CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It's a way of tracking and managing interaction with prospects, leads and customers as they move through every stage of a company's sales cycle.
If ERP systems help you focus on running your business, CRM tools help you focus on customers. CRM software helps businesses improve customer relationships by organising and automating communications and activities across all customer-facing departments including sales, marketing and customer service.
Using CRM software, your marketing team can identify the sources of leads, opportunities and closed sales. They can also find customer information for upcoming campaigns and send targeted email marketing campaigns.
When customers place orders for your products or services after these marketing campaigns, you can track these orders using your ERP software or business management solution.
You can simplify the sales process, shorten sales cycles and make the most of every sales opportunity. CRM software automates sales tasks such as creating quotes and orders, forecasting sales, progressing leads and converting them to opportunities using sales workflows.
CRM platforms store your customer data in a central, secure location. This information includes email and communication histories, sales quotes, orders received, opportunities, and open and resolved support cases.
As this information is in one 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, marketing and so on. You can even create tailored reports that measure how the business is performing against KPIs.
These types of reports help managers evaluate where the business stands and make more informed decisions.
Simon Adcock
Managing Director, ATEC SECURITY
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