieved by choosing the best CRM solution .

Choosing the best CRM software development company can yield your growth and return on investment .

Winklix is leading software development company providing SalesForce customisation , Sugar CRM customisation and custom CRM development solution .

How To Get The Most Of Out CRM

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It has been seen that most of the time customer needs help of the customer to complete the purchase of the product . For any business organisation to run on the path of success , effective customer support is mandatory part . That is the reason , no matter what is the size of business , they all are loving to adopt Customer Relationship Management ( CRM ) solutions , which helps them to manage customer data , their order history , handling customer request and more .

CRM is a tool that helps the organisation to keep track record of customer information like order hostly , their preference and engagement and more . This facilitates organisation to know their customer at deeper level and showing the product or services that will be preferred by customer . CRM stores the information in central database which is easily accessible by all the departments of the organisation to make it more convenience for everyone present in the organisation .

To get the best out of CRM , it is important to focus on best practises that can facilitate us to get the maximum benefit out of it .

This article helps you to conceptualise most important things which you need to take care of while choosing your CRM . We at CRM software development company for over decades , and due to this experience we have prepared guideline to invest in new CRM .

Choose The CRM Required By You , And Not The Best CRM

Not every software is crafted according to your organisation need . It is always recommended to research on the CRM you are going to implement , rather than preferring the CRM solution often referred by your friends or business partner . Every CRM has their own pros and cons . So before finalisation of CRM solution you must check with all the requirement , and even if it does not contain some common features which is not required by you , you can choose that .

Also before choosing the CRM solution , you must also considered that whether you want local CRM , or you want cloud based solution . Whether you want to go on with monthly service contract , or want to invest one time upfront cost . Whether you are in need of customised solution ,  or common made features is enough for you .

So by keeping in mind of all the above points , you should take informed decision for solutions available in the market . It has always been seen that service contract may sounds costlier than upfront cost but may not support your future customisation and thereby increasing the cost .

Automate The Task Of Organisation

CRM tools are well designed to automate all the task of the organisation , thus saving heavy lifting of your business . For instance data entry , data entry is the real time consuming process if it is done manually , which can easily be automated by CRM . Taking the advantage of this automated system will not save your organisations precious time , but will also free up your employees and employing them in some other important task .

Training Of WorkForce About CRM

A good CRM system is not good until  you are aware of making full utilisation . So it is necessary to guide your workforce well about the benefits of CRM , why it has been implemented , how to use the same .

Periodic test to see how well they are been educated is crucial to ensure productivity does not go down .

Rules Are Important

For a CRM to function at its full potential , you should ensure that it is never being misused . For instance , you can put one rule that every lead lead data must be entered in CRM without any excuses . Enforcement of such types of rules helps data integrity , more transparency and smoother transactions .

Easy Availability Of Data Across All Departments

One of the major benefit of CRM is the data is easily accessible to all the department all the times due to centralised managed databased in CRM . By promising of data accessibility across all departments ,  CRM helps to avoid confusion which obviously may be the case when you are having to many cooking for preparing the single dish .

Assume if there is no CRM , it means once the customer raises any concern , the information may passed from one agent to another and then to another agent , which results in customer frustration and lost revenue . But with the help of CRM , a data entered by salesperson can be easily accessible by IT professional , or any one needy in the organisation within minutes , thereby facilitating best customer service possible .

Data Is Gold , Utilise It , Mine It

CRM are developed to handle mass amount of data . But what is the use of the data if you don’t have analytics of the data . CRM system has inbuilt feature to mine all the captured data and use that information to produce valuable conclusion which can help you to be future ready and make informative decision accordingly .

If your CRM does not allow you to analyse the data , then those information is nothing more than thus storing the data and consuming up your spaces !!

Also read : ERP Vs CRM Software

Choose Simple And User Friendly CRM

It is usually the case with many organisation that when they first encounter with the varieties of CRM solution , they want to invest in something that might be complex and far more than what is required by your organisation . Be careful with that and take the decision precisely – always choosing the best CRM that suits all your need is preferable . Choosing the features with lots of features that is none of the use for your organisation is ineffective for you . This step helps you and your organisation team member to take full advantages of your CRM , without wasting their time on unnecessary features .

Above all , you should always be willing to make changes in CRM in case required . The requirement  generates from your day to day operation and can guide you how they can be performed as per your expectation . CRM has more than the expected potential of performing well , but it will exist only if you successfully implement the CRM and do necessary customisation as required from time to time .

