Here are several excerpts from an article by Dale Vile, Research Director for Freeform Dynamics, CRM Promise and Practicality for the Smaller Business. Be sure to also check out my commentary at the end of this post:
Most small businesses haven’t taken much notice of the whole CRM software phenomenon, dismissing it as something for the big guys and largely irrelevant to them. But is it?
Well no, actually. All organizations, regardless of their size, need to manage interactions with their customers and prospects, and are invariably doing so already in one way or another. In practice, however, most don’t think of these activities as “CRM”, they just get on with reaching out to new people during the sales process, looking after existing customers, and hopefully selling more to them over time.
The most popular tools used to support these activities are Microsoft Office based, e.g. Outlook/Exchange for day to day contact management, Excel for keeping lists, forecasting sales and analysing performance, and Word to produce everything from marketing literature, through proposals, to delivery notes. The next most popular tools are personal contact managers, made popular over the years by products such as ACT!.
Lots of small businesses run perfectly well on this basis, but it is not without its challenges, stemming mainly from the fact that the various components are typically not joined up, either between functions or users.
If you recognise this kind of setup, you’ll also recognise the problems that accompany it, from inefficient processes (lots of paper, emails, hand-offs, etc), through errors and misunderstandings because the right hand sometimes doesn’t know what the left is doing, to an overall lack of visibility as a result of everything being so fragmented, which in turn gets in the way of effective planning, management and optimisation of the business. In many ways, this is just a smaller version of the coordination and visibility issues faced by large corporates, but the good news is that something can now be done about them.
Smaller footprint software solutions from the likes of Microsoft and Sage, or even subscription services providing CRM capability over the wire (such as salesforce.com), are available today which can pull the threads together without the need for huge investments in software and expensive consultants. As a result, an increasing number of small businesses are realizing that CRM solutions really can deliver benefits in a practical and cost-effective manner.
The trick is to avoid trying to boil the ocean though, i.e. don’t try to automate everything at once across field sales, telesales, marketing, and service, just pick one problem to begin with where improvements will have the most impact. Many, for example, start with field sales automation, because keeping track of and supporting the activities of distributed teams is a perennial problem that is difficult to solve without joined up systems.
Wherever you start, however, it is advisable to work with natural behaviour rather than against it. In order to drive the payback in terms of productivity, effectiveness and business visibility, it is important that sales staff, for example, actually use the CRM system. At the very minimum it must therefore integrate seamlessly with their existing contacts, calendar and email system, as experience shows that you are unlikely to wean sales guys off Outlook and their PDA, and if you ask them to maintain everything in two places, it simply won’t happen. Fortunately, most of the solutions on the market take account of this, which also helps considerably from a training and ‘compliance’ perspective.
Perhaps the most important piece of advice for any small business considering a CRM solution, however, is to understand your own processes and needs before you implement. That’s not to say you need to have it all worked out before looking at options, as conversations with potential suppliers will often generate ideas that will be of use to you. However, if you know what you are trying to achieve before signing on the dotted line, you’ll have much more chance of success.
With the advent of Web 2.0 and on-demand technology there are more CRM choices for small businesses then ever before. However be forewarned, if selecting the right CRM software was easy, then the best and brightest wouldn’t blow it so badly… and expensively.
So, what’s the secret to success? Actually, it’s quite simple.
Before spending time and money looking for CRM software, critique your current customer management situation and identify the specific areas where you need to make improvements. Doing so will help you to uncover exactly what your orgainzation needs to do to improve its ability to get, keep and grow customers. Most importantly, the insight you’ll be gaining into your customer management weaknesses will be critical to your ability to find the “best” CRM software for your organization.
Here are just a few of the CRM solutions that small businesses should consider: Prophet CRM ( great for Outlook users), PipeLine Deals, LongJump, Really Simple Systems, ZOHO CRM and InfusionSoft.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hi Jim
Sounds like we are pretty much on the same page with regard to the need for understanding objectives and requirements before embarking on a CRM systems initiative.
Agree with your comments on hosted offerings, though I would add that due diligence is very important when qualifying service providers, particularly looking at issues around security, privacy, operations (e.g. backups) and lock-in. The first three are obvious, and should not be a problem with a responsible and experienced provider, but the latter can easily catch you out if the service is based on the provider’s proprietary home grown software. The question to ask is if I need to switch providers at some point down the line, how would I get three years worth of contact and history out of the online service into my new system. The problem is no different in principle to migrating between on-premise systems, but you need to make sure that you can get at your data in a usable format, which can be a challenge with some online solutions.
Cheers
Dale