Today, selling a product or service is not enough to win over your customers. Because of the abundant supply of similar propositions, customers are looking for something more, like personification and an efficient experience while interacting with the brand.
This led businesses to shift from a “customer-centric” approach. Therefore, the Customer Relationship Management or CRM merges inside the companies operation.
What is a CRM solution?
CRM collects all data in one place, including interactions, purchase history, and customer data such as name, phone number, email address, and preferences. This information is usually disseminated across multiple working channels, making it generally difficult to track the data. However, this system is not only beneficial from the point of view of the consumer but can also improve the organization as a whole: CRM centralizes all data and makes it available to multiple levels of management - marketing, sales, customer support, and others.
Why do you need CRM?
Implementation of a CRM system will help solve several of the most important business problems, such as:
- Collect and create customer profiles to make it easier to track buying habits and customer behavior, as well as be able to assemble a customer group and direct the right marketing campaign at the right time.
- Create an effective and personalized interaction with your client. Since all the data is collected and located in one place, there is no need to request the same information from the client several times.
- Reduce misunderstandings and ensure transparency of information in your organization by sharing data on assigned tasks, analytics, strategy effectiveness, etc. Thus, everyone in the company gets the opportunity to see all business processes.
Internal Factors affecting the implementation of CRM
Although CRM is a beneficial solution for the organization, some internal factors might affect its implementation and restructure the usual workflow.
Management commitment — the top management is required to effectively communicate that CRM is not a threatening source for employees and that it will merely optimize the work process. Such support will make the internal environment acknowledge CRM as an important element of business strategy by involving in activities that demonstrate the commitment to CRM implementation
Organizational Culture — the staff is required to be familiar with and comprehend the CRM and organizational strategies behind it. The new system is tightly connected to cooperative work culture and will require employees to change attitudes towards integrative cooperation, communication, and participation of personnel at all levels to deliver a unified view of the company and its products to customers.
Financing resources — the implementation, continuous monitoring, and upgrade of the CRM system, would always require solid financial support from the company. This requires analyzing the economic situation and deciding whether the organization will be able to finance the system in the long term.
System development — a CRM system is not the same in every organization as companies require different features, different levels of automation, and different uses. CRM is a tool to achieve an organization's strategy, so management must think through every detail of the system and avoid including all available functions, otherwise, CRM will become dispersed, complex, and add cost due to unnecessary functions.
External Factors affecting the implementation of CRM
Some external influences can affect the Customer Relationship Management system.
Data privacy regulation — requires firms to protect the personal information of consumers, however, sometimes companies are not allowed to even keep that data. For example, marketers that collect EU customer data are not able to collect and use cookie data, impression data, or personal data without express consent Under GDPR. Customers are required to affirmatively consent to the collection of their data and each intended use.
Security breach from hackers — this factor is directly affecting the customers’ trust and might prevent gathering data from the target market in the future. Also, the data leakage can harm not only the reputation of the company externally, but also doom its internal operations.
Technological changes — every year, new technologies emerge that can complement CRM software, but they will also require an organization's operating structure to change again.
Build or use a ready-made CRM system?
When implementing CRM, organizations always face a choice - installing a ready-made CRM system (Zoho, Salesforce, Zendesk, etc.) or building a new system based on the requirements only their company.
Of course, the installation of a ready-made CRM solution will take a little time. However, ready-made systems are usually oversaturated with different properties, of which you will use only 5% and overpay for an unused 95%.
Setting up a new CRM can take months, even a year, as the time depends on the level of customization - the level of access, the features you want to add to your CRM, and the amount of data that needs to be migrated to the new system. With your own CRM, you can install and use only the functions you need, which accordingly reduces your monthly costs.
AppMaster.io lets you create modern software at no extra cost based on its own no-code platform. Your software can include either only the server part, or it can be supplemented with full-fledged web or mobile applications, also created using the platform. Such software is in no way inferior to software developed by professional developers since the platform not only generates source code ready for export but also allows you to place it on any cloud or private server right from the working environment.
To learn how to build your business CRM using no-code, contact the developers directly in the community chat or read one of the customer stories who successfully launched his CRM system based on the AppMaster.io platform.
