Forget about core sales functionality

All CRM systems have the same basic sales functionality: accounts and contacts, leads and opportunities, and sales pipeline forecasting. Different systems deliver this in slightly different ways, but ultimately this core functionality is essentially the same across all systems. It is therefore important to not let the well-crafted marketing material, with the shiny screenshots, distract you from asking the key questions that will help you select the right CRM system for your organisation.

The right fit

The first questions that people ask when selecting any IT system are around cost and how much you get for your money. After all, there is always a budget we need to remain within and you can be sure that it’s one of the questions the project sponsor will ask you. However, what we should really focus on and what ultimately drives a strong ROI, is user adoption.

A system your users are happy with that lets them work productively, delivers a much greater benefit to your organisation than one that maybe costs a little less, but your users find frustrating and ultimately stop using. A key question should therefore be:

“Does this CRM system deliver on the issues our users care about; and will our users want to use it?”

Before choosing a CRM system, it’s important to conduct some analysis to understand what the users want from the system and will make it enticing to them. Common feedback could be comments such as:

  • I don’t want to have to enter my username and password every time I want to check something in the CRM;
  • I want to be able to easily track emails from customers into the CRM without having to stop what I’m doing;
  • I just want to see the information that’s important to me and what I need to know;
  • I need to be able to easily find all the information we have about our customers so I can make informed choices;
  • I need to be able to access the system when I’m travelling or with customers and I need to be able to see real time information.

Whatever is important to your users, make sure you capture and understand it. This will help you ensure the CRM system you choose will be better adopted internally.

Right for right now

A CRM system needs to be able to deliver exactly what your business needs from the word go. I’ve been delivering CRM systems for over 10 years and I have never delivered one that was ready to go out of the box. In my experience every company wants some changes made, whether that’s a custom report, some extra fields to capture the specific information they are interested in, or a workflow to send out notification emails when key events occur. Whether your organisation needs only a few changes, or whether it needs a lot, the question to ask is:

“Can this CRM system do what we need it to do; and what is that change going to cost?”

Right for the future

Once your CRM is live, if the system delivers on its promises, sales will pick up and your company will grow. As your company adapts to that change, your CRM will need to adapt with it, in whatever form that takes:

  • More users working across different time-zones and on multiple devices?
  • Selling to companies across the world in multiple currencies?
  • Refining and enhancing sales processes as you adapt to new markets?
  • Providing after sales support to an increasing customer base across multiple channels?
  • Adapting business processes to be more streamlined and increase efficiencies?
  • Needing ever better reporting and analysis to keep visibility and control of your operation?

Your CRM system needs to be able to scale and adapt quickly with changes in your business to keep it relevant and to keep user adoption and productivity high.

Joining the dots

All departments within an organisation depend on each other to contribute their part to the overall business process: Sales rely on Marketing to increase awareness and generate leads; Delivery rely on Sales to keep the business coming in. Accordingly, the most effective CRM systems are those that understand these synergies and provide tangible benefits for all areas of the business, rather than treating sales as an autonomous body.

This can be achieved in a number of ways, the primary of which are:

  1. Modern CRM systems increasingly provide functionality to handle every aspect of how your company engages with your customers. This lets the various teams in our organisation collaborate more effectively together to give our customers a more joined up service;
  2. Powerful enterprise reporting and analysis tools can deliver the visibility between departments and the overarching insights that inform good business decisions at all levels;
  3. Data integration and workflow tools allow data to automatically flow across your organisation at the right times, tying together the efforts of your organisation as a whole.

Whichever approach, or combination of approaches, is right for your organisation, the question we should ask is:

“Does this CRM system have the capabilities to deliver the benefits that will help my organisation work more effectively as a cohesive whole?”

 In summary, the four key questions to ask of any CRM system are:

  1. Does this CRM system deliver on the issues our users care about; and will our users want to use it?
  2. Can this CRM system do what we need it to do; and what is that change going to cost?
  3. Is this CRM system able to scale and adapt quickly with changes in my business; and again, what is that going to cost?
  4. Does this CRM system have the capabilities to deliver the benefits that will help my organisation work more effectively as a cohesive whole?

If the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these questions, you’ve found a good system to take forward.

Our CRM of choice for most organisations is Dynamics 365 for Sales find out our 9 favourite features here.

For any support finding the right CRM for you please contact us to find out more from myself (Peter Rush) and the team.

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