Selecting the right customer relationship management system can help your company streamline sales management, marketing, and customer service. That can ultimately grow revenue and give managers better oversight of the business. Although choosing CRM software can be time-consuming, it’s important to take the time to first evaluate your company’s needs in order to choose a system that can keep pace with the growth of your company. Next, you should assess your company’s internal resources, paying particular attention to technology capabilities and budget. When you can clearly state your needs and resources, you’ll be in the best position to approach vendors and evaluate their solutions.
Whether you’re looking to implement a CRM solution to improve sales management, streamline marketing, or improve customer service, having a clear and focused plan is crucial. Assembling a team to help research and evaluate CRM solutions will allow you to get feedback from various departments about your requirements. If implemented properly, CRM can help your company become more competitive, attract new customers, and boost profits.
This whitepaper provides top CRM evaluation considerations by summarizing concepts from several sources. The process of choosing a CRM solution is distilled into three steps: Evaluating Company Needs/Goals, Evaluating Internal Resources, and Evaluating Vendors. By following this three-step approach, you can expect to find a CRM solution/vendor combination that best suits your company.
Evaluating Company Needs/Goals
The first step in choosing a CRM solution is to look within your company to assess needs and goals, and then create a written record of the assessment culminating with a request for proposals (RFP). CRM can be costly without the proper research and planning. Take time to evaluate your needs carefully; on one hand you don’t want to end up having to repeat the entire process again in a few years (CompareCRM. com, 2006).
On the other hand, it’s important for SMBs to take steps to prevent buying more CRM technology than they need. “Having specific business requirements and goals in mind, before approaching a vendor, will help focus the process” (CRM-Software-Evaluation.com, 2006).
Small businesses are often hindered by uncertain economic and industry growth, as well as insufficient cash flow. Medium businesses also tend to be hindered by uncertain economic growth, but operating costs and uncertainty in their industry become even more of a factor. It’s important to recognize the differences between small and medium business in order to find an appropriate CRM solution (Lager, 2007).
Small and medium businesses are not all cut from the same cloth. CRM solutions must be appropriate to each situation without being impractical to implement. For many companies CRM solutions must address three levels to of IT:
- Building infrastructure, focusing on individual PCs
- Connecting infrastructure, shifting focus to protecting the server
- Extending the enterprise, focusing on “multidimensional layers with a firewall on the network but also on mobile workers laptops” (Lager, 2007).
Ask the following questions when evaluating your company’s needs and goals for a CRM solution.
- What are my company’s CRM requirements? It’s important to understand your company’s long-term goals before purchasing a CRM solution. If you don’t understand your organization’s objectives and requirements, you’re more likely to choose a customer relationship management system that offers either too much or too little. Don’t forget to identify goals for items such as return on investment (ROI) and desired productivity improvement. (CompareCRM.com, 2006)
- What are my business’s goals for implementing a CRM solution?Do your homework before interviewing a vendor by preparing an RFP. An RFP will require you to have a good grasp of your company’s technology and business requirements. You’ll also have to decide whether you want a hosted or non-hosted system. Setting up a project team to evaluate your business’ needs can help you with your fact-finding mission. An RFP also keep you from being persuaded by a vendor to purchase additional modules that you don’t need. (CRM-Software- Evaluation.com, 2006)
Evaluating Internal Resources
An assessment of internal resources revolves around your company’s staff and their technical capabilities, along with your budget. “The average small business has 1.2 full-time IT staffers supporting 10 employees, for an employee-to-staff ratio of 8.3. They must deal with desktop and laptop computer issues, handheld devices, and telecommuting problems for which they may lack expertise.