Winklix is also one of the best CRM software developer providing custom CRM software development , Salesforce Customisation and more .

How To Develop A Custom CRM For Large Enterprises

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Its hard to run a large enterprises without any customer relationship management system . In present market , numerous of CRM softwares are available in market tailored for different business sizes and industries . Then you must have a question arising in your mind that why to choose custom build CRM for your enterprise ?

These are lots of CRM mass vendors available in the market – the most famous being SalesForce which caters across 20 different configuration : Solutions for banks , hospital  , sales automation and more . Despite of its CRM functionality and flexibility to customise by a salesforce consultant , the enterprise where more than 20 user are working the cost will be $ 160- $ 320 per user/month , which is really a costly solution for any business organisation .

Why You Should Develop Your Own Custom CRM ?

The very first thing which comes in mind while choosing a CRM solution  is cost involved in developing the portal . Mass vendors ready to use CRM are expensive in nature and may contain excessive features that may not be viable for your organisation .

But while talking about the custom CRM development , the cost of developing this is also not cheap , but you will only pay for what functionality is required by you . Secondly employees will not have to spend additional hours in understanding the flow of the CRM as it is built as per the existing work flow of the organisation made custom for you .

For instance , while developing an CRM software for POS ( Point Of Sale) industry , we will be focusing on colours , icons and customer’s specifics approach for easy of usability for vendors and they can easily get familiar with the things as required by them

What Things Need To Be Considered While Developing CRM System ?

1) Ease Of Convenience

Time is money and should be invested with utmost care . Its better to save the time of the employees without wasting for searching things like common information or documents that should always be handy , and as per the requirement of the organisation , and at the same time can be able to generate reports and communicate directly with customer .

” Perfect CRM is one which is accessible from anywhere , from any device and provide meaningful reporting capabilities ”

2) Level Of Complexity

The more you add on the features in CRM , the more complex it will be as it will be requiring a set of technologies for CRM development .  We have developed a CRM for construction company using symphony2 framework because of its reliability and easy to use feature . Together with this framework we have used RESTful API and Ember.js . The project was built on a single page application thus allowing richer user experience .

3) Flexibility In Usage

When it comes to flexibility , it means your CRM should be capable enough to grow with your company , instead of choosing a new solution . Also it should be flexible enough of changing a setting of CRM system under particular process .

4) Compatibility In CRM

In addition to the other features in CRM , its compatibility with third party resources must be present . For instance the integration of CRM with messaging services , telephony , ERP and all .

5) How Reliable Is CRM

The CRM stores the most important data in the organisation , and it should be secured with utmost care , thus protection data from any third party security breach by applying appropriate measures .

Why It Is Necessary To Develop A Mobile Application For CRM ?

A web version of the CRM might be enough for organisation and internal management of employees , but when it comes to customer interaction mobile app must be available for interaction with them . Moreover mobile app is also necessary to communicate with sales employees of the organisation who are mostly in field to grab to give them new leads information , meeting schedules information and also to track the location of employees .
We would always prefer building of native mobile app for CRM solution for higher performance .

Defining MVP For CRM

We divide the CRM system application into two area’s :

1) Interaction With Customers

While taking about the CRM , it must have the following necessary feature in order to automate customer relationship :
  • Integrating it with telephony and message  and email service
  • Database of customer with filter to search as required
  • Tracking of customer
  • Generating of reports of customer
  • Calendar with build in notification for entering information on future meeting and updating the sales person accordingly .

2) Interaction With Internal Employees

CRM is all about allowing the task , defining the work load and ability to control all things by the Higher authority of the organisation . On the basis of these point the CRM system should have the minimum set of functions as follows :
  • Different level of access for different employees
  • Calendar with build in notification for assigned task .
  • Project assignment and monitoring .
  • Attachment of files and documents to particular task .
  • Communication with employees for particular task .
  • Getting task status update and its priority
  • Generation of workload reports .
Depending on the size of business you may be in need of different set of features in addition to the features listed above . The main motive is to create a CRM system than can automate the task of the organisation and help your organisation to reach to next level .
Winklix have dedicated team to develop custom CRM solution for your business as well as integration and customisation of SalesForce CRM . So in case you are looking for web based CRM development solution , or mobile app for the same you can right away contact us .