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What CRM Products Make Sense in Your Environment
When examining CRM products that make sense in your environment, it is important to remember that customer relationship management solutions truly encompass a full range of customer-oriented business activities. This distinction is important as it highlights that there is no one product that supports all CRM functions in your business. As a result, it is important for you to correctly identify your needs before you try and select those CRM products that will perform well in your environment.
In selecting your tools, for instance, it is important that you not only examine the needs you have for your business today, but also in the future. Your overall CRM products strategy needs to fit with your long-term plans. If this plan includes more than 200 percent growth, your solution needs to be able to support that growth, or you will be repeating this process in the very near future. To ensure the CRM products you select will make sense in your environment, there are a few things you must remember to examine.
First, what is your selling strategy and what do you need out of your CRM products to drive more efficiency and results from that strategy? Do you need pricing, customer information and routing all in one place? Are you running a call center that demands your agents have a single view of all data surrounding each customer so they can effectively cross-sell and up sell during every customer interaction. If you are planning to place these CRM products within specific departments to deliver benefit, be sure you interview decision makers within those departments so that their needs are met with your selection.
Second, look at the functionality you need to be able to realize with your CRM products. Keep in mind that there are a number of applications that are moving to the web. This means you can have access to Software as a Service solutions and on-premise solutions, but you need to remember that what you need now may not be what you ultimately need in the future. How will you scale your functionality as you change and grow?
Finally, once you have identified the answers you need for strategy and functionality, you can begin to decide the tools you need to function efficiently and effectively. You can then start to examine the available vendors in this space so you can compare different CRM products offerings. You don’t have to stick with the same vendor at each step of your implementation, but be sure you know how well different solutions will integrate in your environment and with each other.
In your search for CRM products, also keep in mind that vendors like to lock your entire infrastructure into one platform. This is fine if the provider can meet all of your needs now and in the future. Most likely, however, you will want to have some flexibility without spending beyond your budget. Try to keep those all-in-one players at bay until you are sure they can provide the CRM products that make sense for your environment.
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