CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is 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 lets 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.
CRM software provides a level of automation that enables businesses to run smoothly and efficiently. And, because every customer interaction is stored in one 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 more informed business decisions.
CRM software works by collecting an organisation’s customer data—any interaction with existing or potential customers—and organising it into a centralised environment, accessible across the organisation.
This allows users to track and reference past customer interactions to more effectively move prospects forward on 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 their connections. The centralised framework optimises workflow, allowing business people to communicate both internally and with the customer to maintain a positive, personal experience at every point.
Besides helping business people create a better customer experience, the uniformity and breadth of information provided by CRM software aids managers in evaluating progress and devising effective strategies moving forward.
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 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 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 open and resolved support cases.
And because 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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