by Jami J. Rodgers, Vendor Guru Columnist
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems track and analyze trends in sales, your market, and front-office transactions. Relying on an effective CRM within an electronic resource planning (ERP) system can help your small business increase sales and productivity. A CRM, as one part of an ERP system, can integrate sales and marketing information and relate it to other key in-house data and trends.
Typically, ERPs combine various databases, such as sales figures and customer information, and overlay them with manufacturing, financial, and sometimes even human and materials management data. This integration allows the small business owner to have a one-stop source for all information and subsequently to make informed business decisions with an accurate, consolidated snapshot of current and projected sales.
Customer and Sales Database Integration
Most CRM tools are integrated into company-wide ERPs as part of a universal data repository that allows customer database and sales database information to be analyzed simultaneously. By factoring in a number of variables, the small business owner is easily able to identify sales trends and opportunities for future growth. Other bonuses of an ERP with CRM capabilities provide you with the ability to tweak design engineering, order tracking, supply chain management, and the revenue cycle of your business. Having one system that integrates various departments, means fewer software bridges and interoperability issues than having stand-alone systems to track critical business information.
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Important Considerations for Your CRM
As the primary tool driving your sales future, you should be able to tailor your CRM to identify crucial data points that capture information important to your clients. Your CRM solution must be designed to promote a customer-centered ideology and develop a continuity process to better serve customers, and track their complaints in an easy-to-use database format. A well-informed staff that is able to use the data in your overall ERP system helps project a knowledgeable and professional support system for customers and the products and services you provide for them. In the increasingly competitive market place, customers must be viewed as an investment. With a CRM, you can maximize your return. A small business that adopts CRM realizes that customer relationships are assets that need to be protected to increase future business. With all of the variables that can influence the human-side of business and the interactions with current customers and future clients, it is important to realize that your bottom line depends on understanding customer relationships. Your CRM integrates all these single actions into a big picture for growing your small business.
Sources
CIO Magazine
Wikipedia
Jami J. Rodgers works in acquisition management for the federal sector in Washington, D.C. Jami holds a B.S. in Spanish with a business option and an international studies minor from The Pennsylvania State University.
