A CRM software holds the details for the most crucial component of your business – your customers. Customer demographics, their preferences, grievances, interactions, and so much more is logged in the CRM system. All of these details are incredibly crucial for your business to provide superior customer service. However, companies often make mistakes when deploying their CRM setup and lose out on many benefits.
You can know lot more here Khatrimaza
Through this article, let’s walk you through some common mistakes that you should avoid if you’re looking to implement a CRM for your organization.
Mistakes to avoid while implement a CRM System
There isn’t much that can go wrong for your organization once you have correctly implemented your software. However, there are some pitfalls to watch out for while narrowing down on the CRM solution right for you!
Mistake 1: Not opting for a mobile-first CRM
Cloud-based technologies have redefined the meaning of accessibility. As a result, the CRM market has seen a lot of changes over the last decade. To put things in context, 2008 had 12% of businesses using a cloud-based SaaS CRM, whereas, in 2019, this figure increased to a whopping 93%.
The reason for this increase is understandable if you look at the benefits that a cloud-based, mobile-first CRM offers to everyone in your organization. From being able to access the details from different devices to having information at all times – going the cloud-based route enables you to control your CRM software at all times.
Given this fact, selecting a CRM software that doesn’t support mobile phones is a grave mistake. Not only will it negatively affect productivity, but it’ll also make it challenging to keep the operations streamlined. After all, if your sales team can’t have the details of your customers on the go, they aren’t really benefiting from the CRM software. The solution here is to choose a cloud-based mobile-first CRM that gives you the ability to access it using multiple devices.
Mistake 2: Not thinking about scalability
More often than not, businesses only weigh their current needs and requirements before selecting a CRM solution. On paper, this might make sense – why would you think about features that you don’t need? However, this thinking drastically fails if you consider two things:
- The potential growth of your business and the changes it’ll need to accommodate.
- The cost of switching to another CRM system at a later stage.
The CRM software that is just right for your organization today may be too limited in just a couple of years’ time. At that point, you’ll find yourself struggling with this CRM software, and the only option will be to shift to a more robust CRM software.
This transition might sound easy, but consider the vast amount of data and information your CRM software would’ve managed by then. If you go ahead and switch to another software, integrating the information from the previous CRM software will be extremely difficult. You’ll have to do most of the data porting manually, thereby needing to spend a lot of time and effort.
Therefore, when you’re choosing your CRM software, always weigh your future needs as well.
Mistake 3: Not integrating it with your project management system
Keeping the CRM system isolated from your project management system is one of the biggest mistakes you can make while deploying any CRM software. If you’re operating in the B2B domain, where projects and customers are inherently connected, this is an even more grave mistake for you.
Consider the example of a digital agency. For a salesperson to know what kind of resources they can sell to a potential client, they must have the project data. In the absence of project data, they won’t be able to offer an accurate quote, leading to overcommitment of resources and unhappy customers.
Integrating your CRM software with your project management system rectifies many concerning problems:
- Salespeople will have better insight into the availability of various resources across the organization.
- Project managers will be able to plan resources better, based on the deals currently in their sales pipeline.
- HR and management teams can hire more suitable people based on forecasted demand for resources.
Therefore, you should use a CRM software that works seamlessly with your project management system and offers you the utmost clarity on your organization’s different dynamic parts.
Mistake 4: Not considering the end-user needs
More often than not, businesses select the CRM solution with a good set of features on paper. They fail to take into consideration the needs of their end-users. The users of your CRM software will not just be the upper management but salespeople, marketing teams, customer support teams, HR reps, and everyone else.
The needs of these different end-users also vary greatly. While management may think about pricing, salespeople would be interested in having all the information related to leads and deals, and HR reps might want to see the resource allocation data in the CRM.
So, to solve this problem, you must take the end-user needs into account at every step of your selection process. Here’s how you can do that:
- Choose a single point of contact from the different departments that will be using the CRM software. This will help you streamline communication while understanding the needs of the end-users.
- Involve the end-users from the very first stage of the CRM software selection process.
- Focus on features helpful to end-users and not just those that sound good to you on paper. Discuss the features with the end-users – who will be working on the software on a daily basis. Prioritize the features that would end up streamlining these daily tasks.
Mistake 5: Picking an overly complicated solution
If opting for a software that doesn’t fit your scaling business is a mistake, so is the opposite one – picking one that is way too complex and not useful for your current needs.
This mistake generally occurs when you overestimate your company’s growth plans while selecting the CRM solution. To rectify this mistake, introspect on the following questions:
- How much is the management willing to invest in the business in the coming few years?
- Is the company raising outside funding? How are they using it?
- What is the expected investment in different sections of the business in the coming years?
- Where do you see the business in 1, 3, 5 years from now?
With the answers to the above questions, you’ll find yourself in a much better position to select a CRM that is not only perfectly fitting for your current needs but also suitable for your scalable business.
All in all, while opting for a CRM software, your goal should be to match the selection with your company’s growth trajectory. Otherwise, you’ll either end up with an overtly simple or an overtly complex CRM software – neither of which will help your cause.
In conclusion
One can easily eliminate the mistakes mentioned above by introspecting and weighing different options. Once you’ve surpassed these mistakes and have finalized on a CRM software – things will start getting progressively easier for you and your organization.
We hope this article helped you understand some critical mistakes while deploying a CRM software and what you should do to avoid those mistakes.
