Do we need a CRM solution? Yes. No. Maybe

You may be won­der­ing if you even need a CRM solu­tion. That’s a ques­tion that many, espe­cial­ly small­er com­pa­nies, ask them­selves. Well, the answer is pret­ty sim­ple, espe­cial­ly since even more afford­able or free CRM sys­tems are extreme­ly pow­er­ful nowa­days. If your com­pa­ny sells prod­ucts or ser­vices to cus­tomers and you want to grow or increase sales, you have a need for a CRM. How­ev­er, if your sales are spo­radic and infre­quent, you can prob­a­bly sur­vive with­out a CRM.
So, that was the short answer- and now here comes the long one:

As the proverb goes; “what brought you here won’t bring you there.” This state­ment can be applied to a devel­op­ing busi­ness. Dur­ing the start-up phase, you may have relied on Excel spread­sheets, or some­thing sim­i­lar, to track sales orders and inquiries.

But with the growth of a com­pa­ny, the com­plex­i­ty also grows. Not only do you need to man­age sales orders, you also need to mon­i­tor turnover and the sales cycle. Every com­pa­ny which has grown has cer­tain­ly also expe­ri­enced growth prob­lems. But how do you know when you need a CRM? Here are five signs that tell you it’s time for a CRM sys­tem:

You have to painstakingly gather information about a customer

Have you ever talked to a cus­tomer who asked a ques­tion and you have had to search for an answer for over an hour? Please do not believe that the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy cus­tomers of today have enough time for that. They can eas­i­ly and quick­ly move to one of your com­peti­tors, who has the suit­able and tools to stand out in a hyper-con­nect­ed world.

When it comes to cus­tomer infor­ma­tion, the last thing you need and want is data scat­tered around dif­fer­ent loca­tions: you have a Post-It note, an Excel spread­sheet and mul­ti­ple unsyn­chro­nised pieces of cus­tomer infor­ma­tion in var­i­ous places. The prob­lem is that the dif­fer­ent but also rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion is sep­a­rat­ed. The result: you can’t make a strate­gic deci­sion.

To max­i­mize the effec­tive­ness of your sales, you need to cap­ture data at every stage of your cus­tomer life cycle. How do you get a com­plete pic­ture of your cus­tomer rela­tion­ships when dif­fer­ent peo­ple doc­u­ment and track cus­tomer inter­ac­tions in dif­fer­ent ways? And it’s exact­ly at this point that you should notice that you need a CRM sys­tem to struc­ture your data in a way which allows cus­tomer-focused employ­ees to store and access infor­ma­tion in a cen­tral loca­tion.

You no longer have to painstak­ing­ly com­pose spread­sheets, notes and emails to deter­mine the his­to­ry of a par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer. With a CRM sys­tem, you can quick­ly access impor­tant sales and man­age­ment reports.

No CRM, no follow-up

If you don’t send bills, you won’t be paid. As a result, you will not be able to pay your bills and keep the busi­ness run­ning. If you do not send pay­ment renewals on time, you can lose an impor­tant part of your busi­ness. If you do not use a CRM sys­tem, you will lose data.

There is sim­ply no more effi­cient way to organ­ise your data and infor­ma­tion. How are you cur­rent­ly remind­ed to send an invoice or renew­al? A CRM sys­tem can do that auto­mat­i­cal­ly for you. Addi­tion­al­ly, your CRM sys­tem can show you the cus­tomers who need more atten­tion.

You’re lost if you’re not in the office

Because we live in an extreme­ly net­worked world, it is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly easy to work from any­where, any­time. How­ev­er, with­out a CRM sys­tem, this will not be the case. If your sales team needs to attend a con­fer­ence, how can it keep up with new cus­tomer infor­ma­tion with­out hav­ing to go to the office?

Nowa­days, your sales team need to stay up-to-date on the go. They may receive valu­able infor­ma­tion local­ly, but if they are forced to take notes else­where, the infor­ma­tion can only be shared when they return to work. With a CRM sys­tem, you can enter infor­ma­tion in real time — from any­where, any­time. This sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the risk of los­ing infor­ma­tion.

