CRM Implementation

CRM Implementation

The CRM implementation matrix captures many procedures and activities. This matrix is divided into two dimensions and covers a wide range of potential activities:

• Customer dimension: Various stages of a customer–firm relationship (customer acquisition, growth, retention, exit).
  
  
• Management dimension: Analytical CRM (i.e., gaining a thorough grasp of consumer needs, behaviours and expectations) and operational CRM activities and procedures (to roll out and manage interactions with customers across all demands).

The implementation matrix plots a collection of managerial actions and processes against different stages of the customer–firm interaction. A specific implementation activity or process is represented by each cell in the matrix.

As a result, marketing-driven CRM installation is defined as follows:

• Activities and processes that make up both analytical and operational CRM describe marketing-driven CRM deployment. Customer data collecting, happiness and loyalty measures, customer requirements analysis, relationship economics and segmentation are just a few of the possibilities.
  
  
• Value proposition management, campaign management, channel management, referral management and loyalty management are examples of operational CRM activities and processes.
  
  
• The company’s ability to comprehend the customer’s worth to the company and the various needs of different customers.
  
  
• A procedure for acquiring and retaining customers that is constantly aligned with their needs and values.
  
  
• The ability to continuously improve the company’s services by learning more about its customers.

The whole CRM strategy is made up of the five aspects together in an integrative way. They interact and reinforce one another and each component serves an important purpose, with none of them being sufficient in isolation. To compete, a company must at least match its competitors on all factors and maintain beneficial interactions between them. CRM champions benefit from the effects of these favourable encounters. This chapter describes CRM implementation.

In this article, you will study business-to-business CRM, sales and CRM and sales territory management. You will also study contact management, lead management, configuration support and knowledge management. Further you will learn business planning, architecture and design. Technology selection, development, delivery and measurement is also described in this chapter.

Business-to-business CRM

Business to Business Customer Relationship Management (B2B CRM) refers to a collection of systems, technology, strategies and procedures that assist B2B organisations in managing their connections with current and future customers. When we talk about B2B CRM, we may be talking about it as a strategy, a process or a solution.

A system refers to a software programme (or solution) that collects and analyses data from each customer touch point (e.g., website, online chat, email, phone calls, social media, meetings, direct mail and so on). This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Marketing email communications received from customers, including whether opened and/or clicked and if they did, which link they clicked on, along with information on the content related to that link.
  
  
• All other forms of digital marketing, including display advertising delivered to them and whether they clicked on it.
  
  
• The content of the pages they viewed, when they viewed them and how often they viewed them are all part of their website browsing history.
  
  
• Phone calls, trade show booth visits and other offline interactions, providing details on what was said and any follow-up actions. The data is saved in a centralised database, which is generally on the cloud and can be accessed by all co-workers.

B2B CRM is basically a strategic approach of identifying and meeting the demands of business clients at every step of the sales cycle. This is made possible by the system.

Let us consider an example of Meesho, to understand the concept of business-to-business CRM: Meesho, an Indian-origin reseller marketplace, was launched in late 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi alumni. The company is constructing the next significant web network for home-based enterprises.

Individual resellers can advertise their products on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media networks. Millions of people who had been waiting for a chance at achievement and independence now have more control over their lives. They became aware that they required a solution to handle their leads as the business grew and the team grew.

During their quest for a solution, they found a CRM that could assist in addressing these needs. They have attained the following outcomes with Lead Squared:

• For a more automated strategy, they have abandoned the manual way of supplier involvement.
• When working in teams, information is shared more quickly and effectively.
• Since documents are automatically validated, the onboarding process for suppliers is sped up.

“Where an individual salesman needed roughly 8 to 10 minutes to fill out the necessary details of a potential supplier, with Lead Squared it only takes a minute,” a representative from Meesho says. We are thrilled to note that the team’s productivity has grown from its previous range of 5 to 10% to 70%.

