Cutting through the noise

In this post we walk you through 5 must-have elements of valuable Sales CRM. With so much information floating around the internet it can be difficult to distinguish the most important features you require.

This post is intended to help you ‘cut through the noise’ – essentially doing away with confusing industry terminology and focusing on the most important aspects of successful CRM.

Customer Relationship Management software like SugarCRM offers a range of different features/functionality. Each element has specific benefits aiding in your organisations success. Putting each ‘piece of the puzzle’ together in the most effective way is vital in order to achieve a successful CRM solution for your organisation.

Lead Management

Lead management refers to the tracking, management and distribution of leads. The management of leads is a vital CRM component mainly benefiting the sales, marketing and customer service functions of your business. This element involves campaign management, mailing list organisation, automating personalised communications and much more.

Sugar Market, Sugars marketing automation software includes advanced lead management functionality allowing customers to score leads based on their likelihood to convert. For example, the point system can assign 1 point to a lead that has opened an email campaign and 2 points to a lead that has opened a campaign and clicked a link. This gives your sales staff a better understanding of which leads to spend the most time nurturing.

How can Lead Management help my organisation?

• Track customer interactions
• Integrate sales/marketing
• Improve collaboration between departments
• Lead-scoring prospect management
• Spend more time with prospects likely to convert
• Increase ROI

SalesForce Automation 

SalesForce Automation is a vital component of any successful CRM. This element includes sales forecasting, analysing sales processes and tracking potential customer interactions with a view to increase sales and better understand the sales cycle. As a result, Salesforce automation allows organisations to better understand and improve revenue generating opportunities.

The ability to track which opportunities your users are expecting to close in a given time frame is vital in any successful CRM implementation. This allows management to better understand the reasons behind closed/won opportunities and precisely track the performance of staff.

How can Salesforce Automation help my organisation?

• Sales Forecasting
• Sales performance tracking
• Record sales processes
• Improve reporting
• Increase ROI

Workflow Automation 

Workflow Automation is the element most mentioned in regards to saving time/ROI for many organisations. This element refers to streamlining the most time consuming processes that make up your organisation and running these processes in the background automatically. Quote requests, management authorisation and form filling are some of the processes that Workflow Automation significantly improves. As a result, staff save valuable time and processes take less effort from users to complete.

How can Workflow Automation help my organisation?

• Automate manual tasks
• Automatic task re-routing
• Speed up business processes
• Reduce task repetition
• Build structure and governance into your internal processes
• Ensure things like – ‘lead follow-up’ always happens
• Increase ROI

Analytics/Reporting

In order to observe and take action on the trends/anomalies in your data, Analytics and Reporting functionality is a vital element.

Reporting on past and present data is vital in achieving a thorough understanding of the trends impacting your business. In order to achieve a detailed understanding of your data, CRM’s like Sugar provide the ability to create graphical representations of your data in a quick and easy way. These graphical representations come in the form of charts. Allowing you to better understand your data and produce easy to analyse dashboard views.

These charts can be embedded onto a live dashboard and give the CRM user the ability to drill through to reveal the underlying data that makes up a particular part of a chart.

You’ll want to ensure that important reports can be delivered as a PDF attachment to a scheduled email so you never miss the action. SugarCRM has the ability to schedule emails to be sent to an individual or team of people on a regular basis.

How can Analytics help my organisation?

• Dashboard reporting views
• Better understanding of trends
• Quick and easy graphical representations
• Understand past and present data anomalies 
• Increase ROI

Mobile Access

Mobile access is a key element in any valuable Sales CRM. The key benefit to your staff is having the ability to work from anywhere in the world.  As a result, your customers benefit from better communication resulting in stronger/longer-lasting relationships.

CRM’s like Sugar include robust mobile applications, available on all popular devices (mobile, tablet etc). This ensures your staff are updated with real-time customer information at all times. Run your business on-the-go, integrate your calendar, update communications seamlessly and access data even when you have no internet access!

How can Mobile Access help my organisation?

• Access Anywhere Technology (AAT)
• Calendar Integration
• Access and update leads, contacts and opportunities anywhere
• Access and update files anywhere
• Run your business ‘On-the-go’
• Regular free security updates
• Increase ROI

In Conclusion

We hope you have a better understanding of the 5 must-have elements of valuable Sales CRM. No matter where you are in your CRM journey, the best way to realise your challenges and pain points is with a free consultation call with one of our expert consultants. We ensure you get the most out of your CRM project through our requirements workshops, analysing your business processes and goals – resulting in the most effective CRM solution possible, benefiting your whole organisation.

With 250+ Successful implementations under our belt we have a wealth of knowledge for you to exploit!