Assessing Custom CRM Solutions
When deciding on a custom CRM solution, it is important to know what you really need before you begin looking. Failure to do so may lead you down the wrong path, obscure the initial objective of your customer relationship management strategy, and cost you a lot of money. How do you prevent this from happening? It’s a matter of determining which areas of the business are lacking and which are successful but could be doing even better.
In general, a CRM solution is meant to provide a turnkey solution that you can switch on to improve the systems and operation of your business processes. After all, it is much more efficient and cost-effective to substitute human resources with computer systems if the two are comparable. CRM solutions can easily organize and arrange your information in a manner that humans cannot.
A good way to identify deficiencies in your business model is to analyze the individual business units separately (i.e. sales, marketing, customer support, operations, etc…). Doing so will allow to locate bottlenecks, holes, and areas in need of improvement. Subsequently, you can rank the business units in order of how much attention they need. As a rule of thumb, you want to target areas where the biggest ROI gains can be achieved in the shortest period of time. These are “quick wins” and a customer relationship management system can help you accomplish this. Secondly, you want to look at areas that may not be as vulnerable or weak, but do provide some opportunity and room for improvement. These will play into the longer term role of the CRM strategy.
Once you establish your priorities and rank your business units, it will quickly become clear how you will want your custom CRM solution to shape up. Bringing this research and due diligence to the table will till ultimately simplify the development planning and implementation. In the end, your custom CRM solution should streamline business processes, increase productivity, enhance loyalty, and… make you more money.