Objectives of a Business-to-business CRM System

The following are the objectives of a business-to-business CRM system:

• To boost the business by aligning your sales and marketing more efficiently: If your marketing team doesn’t have access to the sales team’s data, how can they determine whether their efforts have been successful? Your sales and marketing teams will work in perfect harmony thanks to the way B2B CRM exactly addresses this gap. To collaborate more effectively and enhance your business plan, these two divisions do in fact need to communicate information.
  
  
• To make your client acquisition processes easier and more customisable: The process of acquiring and keeping clients in the B2B sector is extremely laborious. Professional clients are picky and well-informed about their needs. Additionally, they are greatly sought after by potential service suppliers every day.
  
  It is critical that you rely on a B2B CRM to tailor your communications and your marketing plan with reference to your clients and prospects in order to satisfy the reality of these needs. In essence, you need to give your B2B clients the impression that you comprehend their realities and can meet their specific needs. This is crucial for standing out from the crowd and delivering the best possible customer service (CX).
  
  
• To place your client at the very heart of the sales process: Business-to-business clients want to rely on resources that give them autonomy and make decision-making easier. They can benefit from your B2B CRM in this situation.
  
  Never forget that in a B2B transaction, your client is a company with several decision-makers, all of whom need to be in agreement. Imagine the mayhem that would result if these decision-makers lacked access to consolidated data that would enable them to assess the success of their goals! By providing them with access to data centralisation and visualisation tools, you should put each of your clients at the centre of the sales process.
  
  
• To become an invaluable reference for your clients: It’s not always easy to gain a B2B client’s trust. But once you do, you’ll start to serve as a reference for them, increasing your prospects of developing a long-lasting commercial relationship with them.
  
  
• To keep in contact with your prospects and clients: A solid database for each of your prospects and clients is necessary for B2B CRM. By keeping track of each of their histories, it will be simpler for you to get in touch with them after a project to upsell and continue doing business with them.
  
  
• To invest your time in value added tasks: Even though we occasionally wish there were more, there are only 24 hours in a day. Your sales teams frequently don’t have enough time to keep up with client connections. Fortunately, by implementing a B2B CRM, your sales team will save time and be able to concentrate entirely on the tasks that have a direct impact on your clients.
  
  
• To improve your productivity thanks to AI and BI: A number of B2B CRM rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and business intelligence (BI) solutions to run more pro-actively and intuitively, in addition to these automation, centralisation, and customisation options

Sales and CRM

Most people consider CRM to be software or a tool that assists them in managing and strengthening their contacts with prospects and customers. While actually, the use of CRM varies depending on which department the organisation is speaking with. A CRM may be used by a support team to manage client requests or by marketing teams to research how clients respond to Internet advertisements. In the sales industry, a CRM is used to help manage lead generation. With a sales CRM platform, businesses can securely store customer information while increasing sales.

A sales CRM is basically a solution for managing all touch points with prospects or customers during the sales process. A touch point is any direct or indirect interaction between sales personnel and their leads. The programme keeps track of future communication, automatically organises client data, sends reminders to follow up with leads and much more.

Sales Operations Should Be Centralised

Salespeople spend their days juggling prospecting and cold calling, as well as deal management and field sales. Managers review their salespeople’s performance, conducting ride-along and mentoring their team. If firms do not have a centralised mechanism for conducting these day-to-day duties, the department can quickly become dysfunctional.

Sales CRM is designed to be one-stop shops for all of the company’s daily tasks. They can connect to existing company tools and communication channels, allowing businesses to handle all tasks from a single, centralised location. This data centralisation provides a single source of truth for the entire organisation.

Sales professionals may immediately obtain the most current, accurate information they need to follow up on a lead or close a deal. They can also communicate with prospects via all communication channels such as email, phone and the website’s chat box, without having to jump between apps or browser tabs.

For example, Amazon has a specific sales department who is responsible and accountable for the sales operations and management. The other departments of the organisation cannot interfere in the sales operations of the organisation.

