The amount of data we live with every day grows without stopping, and companies are witnessing a growing complexity in their environment.
If the huge amount of customer information is not handled properly, this becomes a headache, missed opportunities, causes delays, lack of control, and ultimately loss of sales.
To try to combat these problems companies often buy systems that help them manage their customers, called CRM, which we can translate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as “Customer Relationship Manager”.
It is a tool with which you can create databases with the most relevant information of your prospects and your clients. The integrated data in the platform allows to optimize processes in the sales department and the marketing department, attend each client in a personalized way and design specific sales strategies to sell more and better.
Independent CRM?
But is the best option for the company to acquire an independent CRM system for managing their prospects, making quotes, and managing the sales cycle until they become customers?
A priori we can say that if the selected CRM system has a total integration with the company’s management system there would be no problem, since the customer data, the contacts and all the commercial activities would be in a single database and they can be consulted only by pressing a button.
With integration we understand that the generation of business proposals, created from the CRM, can be converted into sales orders, invoice sales orders and Potential Customers become Customers, and you can track an order from how it was generated until its delivery and subsequent collection.
In addition, the sales team has full visibility to the status updates of the orders and can make both price inquiries and price changes and discounts if necessary.
As a most important point, what determines the success in the use of a CRM is to allow users to incorporate the important information in a simple, agile and natural way at the time that is easiest for all the processes that exist. in your business. This is where having a fully integrated CRM increases its importance, to have more and more opportunities to continue increasing the related information.
But unfortunately this does not happen in most cases of acquiring a CRM in companies.
The most common is that companies acquire independent CRMs due to the speed of installation, low costs and beautiful graphics, without verifying their total integration with their management system.
Verify this integration is of utmost importance, in order to avoid duplication in data entry, maintain several computer systems, train staff in different systems and therefore a higher final cost.
So, if the CRM system you are selecting has full integration with your main management system, this is a good option. But if CRM does not have full integration, the best option is an ERP that includes CRM functionality.