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Why is Customer Relationship Management so important?
- October 26, 2018
- Posted by: Admin
- Category: Blogs, Business Intelligence, CRM
It should come as no surprise that business leaders have a lot of responsibilities. To keep their organization productive and profitable, they would have to consider all variables and angles that could impact not only their work but the work of those they manage. What would help immensely with a leader’s tasks would be integrating a capable sales team that is on the same page with all the other departments as well as their customer base.
Ultimately, selling products and services is the backbone to what keeps the lights on for many companies. By establishing a reliable CRM solution, key sales teams will be able to get remote and mobile access to all the essential information. Let’s take a deeper dive into what CRM is.
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy used to understand customers and their many requirements (what customers need, how to market to customers, how to effectively communicate, etc). This thinking leverages management techniques to maximize marketing and customer service capabilities to build strong relationships with pre, current, and potential customers.
In other words, CRM helps businesses build relationships with their customers, which in turn creates loyalty and customer retention. A CRM tool creates a simple user interface for data collection to help the management team identify and communicate with customers in an accessible way.
According to Gartner, CRM software totaled $26.3 billion in 2015 and predicts that figure will continue to rise through 2018.
We recommend CRM to be a part of your strategy, as it is integral to making and sustaining a winning business model. Small businesses and even freelancers can benefit from CRM processes as well. After all, who wouldn’t want to increase their customer retention and profits?
Benefits of CRM Solutions
Some key benefits of CRM Solutions:
- Increased understanding of the customer base
- Easier management of customer contact information
- Enhanced customer retention
- Access to customer data for sales teams
- Better management of sales pipeline or territory results
- Improved customer experiences
- Improved handling of leads, prospects, and productivity
- Attract new customers, clients, and contracts
- Execute relevant marketing programs
- Increased efficiencies and decreased costs
- Optimized product mix sold to customers
- Improved accuracy of sales forecasts
Types of Customer Relationship Management
There are many different types of CRM software in the market. However, most CRM software focuses solely on a major category listed below. While these categories are critical to customer management, having multiple perspectives of engagement would further reduce any chance of inefficiencies.
Analytical
The main function of analytical CRM is to analyze customer data so that management teams can better understand market trends and to a further extent: customer requirements. Ultimately, analytical CRM aims to improve customer satisfaction.
Operational
Operational CRM usually has to do with one of three types of operations: sales, marketing, or service. Operational CRM is an important tool for lead generation because it is often related to historic customer data such as: previous marketing campaigns, purchases, and satisfaction rates.
Collaborative
A Collaborative CRM happens when companies share information about customers with external companies and businesses. This is an excellent fitting for markets where innovation and new product development are paramount for success since additional data creates a very detailed view into the consumer landscape.
How to Choose the Right CRM Solution
CRM solutions come in all shapes and sizes. An effective CRM system will help businesses create a better experience for their employees and customers. It will equip business teams with the proper tools for sales efforts, marketing campaigns, meeting notes, order history, and service issues. These valuable capabilities will impact each customer ensuring that each engagement effort is treasured and productive.
Implementing CRM strategies for business use can appear to be a time consuming and expensive process. Rest assured, however, for it can be a very strong potential for return on investment.
CRM ensures that companies do not waste time and money applying the wrong approaches that aren’t suitable for their customers. Due to the potential of having so much data-driven precision, companies can maximize their sales and development capabilities.
For more information, discover how Plasma’s managed services can offer your organization the ability to boost workflow efficiencies and increase productivity. Call toll free at 1-800-852-0927 or click the button below.
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We are implementing Plasma Ag Solutions across our network of locations. Plasma Ag provides several capabilities that stand out for our users such as Programs, Rebate management, and Inventory tracking. It is quite difficult to track margin information on crop protection products in our industry so our Owner Operators love the transparency the system provides. We utilize the system to professionalize our support to the network and it has become a bit success with all of them.
Several hundreds of our retail locations and joint ventures use Plasma Ag solutions as a part of their core operations. Plasma solutions provide very useful tools and deep insights to users – including tracking customer transactions and financial information. Their applications are tightly integrated with CRM, ERP, Accounting, and our other mission critical IT infrastructure and third-party systems. The dashboards provide rich analysis and insights that helps us adjust to the changing markets.
Plasma Ag solutions have been a tremendous asset to our operations. They offer powerful capabilities such as managing Retail programs, Products, Programs, local discounts, and wraps. Ability to track inventory at physical locations, calculating true and average costs, rebates and accruals on user-friendly and simple interfaces has helped us and our retail customers adopt Plasma Ag solutions quickly.
Our software, system and processes used to be an old struggling engine. Plasma team solved all that. With exceptional training and planning, their consultative executive team down to their support team executed the deployment with first-class speed and professionalism. Their platform not only removed all the pain points in my division, but also created a ripple effect benefiting my entire company.
It has been my experience that Plasma has the technical expertise, commitment, and work-ethic to deliver best-in-class solutions that allow business owners to fully realize business strategies and objectives. They work in a highly professional manner to ensure that the clients’ requirements and recommendations are fully realized. I would highly recommend Plasma for any web enablement initiative that you may be considering.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us as our online business partner. I don’t even consider our work with them outsourcing because Plasma management takes the time to truly understand our business and is able to direct its technology resources for the most efficient and quality output possible. I don’t think you can say that about many companies in their space.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us with our online requirements. I would recommend them to any company looking to better manage their online presence.
It has been my pleasure to work with the Plasma Team since August 2008. We have completed three major builds and multiple smaller projects in this time. I heartily recommend Plasma Comp to anyone needing a workable, practical and effective system solution. Plasma’s Q&A process was extremely thorough. They quickly understood what was needed and then worked the process with pointed and penetrating questions to ensure they had the entire picture of the finished product.
I think Plasma has come a long way in embracing our philosophy of becoming more agile, both leading and following in this area when necessary. The teams have been very open to change and have a great attitude. I have no complaints!
Plasma is a great vendor to work with. They took us from an email-based process to a fully designed, web-based workflow. They have dramatically changed how our devices are certified to be used on our network and they will save you time as well! One of the many processes in our current environment has saved us so much time; from four months down to a few days!
