In short, Best CRM is a way of life that the members of your organization have to espouse.
That being said, it is possible to derail any CRM efforts by choosing a CRM software system for your organization that does not function well. Thus, it is equally important to balance using the Best CRM practices with use of the best CRM software you can get with your budget.
You should look at the functionality of the CRM system you are aiming to get before you decide to get it. In plain words, can this CRM software help you secure the optimal CRM results you were aiming for? If it does not, you should stop looking at how cheaply it is being offered to you and scout around for a better one instead.
Examine the advantages and disadvantages of the system
under scrutiny well, with emphasis on how this system can help make customer relationship management easier. If the system is all bells and whistles but no substance, then you should drop it and look at other options. A cute system is not going to help you as much as a highly functional system.
Ask for the opinion of others you trust who know what you will be using this CRM system for. Sometimes, others may see another angle to the system than that which is obvious to you. If they will be using the system with you once it has been deployed,
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then it becomes more important than ever to get a good CRM
system.
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Getting Optimal Use Out of Your Preferred
CRM Application
In Customer Relationship Management (or CRM), you need
to make sure you know what your priorities are and that the CRM
system you are angling to get is best for your needs. This means analyzing what the key function of your business is, and how the CRM system can help you optimize your pursuit of that key business function. Only when you know this clearly can you start canvassing for the most appropriate CRM system you can get.
It is often quicker, more efficient and less risky to let a team of CRM specialists handle the research about and search for the right CRM application, than to involve a whole bureaucracy. There is a reason why private companies let project teams handle specific tasks they save big bucks this way. Also, there is less room for lengthy arguments on a small team of experts compared to a larger group of not-so-experienced users.
The size of the CRM specialist team will depend on how
complicated and how vast is the scope of CRM application to be sought after. You may then proceed to trying to figure out how the CRM system chosen is to be customized for use in your particular organization. (This, incidentally, is the most complicated step of all, because the team has to reconcile the functions of your business with the functions of the CRM system itself.)
One that lengthy and arduous step has been finished, your organization now has to come up with a feasible training program so that the other members of your organization gain expertise in using this CRM application you have selected and deployed in the organization.
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How to Choose Between Competing
CRM Applications
Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) is a broad
field of discipline and the number of CRM applications being introduced into the market can be quite confusing to sift through.
So how does one choose between competing CRM applications then?
One reason making a choice between competing CRM applications has gotten harder in recent years is because customers have gotten smarter and more difficult to please lately. Whereas basic CRM in the past may have been as simple as just creating a mailing list, nowadays, CRM has to both please a specific customer need and be efficient at that function as well.
This means your ideal CRM system needs to be flexible
enough to be scalable for use in varying degrees of magnitude, competitive enough to function for you well on a daily basis, and precise at managing CRM for you so that the key function of your business is not confused with the CRM function.
Unless your organization is willing to pay for a customized CRM solution produced by CRM specialists on an as-you-need-it basis, you will probably have to settle for out-of-the-box CRM
applications to make your choice from. This also means that at some point you may find it hard to use certain aspects of your preferred CRM application because it does not jive with some parts of your business. This is the hard part of choosing pre-designed CRM applications and it is caused by the fact that the CRM application developer did not have your own business in mind when the product was being developed.
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Because of this, all you can really hope for from an out-ofthe-box CRM application is to make sure that you can apply it to most parts of your business, and that it can be flexible enough to be customized for those parts that the developer did not think would need to be part of his original product.
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Analyzing the Intense Competition
among CRM Companies Today
To sum up a complicated situation like the state of the CRM
Development Industry, it can be safely said that the market for proprietary CRM solutions has already been saturated. If your organization is thinking about competing in the proprietary CRM
solutions arena, then you ought to think twice because you will get creamed by the cream of the crop. It is a far more prudent strategy to go the open source route to introduce your CRM application to the market instead.
Why make an open source CRM product? Open source, for
those who do not know, is software that is created using an opensource license (but that does not automatically mean that the open source CRM software is a free software product.) The point behind making an open source CRM product is so that the product can be evaluated by more people and feedback can be returned to the developer so that the product can be continuously refined and upgraded to the point that a superlative CRM product can be made.
It should also result in a less expensive (though not totally free) product that prevents consumers from being confined only to the pricey proprietary CRM products available on the market today.
If you pursue the open source route to developing your
product, you need to get the appropriate opensource license to be able to ethically market your CRM application as such. Otherwise, you risk confusing consumers everywhere about what kind of CRM
software application you came up with in reality.
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Using CRM Comparison Results to
Make Better CRM Products
Any CRM comparison research will show that there are some CRM product developers who are running ahead of the pack, in terms of the quality of their products, how they introduce these products into the market and how well-received the CRM products are. Generally, CRM applications may either be open source applications or proprietary CRM applications. The difference between
the two types is that the open source ones allow the user to gain access to the source code to amend it, while a proprietary product has a source code that only people authorized by the company that owns the code will be able to amend.
To succeed in the CRM product acceptance by consumers
aspect, the product has to be user-friendly (meaning, your average non-techie user can find his way around the features of the product with relative ease), allows for integration into the existing system of the user, and permits customization for the system of the user when needed.
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