Mobile CRM solu­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly effi­cient as they, for exam­ple, allow your sales team to access the sys­tem from any device.

Without automation, you’re overwhelmed by the daily sales routine

If you spend more time search­ing for data than look­ing after cus­tomers, you know you urgent­ly need a CRM. When it comes to Excel ver­sus a CRM, there is a clear win­ner. In an ide­al world, you want con­sis­tent sales reports that will match your progress and your tar­gets.

How long does it take to man­u­al­ly fig­ure out how many leads you’ve processed in the last week, last month or last year? Which of your sales employ­ees is the most pro­duc­tive? How long does your sales cycle last on aver­age? All of this data needs to be under­stood, but it’s just too awk­ward and time-con­sum­ing to cap­ture it man­u­al­ly.

A CRM func­tion is there­fore the log­i­cal choice for cre­at­ing advanced reports. Remem­ber: data is pow­er.

Your business is growing faster than you can

As your busi­ness grows, you need scal­able sales process­es. At this point, you’ll prob­a­bly begin to under­stand why you need a CRM solu­tion. Prob­lems often start with hav­ing man­u­al process­es that are incon­sis­tent with­in your sales and mar­ket­ing teams. If you only get five leads per day, then it might be okay to use a spread­sheet. But if more than 20 leads come in dai­ly, you need a more advanced solu­tion.

You do not want to hire new employ­ees only for the exist­ing ones to leave because they’re frus­trat­ed by man­u­al and inef­fi­cient process­es. You want more leads, but you can’t even track those you already have? Maybe you have a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive who stores infor­ma­tion on his phone and anoth­er who writes it down in his note­book. With this kind of incon­sis­ten­cy, there is no insight for man­agers or oth­ers. As your busi­ness grows, you need sleek process­es and clear poli­cies.

When employ­ees leave the com­pa­ny, they can eas­i­ly take their con­tacts and infor­ma­tion with them. A CRM sys­tem stores all the data on one plat­form, so you always have an overview of your leads and your sales cycle. Addi­tion­al­ly, there are indi­vid­ual access rights so if any­one leaves, every­one else still has all the data if need­ed.

The CRM in Bitrix24 is a platform for organizing and tracking interaction with potential and existing customers, partners, agents and other contacts.
Have a look for yourself!

It is our belief that “sim­ple col­lab­o­ra­tion” is the effi­cient, future-ori­en­tat­ed key to your company’s suc­cess.

We are hap­py to answer any fur­ther ques­tions you may have. Please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.

Overview of our ser­vices:

• CONSULTATION AND CONCEPTION. No two com­pa­nies are alike: LINXYS analy­ses your company’s cur­rent sta­tus and works with you to find the opti­mal goal.
  We will glad­ly arrange a free intro­duc­to­ry meet­ing with you and intro­duce you to the basic prin­ci­ples of net­worked work­ing using a social intranet. At this meet­ing, we dis­cuss the per­son­alised options for your com­pa­ny with those respon­si­ble.
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• IMPLEMENTATION. LINXYS imple­ments your project accord­ing to your indi­vid­ual needs. Trans­par­ent and con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our cus­tomers is stan­dard prac­tice for us. Togeth­er with LINXYS, make your intranet the place where you can reach your employ­ees and com­mu­ni­cate with them at an equal lev­el. As a com­pre­hen­sive part­ner, we accom­pa­ny you and, with the right solu­tions and strate­gies, we ensure that you can suc­cess­ful­ly advance the per­for­mance of your com­pa­ny.
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• SERVICE. Opti­mal and indi­vid­ual: your new dig­i­tal enter­prise plat­form. From cor­po­rate brand­ing to indi­vid­ual inter­faces, LINXYS always focus­es on your com­pa­ny and your indi­vid­ual inter­nal process­es.
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• SOLUTIONS. Intro­duce pro­fes­sion­al changes and con­vince your employ­ees of the added val­ue. LINXYS offers indi­vid­ual solu­tions — before, dur­ing and after the roll­out.
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• WORKSHOPS. Improve effi­cien­cy and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reduce costs through employ­ee accep­tance. LINXYS con­ducts tai­lor made work­shops to reach these goals.
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