Improve the Accuracy of Customer Data

Data entering by hand is prone to human mistake. Let’s say a salesperson wants to manually record the contact information for a lead. They may inadvertently input incorrect information or just neglect to provide the contact information for the lead. Sales CRM reduces mistakes by automatically capturing each activity a sales professional makes within the software, such as making a sales call or sending a follow-up email.

For example, Amazon regularly updates and verifies their customer data to send emails and product catalogues to potential customers.

Identify Sales Process Constraints

For organisations that do not use sales CRM, analysing performance may be tough. To make sense of it all, they must organise massive amounts of data into spreadsheets and work with Excel algorithms.

A sales CRM’s attractiveness is that it takes care of data analysis for the company. Customer data is automatically combined into real-time “smart reports” that give insight into how the sales department as a whole is performing.

Indeed, 47 per cent of CRM users stated that adopting a sales CRM platform had a significant impact on client retention. Sales CRM has a number of tools that enable team to work more efficiently and effectively. CRM software can help in streamline the sales process by automating administrative processes, data entry and contact management.

For example, when Amazon noticed that the customers were unable to search for the exact product that they wanted, Amazon used AI to refresh their field and offer them similar products that they had purchased earlier. Hence, they converted constraints into opportunities.

Sales Territory Management

Sales territory management is more important than many people realise because it may increase sales, generate a larger consumer base and inspire teamwork among salespeople. Territory management is the management of a client group or geographic area for which an individual salesperson or a sales team is responsible. These areas are typically defined by geography, commercial potential, history or any combination of these elements. The ultimate goal of this region division is to maximise sales and profits while allocating resources efficiently.

It is critical to establish balanced sales territories. There are two possibilities when a sales territory is out of balance. When a territory is underserved, the sales team or salesperson is split too thin, resulting in sub-optimal levels of activity. Because they are busy, those in charge of territory will seek out too few leads, identify too few prospects and spend too little time with clients. Customers will go to competitors as a result and the company will lose sales.

In a territory, over-servicing occurs when the sales team has too little work and too many team members to service a small area. This raises overall costs and pricing, resulting in lower sales. Precious resources are also wasted when they are not used in more vital areas. This may result in underservicing in other areas.

Unbalanced regions can generate a variety of issues. Some of these include an unequal allocation of sales potential throughout the sales force, distorted compensation among sales reps and reps leaving the organisation to seek better balance and compensation elsewhere.

Sales potential forecasting is one of the things people may do to create strong sales territory. This assists in determining sales targets and identifying regions worthy of allocating scarce resources to. Forecasting analyses the quantity of prospects in a given area as well as their collective (and individual) purchasing power. Figure shows sales territory management:

For Example, Amazon has made different sales strategies for different sales territory, Amazon India make sales based on the custom and beliefs of Indian customers. India is a specific sales territory for which a specific sales team has been made by Amazon. This team research the needs and wants of the Indian customers and develop a sales strategy based on the research made by them.

The steps in developing a sales strategy by Amazon is as follows:

• Define market and groups: Amazon has defined a specific sale territory, India. Then develop a sales strategy based on the needs and wants of the Indian customers.
  
  
• Evaluate compensation: Once the sales strategy has been developed for a sales territory, the next step is to evaluating the compensation to be provided to the sales tea of a sales territory.
  
  
• Define sales objective: Amazon has defined their sales objective and communicated it to the Indian customers; Amazon proved that they want to give maximum satisfaction to Indian customers by providing all he products that they want at one place.
  
  
• Execute and improve: After defining the sales objective, the last step is to execute the sales strategy and make required changes as per the need of any specific sales territory.

Contact Management

The act of keeping, organising and managing information about customers, prospects and sales leads is known as contact management. Companies can manage their contact data in its most basic form by utilising an address book or an Excel or Google spreadsheet with entries for everyone with whom they do business.

Many businesses, however, prefer to employ specialised contact management software. This is especially useful if they have a large number of contacts to arrange or several persons who need access to the information. Typically, contact management software allows users to create records for each contact. Contact information such as a name, phone number, email address or firm can be included.

