CRM is a powerful tool for your business when used efficiently by the right set of people with the digital skills required.
The importance of CRM is derived from the benefits it offers for businesses. It is very important to survive & win in the omnichannel environment, businesses need to know about their customer interactions, where they took place, how they took place, and identify areas that need improvement.
Also, to thrive in this highly competitive digital market, businesses shall need a single integrated dashboard view of potential customers to analyse and discover ways to sell smarter and faster and digital tools to market their brand.
In both scenarios, the CRM solution is revolutionary.
Before diving into the importance of CRM in today’s world, you will be surprised to know that the advent of CRM was around the 1950s and had a consistent growth until the 1970s. CRM has seen massive growth in recent years, just because the goal of the CRM solution is very simple – “To improve business.”
What is CRM?
CRM software is a service-based technology that builds a bridge between a company and its existing and potential customers and manages relationships and interactions between them. The CRM software uses data analysis to process huge chunks of information, thereby streamlining business processes and profitability and improving business relationships between a company and its customers.
A report by Gartner found that “CRM is now a $36 billion industry, companies keep investing in CRM solutions to drive business goals forward. “Customer Relationship Management is simple. When integrated with websites, calls, social media, chats, e-mail, and various other features — this software turns into an all-in-one solution. CRM benefits all businesses irrespective of their size and it is used as a major tool for driving sales and marketing systems. Any company which invests in CRM will help expedite business growth in a prominent fashion.
Importance of CRM for Businesses today
1. Helps accelerate Business Growth
The CRM helps align all the activities related to sales, marketing, and service teams and streamlines the operations with built-in tools and integrations.
Any company irrespective of size will benefit from managing and accessing a record of conversations, purchases, sales, and marketing data that can be associated with leads and customers. Revenue streams improve by a large margin with CRM integration.
2. Aligns activities across teams
Alignment across teams is an integral part of success for any business. when the sales, marketing, and customer service teams work in coordination – it helps streamline all the stages of the customer’s journey. Businesses can synchronise the data to deliver a seamless customer experience and maintain a unified brand voice.
3. Data Sharing
All data in your business are synced automatically and the teams will have access to all the records shared within the system. CRM manages to synchronise all the information from different tools in one place. Most businesses use Email, calendar, drive, and contact databases as standalone tools. With Integrations in your CRM solution, you don’t have to juggle between tools or input everything manually, business and big data will reflect in the system for you. “With CRM, you never miss out on things – CRM reminds you at the right time, you don’t have to dig through the database.”
4. Easy Day-to-Day Tasks
You don’t have to worry about scattered tasks that are a mess of your routine work. With CRM, you can now automate day-to-day tasks easily. You will know the list of clients to be followed up on, the interested client list who needs attention, and knowing the lead scores helps in prioritizing the clients. Planning your daily activity with a CRM system is like the cherry on top. Everything is there in your CRM system, and you can effectively organize your daily tasks better.
5. Enhanced Customer Interactionsx
The interactions between your opportunities, leads, and customers are effectively managed by the CRM system which helps to know your customer better and reach out to them proactively. With CRM, you get all insights about the customer data which will be useful in reaching out to them at the right time and to further enhance the experience of the customers which will augment the brand value. CRM helps businesses improve customer relationships in an efficient way.
6. Tracking sales Progress
CRM system lets you track the sales stages for each month and based on that data your sales team can make decisions regarding progress, track customer journeys, close gaps, look for further improvement, and assign leads to sales reps. Thus, CRM provides insights which help forecast the overall revenue and performance in the sales cycle.”
7. Personalized Communication
Personalized messages create a positive impact on customers’ decisions. It is said that 86% of customers stated that personalization plays a role in their purchase decisions. Today most CRM solutions offer tools to send personalized messages or emails to customers, add names to the marketing emails and send personalized targeted campaigns to build a strong relationship with customers. As per Gartner, “CRM helps increase the average purchase value by 40%.”
8. Documentation & Reporting
The CRM system not only collects, stores, manages, and shares documents, but does a great job of presenting it the way you want. You can customise reports and dashboards, track the issues, forecast sales, manage budgets, and do much more with CRM solutions. CRMs integrated with third-party platforms such as G-Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, and SharePoint lets you create every possible report with the data provided in the system.
9. Workflow Automation
Automated workflows make things easier. CRM platform lets you create workflows that trigger action for a particular task. CRM can automate repetitive, manual jobs to streamline the workflow and send automated emails and campaigns which in turn saves time and improves the overall productivity.
10. Improves the organization’s Efficiency
Every detail, each and every interaction is there in your CRM system. The team members can collaboratively work to achieve organizational goals in unison. With one centralised platform, CRM reminds you of “what to do” and “when to do it”. CRM lays a strong foundation that improves the effectiveness of work and thereby organizational efficiency. According to a Forrester study, “CRM delivers an ROI of almost 245%.”
Final Thoughts
Businesses of all sizes, irrespective of their operations can use CRM to grow their business in an outstanding way. You can effectively automate sales & marketing processes, manage communications, and streamline everyday activities. With advanced features and third-party integrations, CRM provides everything your business needs. Are you going to invest in a CRM now? Who will say no?
Author Bio:
Rosareen Sandra J
Digital Marketing Associate at https://www.apptivo.com
Rosareen Sandra is a Digital Marketing Associate at Apptivo. In her current role, she writes blogs, creates content for social media, and manages marketing activities.
She holds a Ph.D. in Omni-channel marketing. She was a part of Executive development programs in IIM on ‘Strategic management’ and ‘Digital Marketing Analytics.’ She is passionate about marketing. She believes in delivering value to the customers, clients, partners, and society at large by communicating and exchanging offerings.
Author Profile
- Online Media & PR Strategist
- I am an Online Media & PR strategist at ClickDo Ltd. & SeekaHost Ltd. and a Blogger and Educator by Passion. I am also a contributor to many News, Business, Education and Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom. I have completed a journalism summer course at the London School of Journalism and manage various blogs.
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