CRM stands for customer relationship management; it offers a way of tracking and managing interactions with prospects, leads, and customers as they move through every stage of a company's sales cycle.
While ERP can let you focus on running your business, CRM tools help you focus on customers. CRM software helps businesses improve customer relationships by organizing and automating communications and activities across all customer-facing departments including sales, marketing, and customer service.
CRM software provides a level of automation that enables businesses to run smoothly and efficiently. And because every customer interaction is stored in a single place, you and your team can nurture these relationships at every stage.
As a manager, you can also gain insight into how your sales and marketing campaigns are performing, helping you make better-informed business decisions.
CRM software works by collecting an organization’s customer data, i.e., any interaction with existing or potential customers, and archiving them in a centralized environment, accessible across the organization.
This setup allows users to track and reference past customer interactions in order to more effectively move prospects along their journey through automated outreach, sales campaigns, and targeted marketing.
A CRM system enables employees to spend less time searching for customer data and more time developing and fostering connections. The centralized framework optimizes workflow, allowing business people to communicate both internally and with customers, maintaining a positive, personal experience at every point.
Besides helping business people create a better customer experience, the uniformity and depth of information provided by CRM software helps managers evaluate progress and devise effective strategies moving forward.
By using CRM software, your marketing team can identify the sources of leads, opportunities and closed sales. They can also locate customer information for upcoming campaigns and launch targeted email marketing campaigns.
When customers place orders for your products or services after such marketing campaigns, you can track these orders using your ERP or business management solution.
Simplify the sales process, shorten sales cycles and make the most of every sales opportunity. CRM software automates sales tasks, such as working up quotes and orders, forecasting sales, pursuing leads and converting them into opportunities using sales workflows.
CRM software helps you store your customer data in a central, secure location. This information includes email and communication histories, sales quotes, orders received, opportunities, and both open and resolved support cases.
And because this information is stored in a single place, you can feel confident you’re acting on up-to-date information.
With CRM, you can generate reports for key areas of your business, including sales, customer service, lead reports, and marketing. You can even create customized reports that measure how the business is performing against KPIs.
These types of reports help managers evaluate where the business stands and make better-informed decisions.
Simon Adcock
Managing Director, ATEC Security
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