The tools organise this information so that users may easily find the entries again. The information may also be searchable. Contact management software may also include functions such as tracking interactions between customers and businesses, as well as certain scheduling capabilities, such as the ability to schedule meetings with clients on a calendar.

For example, for contact management, prospects and customers can see that salespeople and customer service teams are working together.

Everything is Being Tracked — CRM’s Progression

Free contact management software or software that comes included with other business tools, made it simple to save and retrieve contact information, allowing users to search by name, firm, job title or industry. Advanced sales contact management systems, on the other hand, go well beyond basic electronic contact book features. That is because compiling a list of clients and potential consumers does very little, it is all about keeping track of their connection with them.

What exactly does that imply? In an ideal world, companies would keep track of every interaction they have with a contact — presentations, phone calls, emails, notes on what was said and what action was agreed upon or should be performed — and link it to follow-up activities and reminders. Anything to ensure that transactions are closed and sales are made, in fact.

Contact management systems were superseded by systems geared at customer relationship management or CRM, as a result of these two evolutionary leaps — from focusing on contact details to looking at relationships and from individual desktop databases to shared information across an entire firm.

What is occurred is that these contact management systems have matured into robust customer relationship management systems that track everything from customers and sales leads to marketing campaigns and sales team performance over the last few years.

Lead Management

Using a CRM tool to handle leads may help virtually any sales team turn more leads into transactions. We get a lot of queries regarding lead management in CRM from small company owners. “What is sales lead management in CRM?” or “What is customer lead management?” are common questions. You will address these and other questions further in detail.

Definition of Lead Management

A lead is a person or company who has the potential to become a customer or client. Advertising, direct marketing, networking, outbound calls, website enquiries, email marketing and social media marketing are just some of the strategies used by businesses to create leads. When a sales professional qualifies and enters lead data into a company’s lead generation process, the sales process begins. He/she then communicates with the lead by email, phone or physical visit to learn about his needs, tells the prospective client about his product or service and finally persuades him to purchase the product or service.

Depending on different elements such as the lead’s decision-making process, buying requirement and urgency and so on, the lead-to-customer conversion process can happen quickly or take days, weeks or even months.

Lead management encompasses the complete process of identifying or creating a lead through pursuing and closing a transaction. Lead management can be explained with the help of an example given below:

A company that sells medical records needs to rank its leads for a specific campaign. Based on this market niche, the criteria will differ from the conventional rating they employ. Fortunately, they recently conducted an audit of the lead data that was given through their CRM integration to their marketing automation platform. Sale has also confirmed its accuracy. With the knowledge that they have the right data, they can confidently design this new lead scoring system.

Configuration Support

CRM customisation often refers to CRM extensions that may necessitate bespoke coding or programming. Configuring, on the other hand, refers to the capacity to use out-of-the-box functions to fulfil business goals.

For example, configuration support in Dynamics 365 is applied to perform:

• Database changes and fields
• Forms, validations and views
• Workflows, Business Process Flows (BPF), dashboards and reports
• Security settings
• Calculated fields and templates

Also, configuring can be done by an administrative person using tools like Internal Customisation, Release in solution packages, codeless tool set, Preview and publish modes, QA in Sandbox Environment etc.

While configuration and development can be used to explain customisation, configuration entails the use of current tools that exist within the application platform, allowing 90 per cent of the modifications that are required to be scaled, extended, finetuned, exaggerated, embellished and industrialised. Indeed, this is more of a drag-and-drop, point-and-click and “what you see is what you get” design.

Development in customisation, on the other hand, is carried out for more significant and sophisticated adjustments, as well as extra functionality that may be wanted to better business processes. As a result, there are puzzling functionalities that necessitate special coding for appropriateness.

In truth, the configuration capabilities of modern CRMs are now so powerful that development is uncommon, but it can be employed to meet specific needs. In general, a CRM is an open system that provides for additional functionality and integration with other systems, as well as apps that may be developed and modified further.

