CRM White Paper: Affordable Small business CRM

CRM for your Small business? It's for you, and it's affordable.

Deciding on a customer management program is worthy of an in depth exploration to reveal the most accurate analysis as to what suits your needs, who can provide this to you, at what cost, how long is the implementation, training times and what kind of benefit it is to go with a specific CRM provider. On average, many small-medium sized companies don't have the money to spend on the CRM software like Fortune 500 companies do. Large corporations spend an upwards of $500,000 to millions of dollars trying to implement a CRM solution. This cost is usually completely out of reach for SMB's. Also, the costs associated for traditional CRM program deployment vary greatly because not every solution is created equal and every execution is unique. These small-medium sized businesses usually require more customized CRM software to accommodate to the market they are in and this customization needed, makes a CRM strategy even more expensive and farther out of reach.

Importance of CRM Software to your business

When a small-medium sized business has begun to see an increased flow of activity & growth, these business owners have begun to feel the need for some CRM consulting to understand how this software is going to help them achieve their goals. business owners are always in need of a system, which will organize their contacts, tasks; phone calls, emails, keeps the employees focused and most importantly give better customer service. These organizations have grown enough to see the necessity to be using a program that will enable them to have a superior Web based Contact Management application. Keeping client information history has become expected by customers and when they call to place orders, speak about issues they are having, or need talk to someone about products they may be interested in, you have got to be able to rise to meet their expectations. Giving your staff the right tools to give the client what they are looking for, will take your business further than ever before. And clients will begin to notice and stay loyal to you and your product brand.

As a manager, we all know that generating reports from various sources and then to try to bring them together and make some sort of sense is frustrating and sometimes confusing. Maybe the reports aren't giving you all of the information you need, but you are making due because, to purchase a software program to consolidate just report generating capabilities is too expensive. When you can harness reporting and analysis features that come from one source that is connected to all of your lines of business, think of how much more convenient and easier it is to read these reports, make smart informed decisions and trust that the choices you are making are the correct ones for you company. Gaining this business intelligence insight will allow small and medium sized businesses to identify and follow opportunities that they may have never taken advantage of before. Have the comprehension and understanding about what is happening in your business, and see if there are any issues arising that could potentially become harmful to the future of the company. SMB's do not have the huge capital like large corporations do to make mistakes and be able to move on as if nothing happened. Being able to make the right decision at the right time is invaluable.

Another concern that most small and medium sized companies face is loosing track of their stock/inventory counts because there is poor structure in controlling their input and output. This can create a huge crisis, create backlogs and possibly cause your clients to go to your competitor for the product they're looking for. These types of problems are sometimes difficult to avoid even when you have a great inventory tracking system, but 85% of the time it can be blamed on human error and trying to follow paper trials around.

Keeping track of the inventory in a manor where you can have quick product reference and overview is key to avoiding any further inventory issues. If you could be capable of predicting what your client is going to buy, when they are going to buy and how they want it delivered would be an amazing feat to accomplish in their eyes. With an online, on demand hosted CRM software this can be achieved. Compare past product reports to currents ones on your high value clients and by using this information, you can put the pieces together to be able to predict the next move or action your customer is going to take!

Effectively managing your staff

Every day business occurrences are too much for one person to handle & many of these duties get passed on or down to other employees. Many managers dislike doing this when there is no tracking system in place to control or give attention to the employees who these assignments have been given. Knowing whom, when and where a lead, case, task, or event is, are things managers need to know to effectively do their job and keep employees on point. The small medium sized business managers consistently rely on collaboration with all employees to stay aware of what is going on in the business and to be able to effectively handle any situations or occurrences that come up.

CRM Web based Event and Task management software features cover these leads, cases & sales, keeps them all organized in an orderly fashion and tracked easily by your managers. This feature of web based CRM software also allows you, and the employees to quickly and efficiently plan your day's tasks, the weekly targets and monthly goals. By accomplishing this, everyone in the company can remain focused, productive and forward moving. Task and Event management has become a necessity to small business success.

Customization

We know that each and every business is different and when you're working with a traditional CRM solution, you don't have the luxury of being able to spend tens of thousands of dollars to customize your CRM program so that it truly fits your small-medium size business needs. Your organization is constantly changing, modifying and becoming stronger, so your CRM software should be able to move and adapt with you through all of your growing stages. The limits of what are now possible with Customizable CRM have radically changed from your old traditional CRM programming and this new stage will help to elevate your business to new levels.

