Newsletters

Customer Support:   (972) 395-3225

Home

Articles, News, Announcements - click Main News Page
Previous Story       Next Story
    
Lifting The Lid On Customer Relationship Management

by Mike Richardson, Managing Director EMEA, Maximizer CRM - April 26, 2017

Lifting the lid on Customer Relationship Management
SMEs unveil the real return on investment from their CRM solutions
 
By: Mike Richardson, Managing Director EMEA, Maximizer CRM
 
Many organisations have invested heavily in CRM solutions in order to improve and streamline customer services, increasing loyalty and therefore profits. However, there is in fact, very little evidence of the actual level of return on investment (ROI) that specifically small and medium-sized organisations (SMEs) are harnessing further down the line. It is no secret that CRM requires a level of commitment, so understanding the return on that investment is critical to assessing its success within a business.
 
Having a clear view of how other SMEs are leveraging their CRM can help guide SMEs towards the informed purchase of a suitable CRM solution or can help pave the way to a greater understanding of what additional functions and benefits an existing solution can provide if used to its full potential. 
 
Recent research with 300 SMEs, conducted by Maximizer, has provided the hard evidence of the value and success that SMEs are generating from their CRM solutions.
 
The importance of CRM Value for SMEs
 
Today’s customers are constantly changing and are becoming increasingly more empowered and self-educating. Customers are no longer seeking out a salesperson to provide information; instead they are embarking on a model of route-to-purchase that typically is shaped by having independent research as a starting point. It is the behaviour patterns of today’s customers that indicate to SMEs when they are ready to buy and can be approached.  This means in today’s climate a business that is seen as informative, expert and helpful as the customer progresses along their ‘buyer journey’ puts themselves in pole position to become the favoured supplier.
 
This new buyer-seller relationship has put increased pressure on businesses, making the need to accurately track, inform, guide, manage and measure the customer experience at every stage in order to be poised for when they are ready to purchase vitally important. But the important role played by CRM is not limited to Sales – CRM has become the go-to tool for the whole business – all departments have access to intelligent information on the customer’s providing them with intelligence to deliver stand-out customer service from billing to marketing. CRM can provide this joined up intelligence and help businesses really make strides ahead of their competitors.
 
Business objectives achieved through CRM
 
The Benchmark Study shows that there is a range of ‘maturity’ in the use of CRM by SMEs, with some businesses just setting out with their solution or still stuck at the initial stages of basic deployment right through to optimal usage of CRM to really drive business growth and strategy. Just under a third of companies are putting their CRM solutions at the heart of their business. These are the businesses that can be said to have mastered the ‘new customer journey’ but are also using the power of their CRM solutions to make every customer touch point more intelligence-rich and effective. Optimal use of CRM not only feeds information from various departments into customer facing activities, but also provides different areas of the business with up-to-the-minute information on trends in customer behaviour, possible high value customers or lapsed customer profiles. With this type of market understanding leaders will be able to make better decisions and outline more effective future strategies.
 
Unfortunately, a large proportion of SMEs are yet to reach this high level of maturity in the implementation of their CRM and even though they are extracting a return on investment from their solutions, they are more focused on process and productivity objectives. The latter are in fact a natural starting point for any business implementing a CRM as efficiency and productivity gains are relatively easy to measure. In fact, any CRM solution that does not deliver against such goals has certainly not been effectively implemented, adopted nor measured.
 
The key returns of CRM
 
In order to provide a snapshot of exactly which benefits SMEs are currently drawing from their CRM, Maximizer asked respondents which operating benefits were being measurably gained from their CRM. Fully, 87% of respondents identifying centralisation of customer data as the primary operating benefit of CRM.
 
Centralisation of customer data improves (the much needed) collaboration and sharing of information between departments, ensuring that data is not ‘siloed’ by different business functions but is shared in a way that makes it easier to analyse by any department and to plug into over-arching business strategy. Centralisation of customer data therefore provides a central repository to hold all customer data, meaning there is no room for inaccuracies, all of which provides staff and managers the opportunity to engage with customers via the right channel, at the right time and with the most relevant message.
 
Improved transparency reveals success and areas of weakness in every part of the business. Whilst some 60% of the Benchmark Study respondents rated improved visibility as the third top benefit, only 25% of respondents are making use of dashboards to view and report on KPIs and other metrics, with only 8% accessing advanced Excel to further analyse the data, this indicates potential lost opportunities to measure, report and analyse data to assist with better informed decision making.
 
It is all fine and well positioning CRM at the heart of the business and ensuring that information is no longer stored in various silos so that good quality, real-time data can be extracted, but, being in a position to analyse and segment both existing customer and prospects databases is another enormously profitable activity that CRM can achieve– particularly as 52% of SMEs report this as a key benefit of CRM.
 
Other top rated business outcomes of a CRM
 
Segmentation analysis
 
A common misperception among SMEs is to think that segmentation is merely a marketing tactic – wrong! Fundamentally, businesses need to know exactly who their customers are, how they behave, how much attention they require, how much resource they consume and ultimately the overall profit and revenue they are generating.
 
Customer profiles and history
 
Having access to all notes on customers and their history is crucial, particularly when staff move on, that information needs to remain accessible in house. A CRM hub in fact makes key documents available – not only do these provide value when staff need help answering queries, managing complaints and negotiating contracts, but there are often legal and audit considerations which should be taken into account when accurately storing documents.
 
Sales activity tracking and alerts
 
Sales teams by nature will be more prone to keeping all intelligence in data silos – however there are substantial benefits of CRM which needs to be made clear to them - help in research and profiling, lead qualification, activity capture, sales pipeline and reporting, not to mention being prompted when upsell/cross sell opportunities arise..
 
Managing customer experience
 
All of these important business outcomes are fundamental to helping manage the overall customer experience. A more joined-up view of the customer is vital to providing a positive experience and repeat custom, research in fact shows that 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience[1].  CRM solutions need to be used to manage, organise and automate daily management activities. Manual cross-referencing and other administrative tasks, do not in themselves deliver value, or make best use of a company’s existing resources. People are typically the most expensive resources which a company employs, so focusing their efforts on skilled customer management as opposed to administration will deliver considerable benefit, including more responsive customer service, better use of sale’s people’s time, closer measurement of product development cycles and marketing campaigns. According to Accenture, 89% of customers get frustrated because they need to repeat their pain points to multiple representatives. Business intelligence and Insight
 
The benefits of using CRM strategically cannot be under-estimated particularly for senior management. Having insight into up-to-date business activities and customer interactions provides highly valuable intelligence which will ultimately lead to better business decision making.
 
The results from Maximizer’s SME Benchmark Study 2017 provides SMEs with a very clear understanding of how their peers are deploying CRM and what they value as the crucial elements. In fact, the evidence about the key business benefits and successes which other businesses are achieving through their CRM clearly outlines a roadmap for improved CRM usage and helps businesses benchmark their level of proficiency. Due to the financial commitment required when investing in CRM, understanding the possible return on investment from these solutions is critical to assess its success within a business. To see the benefits and value that other SMEs are gaining from their CRM solutions and through which features, provides key actionable insight to all SMEs.
 
To read the full Benchmark Report, you can download it here: http://go.maximizer.com/benchmark-report-pr


[1] Huffington Post, 50 important customer experience stats for business leaders, 2015 

 
Return to main news page