CRM Systems

Customer relationship management (CRM Systems) is a broadly recognised, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects.

It involves utilising technology to organise, automate, and synchronise business processes - principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and technical support.

The overall goals are to find, attract and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold and reduce marketing and customer service costs.

CRM Systems are now considered a necessary fundamental company-wide business strategy embracing any and every department.

CRM Benefits

At its best CRM implementation is effective at, maximising human resources, streamlining processes, utilising the most appropriate technology that creates a synergy across any business to increase profitability and reduce operational costs.

In summary CRMs enable you to achieve:

• Streamlined sales processes
• Increased client contact efficiency
• Streamlined service processes
• Higher sales and service close rates
• Streamlined marketing processes
• Better profiling and targeting
• Higher sales productivity
• Reduced expenses
• Higher services productivity
• Increased market share
• Added cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
• Higher overall profitability
• Improved service
• Marginal costing
• Increased customer loyalty and retention
• Accurate and easy trend reporting and analytics

Despite the benefits, many companies are still not fully using a CRM advantage.

CRM Challenges

There are a number of potential factors that may limit the CRMs positive impact on a company:

Poorly scoped and ill-considered CRM?

A CRM can be created to solve almost any problem, ensuring you have a team who can identify the real business problems and goals is the key to success. The purpose of a CRM is to improve your business process and efficiency not make it more complicated or bureaucratic.

Poorly considered or ill conceived CRMs are an expensive waste of time and resources that generally stop the company from considering other future CRM providers.

Dusza take the time to really listen to your business objectives and intelligently consider how all the facets of your business intersect. We ask ‘why’ a lot. We want to see how you currently operate and what, if any, processes you follow. This allows us to identify the real problems in your business before creating the right solution.

Initial return on investment is not recognised and budget or time scale set is unrealistic It is easy for the initial cost of a CRM to be the sole reason why a company chooses not to implement such a system.

On average a SME CRM costs from £15k and you should expect to pay an annual maintenance fee. What some decisions makers do not realise is that a well implemented CRM can mean a higher staff efficiency, even when your businesses is busier, therefore recruitment costs can be considerably decreased. The UK’s average annual salary in April 2009 was over £25,000. CRMs can literally pay for themselves and more within their first year of implementation.

Ongoing maintenance fees are essential for any solution provider to support your business and ensure continuity of service. 10% of the total build cost of a CRM should be set aside as a maintenance budget. You need to know the system your business uses to become more profitable, will be accessible and working as efficiently as possible when you need it.

Isolated initiatives?

If the mangers don’t believe in the CRM objectives and the implemented solution, then it is likely to fail.

When processes in a business change this can cause employee distress. It is a human trait to fear change - Even when it betters their lives. You need your workforce to be on side with the CRM implementation. You must be a champion of its benefits so they can understand the purpose of its implementation.

At least one member of management needs to be fully involved in the CRM planning and implementation and be fully aligned with the goals. This person should also understand how to operate the core of the CRM. This will help the rest of the work force during the time of adjustment to working practices after implementation.

No maintenance?

You wouldn’t expect to get much mileage from a ten year old lorry that has never had an oil change. You would expect to invest in oil changes to save on big engine rebuilds or expect to purchase new tyres to increase fuel efficiency.

In a similar way the regular maintenance of your CRM is crucial to optimum operation. Regular checks on the server’s (on which it resides) health is crucial to ensure the stability of your CRM. Regular 24 hour back ups of your CRM allow you to feel secure that your data is safe.

Your maintenance package includes all costs for remedying problems with both our hardware and your CRM software itself. The only additional costs you may will incur is support due to issues caused by your infrastructure but this is usually negligible and charged at our hourly rates (see terms and conditions) but only charged to the nearest 15 minutes.

Something goes wrong?

Technology is never infallible and sometimes it goes wrong. Consider the problems you are likely to have faced either with your personal or work computer during the past 6 months. A single computer that goes wrong is frustrating, an entire network of work computers going wrong costs businesses heavily.

Rather than asking you to invest in the latest, robust, high end computers and network infrastructure we have chosen to provide our CRM solution online. Our CRMs are compatible with ANY computer that has internet access and a compliant web browser (the browser we recommend is free to download online).

Our servers are housed in our private racks within the London Hosting Centre (LHC). LHC features world class resilient infrastructure including multiple levels of 24/7 security, stable high-capacity power supplies, fire protection and environmental controls - This is the technology most SME and businesses simply can’t afford to invest in.

Our network is fully redundant and has been built using the latest Juniper routing hardware along with Cisco and HP switching equipment. Utilising VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) on our routers and rSTP (Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol) on our switches, which along with duplicating all core infrastructure provides hitless failover in case of a hardware failure to ensure world-class uptimes.

Interested in streamlining your operations and increasing productivity?

Call 0845 094 6442 or use the Quick Quote to tell us about your project and get in touch with Dusza today!

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