The hiring of new staff, introduction of new products, business needs changing constantly, larger volumes of client requests and queries are not issues these large traditional CRM providers are able to adapt to. Imagine going to them asking that their software be customized to meet your needs, which are specific to ONLY your business? This would, just not be possible. Most if not all SMB's need to find a CRM provider, who can have readily available answers, working with you to build a CRM solution that will always be useful to you. Imagine a quick, easily deployable product that can give you all of this and more. For traditional CRM companies it takes months to have their "flexible" solutions in place while an on demand hosted CRM software provider will have them for you in a matter of days.

As a business owner you will be able to easily create and customize business rules, new tabs and relationships without the extra hassle of programming, finally eliminating the use outside IT professionals to aide you. On average, a good Customer Relationship Manager program will have the customized solution, which will perfectly fit the needs of your organization in place in less than two weeks. As time moves on and your organization has reached a new plateau, suddenly there is a need to change the custom tabs, fields, rules, interfaces and relationships. With a helpful online CRM workshop, you can log on to your web based CRM, and efficiently make all the changes necessary to provide you with the right tools to continue making your company a success.

Installation & Deployment

The next step in implementation is actually deploying your CRM solution. When you are prepared to begin the transition to a traditional Web based Contact Management program, you find that it may take 8 plus months to have the very basic software installed. What small or medium sized business has time for this? You need solutions that are quick, easy to implement so that you may continue on with your daily work, having little interruption. Besides the fact that the initial installation can take many months, what about the updates that come out several times a year? It can cost huge budgets to have new updates in position. After training staff for the updates they can become behind in their work causing these updates to hinder your business's performance not help it get better.

These become more hurdles to overcome for the small business owner because when business is growing and your company fails to move at the same speed or faster sales begin to slide. With these few issues spread over a period of time, are enough to put a company under. It would be easier to assign a group of employees to train the staff for all new deployments and updates. With a system like "Train the Trainer" the assigned training staff can easily learn the ropes of using a online web based CRM software application from experienced staff of your CRM provider. This will lower the CRM learning curve, saving you time and money.

What is needed to by pass these issues all together is a CRM deployment time that is fast, easy and relatively seamless. Software that has these capabilities will save you time and money, and can be in place within 30 days.

Cost

Finding the right CRM solution for the right cost is the final step in deciding what CRM supplier is right for you. Say you come to a decision as to what provider you think will do the best job, only to find out that your CRM software provider requires you to purchase all of their software and pay to have their professionals install it? What if your IT infrastructure cannot support their software you've bought? Many traditional contact relationship management companies also have their own staff that provides the training for all of your employees. With all of these expensive hurdles to jump its no surprise that you feel like you're back at square one with no solution in sight.

Why not only have to pay for the amount of employees you have instead of paying one large sum for a CRM that could support 5000 employees when you only need support for 100? This is another aspect that these large traditional CRM companies cannot seem to accommodate to. Small - medium sized business owners should be dealing with an on demand, web based CRM provider who specializes in their needs and has them as their first priority and main focus.

All of the costs associated with Web based CRM software are monthly, so there are no hidden fees to worry about and if need be these costs can be compared to the ROI you have predicted, its possible. Because all on demand hosted CRM software is paid monthly it will be easier to identify what your expenses are with the software and you will find it easier to control your budgets. And don't forget, these CRM companies need your business and must retain it, so if you ever have any new needs, issues or feedback for them, many if not most will try to adapt to your ideas and requests to serve you better. It is only with on demand hosted CRM software programming that this type of service is available.

Summation

After reading this it should be clear that on demand hosted CRM software solutions and software-as-a-service solutions are going to meet your business needs 100%. This service comes hand in hand with "software as service" model because after you have chosen your CRM provider, they must continue to earn your business on a monthly basis. As your business grows and the list of needs being to get longer and more intricate, you will come to find that making the choice to move to an Online CRM solution will have been an excellent one. Theses companies are always going to adapt, move forward and listen to your needs. As your company continues to expand your CRM solution will always be there for you, changing, as you want it to.

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