Make CRM software more productive

The purpose of any CRM is to help you to manage and improve your business process. The more effectively you use the CRM system to manage your customer details, the more quickly you can achieve your business strategic goals.

Here are few points that you can use to get more out of your CRM software.

Get people to use your CRM

The most important step of your CRM life cycle is to get your people use it. If you want to get more out of your CRM software system then get the users to maximize its use. Many users may resist the change, may perform actions outside the CRM system, etc,. but you need to set up a challenging process of shifting everything to the system so that you can ultimately get 100% CRM adoption going forward.

Users may take time to adopt it completely. Some users may quickly adapt to the system but some may take time to understand and use it. Give sufficient time and training to make them use it effectively.

The sooner you get all your users on the system and entering data, the more effective the system will be and the more productive your CRM project will become.

Train your Users

Just bringing a CRM solution to your process doesn’t really help. Make sure you include enough time and budget for effective training.

Users should not only understand how to use the software, they should understand the benefits of the new system and how their part of the operation fits with the rest of the company.

Training builds familiarity with the system and confidence for the users. That not only makes users more productive in the first instance, it also encourages them to use it the way they find it comfortable and useful.

Extract Information

Using CRM effectively is the key to getting the most productivity out of your CRM solution. A CRM system enables users to evaluate buying cycles, identify prospects capable of buying within a period of time and view your executives activities which indicates how actively your executives are working on, etc. CRM can help you to forecast growth, analyze and make business decisions based on these data.

CRM software helps companies organize, access and manage easily all the existing and prospective customer information. Enforcing discipline, training and motivating the staff to use the software are very important factors.

A CRM system can become one of the most important tools you’ll need to scale your business.

 

Implementing CRM solution in a simplified way

You may have implemented a CRM solution for your company, but everyone in your organization may not have properly used the new system. This could cause many companies to feel that the CRM is not worth and may stop using it. Employees think that using a CRM solution is too much of a time consuming to learn how to use the system and to make use of the data collected.

Every new solution takes sometime to really understand and use it. But the time invested really pays off later. Here are few ways how you can simplify your way of using a CRM solution thus ensuring a good way to use the solution and get benefits from it.

1. Establish Best Practices

Chalk out the best practices to use the system. Engage actively with the end users and figure out the best process for activities. This will help all the users to follow one process and to collaborate together to provide fruitful output.

2. Use what is needed

Your CRM may offer many features with the package, but that does not force you to use what is not required and end up in wasting time and energy. Not every feature is going to be relevant to your organization. If you already have certain process that is defined, follow the same. If something new is available that is going to help you out, then make use of it. (You can try www.maplecrm.com, which offers features that is tailored based on your requirement)

3. Automate certain tasks

Don’t unnecessarily waste your employees time on tedious, repetitive tasks. Set up automated systems to do the work for you. Develop templates to avoid time on drafting the information everytime. Email templates, Invoice/Quotation profiles, Report templates can save much time. The easier your system is to use, the more people will actually use it.

4. Keep data segregated and clean

Your CRM software is only as good as the data you have stored in it. Every employee should ensure of keeping up-to-date information in the system. If the system is not updated regularly, then slowly this can add up to a database filled with obsolete information. Keep the data categorized so that you know where to search for it when it is needed. By classifying them in different ways, it is easier for you to differentiate your customers and focus only on those which is worth spending time.

Adoption of a new CRM system can be difficult to deal with for any organization, but with a strong commitment and a simplified process, your company can be on it’s way to CRM success.