What should I look for in terms of a CRM?
You need to make sure that the CRM stores the data your business needs. You will also need to check that it can be accessed by all of your employees and with minimal retraining. We recommend web-based solutions for exactly that reason: most people know how to use a web browser and can quickly pick up the concept of an online CRM system.
Just a quick note: a system or an application doesn't need to be hosted to be web-based. You can host the system yourself and generally reduce the ongoing cost.
What are the benefits?
- Increased Sales: Knowing what promotions work and what products your clients have recently purchased will help you make more sales. You can plan the next promotion on the success of the last one and sell your client accessories and upgrades for the product that they already have.
- Increased Customer Knowledge: Having the data about your clients available in one location means that you can review what customers you have and what they are purchasing. This leads to knowing what products to develop / purchase and which ones to get rid of before they start costing you money.
- Central Data Repository: All your staff use the one system which means that all the data about your clients is available from one location at any time. It means that if there computer is stolen or attacked by a virus, all your business data is still safe.
- Easy Access For Distributed Staff: You no longer need to worry about what data a sales person working in another state or country has on their own computer or laptop. You can see their data and they can access it from anywhere in the world. In fact, you can set the system up so it can be securely accessed from an internet cafe!
- Central Management Of Backups: If you had to backup all your customer data now, how long would it take? For us, less than 10 minutes. Centralising the data storage allows for quick and easy backups.
- Management Of Marketing Campaigns: All of your electronic communication and marketing can be done centrally through the CRM system which means that no matter where your staff are, they can find out what communications a particular customer has received and act dynamically based on that information.
- Secure Management Of Company Data: A CRM system allows you to have all your information housed on either a server hosted at a secure facility or on your own premises ensuring that you can instantly prevent certain people accessing confidential company data.
We are working hard to add more pages and information to this web site! But, if the meantime, you are interested in any of our services, please give us a call or drop us an email via the online form. We offer many IT related services not yet listed on our site.