Are you Ready for AI - how fit for purpose is your CRM?

Every business has some form of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) be that an industry leader like Salesforce, one of the many capable alternatives such as Pipedrive, Zoho and Hubspot, or an unstructured collection of spreadsheets. Whatever option(s) your business has (and it’s not un-common to have separate “systems” in different departments that do not communicate!) there will be highly valuable information that could enable better management decision making IF the information can be identified, accessed and analysed.

A well optimised CRM system offers numerous benefits across various aspects of a business. Here are some of the most significant:

• Improved Customer Relationships: A CRM helps you understand your customers better by centralising their data, interactions, and purchase history. This enables personalised communication, proactive support, and tailored offerings, leading to stronger, more loyal customer relationships.

• Enhanced Customer Service: With all customer information readily available, service representatives can provide faster, more efficient, and more informed support. This leads to increased customer satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth.

• Increased Sales: CRM systems provide insights into sales trends, customer behaviour, and sales team performance. This allows for better sales forecasting, targeted marketing campaigns, and improved sales strategies, ultimately driving revenue growth.

• Improved Lead Management: CRM systems streamline the lead management process, from initial contact to conversion. They enable you to track leads, prioritise opportunities, and nurture prospects effectively, increasing the likelihood of closing deals.

• Centralised Data: A CRM consolidates customer data from various sources into a single, accessible database. This eliminates data silos, improves data accuracy, and provides a comprehensive view of each customer.

• Increased Efficiency: By automating tasks such as data entry, email marketing, and reporting, a CRM frees up valuable time for sales, marketing, and customer service teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities.

• Better Team Collaboration: CRM systems facilitate collaboration among different teams by providing a shared platform for accessing and updating customer information. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and can work together effectively to meet customer needs.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: CRM systems provide valuable insights and analytics that can inform strategic decision-making. By analysing customer data, you can identify trends, patterns, and opportunities that can help you optimize your business operations.

• Improved Marketing ROI: CRM systems enable you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and measure their return on investment (ROI). This allows you to optimize your marketing efforts and allocate resources more efficiently.

• Streamlined Reporting: CRM systems offer robust reporting capabilities that allow you to track key performance indicators (KPIs), monitor progress towards goals, and identify areas for improvement. This helps you make data-driven decisions and optimise your business performance.

As someone who has spent a LOT of time and effort on CRM implementation and management, I am genuinely excited by the possibilities coming our way through the deployment of AI solutions. It can be a game-changer BUT, to really make the most of what it can do for your business, you simply have to have a structured CRM strategy.

So, before you take the AI leap, make sure you have the key elements of your CRM system nailed down.

When advising businesses I look to understand, challenge and lay the foundations in seven areas:

• A clearly define your objectives at the outset

o The more accurate and quantified the objectives can be defined the easier it is to select the most relevant system for you then configure the system to achieve your objectives

• Include as wide a team as possible

o Make sure you’re not missing key contributors and have “buy in” across the business

• Are we starting with the basics?

o Think minimum viable product and agilely build on it. Going big from the start can take more time, more cost and, perhaps more damagingly, lose the engagement of stakeholders.

• Data is king – is your data in good shape?

o Collate the different data sources, invest time and effort cleansing the data and harness the insights the data will reveal, they will be unique to your business and gold dust customer facing people

• What to customise?

o Make it fit the ideal sales process and data fields for YOUR business; make it super relevant to the people who use it. If not time and energy making can be wasted forcing change for no benefit to the business.

• Visibility and relevance

o How do we create optimum visibility with dashboards and enable access to the underlaying data? You should be measuring what matters and enable easy access to analyse the detail. Don’t get over excited with multiple KPI’s, certainly not at the start, it will turn off your team if they feel over-exposed or threatened with the scale of visibility from the very start.

• Will the solution allow for us to continually evolve?

o Regularly check (and correct) data consistency, identify and resolve any gaps, get feedback from users and use it to continually enhance your CRM – users will be more eager to adopt it, and when they do the value of your data will continue to increase.

In summary, a well-implemented CRM system will not only put you in the best possible shape to optimise AI solutions, it can transform the way you manage customer relationships, streamline your business processes, and drive revenue growth. It's an investment that can pay off significantly in terms of improved customer satisfaction, increased sales, and enhanced overall business performance.

This article is intended as an overview and introduction to the importance of CRM. Every business we support has their own unique needs and challenges so if you would like a no obligation 121 discussion then please contact us.

A highly experienced and results-oriented professional, Chris brings almost 40 years of expertise to organisations across the energy, IT, textiles, and business supplies industries. 

His career foundation includes a decade with Yorkshire Electricity Board, followed by roles in corporate IT and telecommunications. For the past 25 years, Chris has focused on driving significant growth in SME businesses, including one he owned, where he honed his entrepreneurial skills and leadership abilities.