Configuration is essential for running and managing a CRM. Configuration is essentially the system’s structure and administration.

Knowledge Management

The process of organising, creating, utilising and sharing collective information inside an organisation is known as knowledge management (KM). Successful knowledge management entails storing information in a convenient location.

For example, LMS i.e., Learning Management System concentrates on housing, distributing, and tracking engagement with learning and training materials. This system allows employees to access learning materials from anywhere, on demand. It has interactive quizzes, engagement analytics, customisable learning paths, and course creation and management tools. Lessonly and Moodle are examples of LMS software solutions.

Knowledge management is one of the few efforts that can actually revolutionise how a company runs. A knowledge management process, at its most basic, is the way a corporation manages knowledge, from its generation through its organisational methodology to how it subsequently ensures it is disseminated out.

• Making new knowledge: Knowledge acquisition precedes knowledge generation. This knowledge may originate from a variety of sources, including personnel within a business or individuals brought in for knowledge or experience on a certain issue. After acquiring knowledge, the following stage is to comprehend what knowledge will be utilised for, how it will be applied and where it is appropriate.
  
  
  
• Organisational knowledge: The knowledge must then be structured for future usage in a knowledge management system. This knowledge must not only be organised, but it must also have security elements so that authorised individuals can access it when needed.
  
  This knowledge organisation process is a crucial aspect of knowledge management since knowledge without it becomes unorganised and lacks structure, making it difficult or impossible to find when knowledge is needed in the future.
  
  
  
• Sharing of knowledge: Knowledge sharing completes the knowledge organisation process. This information sharing encompasses everything from knowledge training to knowledge exchange, in which knowledge can be obtained or improved through knowledge discussions with other employees in an organisation. All of these elements contribute to a knowledge management strategy that encourages cooperation and information exchange.

Business Planning

A business plan is a detailed document that outlines a company’s objectives and how it intends to achieve them. A business plan is a documented blueprint for the company’s marketing, financial and operational goals. Business plans are used by both the start-ups and the established businesses.

A business plan is an important document that is intended for both external and internal audiences. A business plan, for example, is used to attract funding before a company has developed a proven track record. It can also help in getting a loan from a financial institution.

A business plan can also keep a company’s management team on the same page concerning strategic action items and on track to reach set goals. Business plans are about more than just money. The business plan outlines the broad planning required to start and manage a successful firm, including profit, but it extends beyond that. A plan should cover everything from researching the competition and determining how their business will fit into the sector to analysing employee morale and arranging for talent retention.

Architecture and Design

A business risks inaccurate, incomplete and unavailable data if it does not have a CRM architecture that includes strategy, structure and operations.

Without data, a CRM is useless; it is the foundation of a company’s understanding of its customers, its capacity to produce accurate sales forecasts and its justification for pushing organisational change.

As a result, badly maintained data can represent substantial hazards to a corporation, losing up to 30 per cent of its revenue.

A solid CRM infrastructure is essential for minimising the hazards of faulty data. CRM software, as the repository for customer data, requires an architecture that prioritises orderly data gathering and storage. A company’s bottom line could suffer if it does not have it.

A CRM architecture defines the strategy, structure and processes required for effective customer relationship management. CRM software is critical to the implementation of this design.

• CRM goals will dictate CRM strategy and will influence the software selection process.
• The CRM’s structure will prioritise data collecting and organisation.
• CRM processes will explain the pathways for achieving CRM objectives.

In other words, the customer relationship management strategy of a company will serve as the foundation for implementing CRM software. Its practical implementation will be the structure and processes.

Design

A well-designed CRM system provides the organisation with a comprehensive picture of its customers. Sales staff can view everything in one place, thanks to a simple, customised dashboard that displays customers’ previous interactions with the organisation, the status of their purchases, any pending customer relationship details and more.

This definition of a good CRM system demonstrates how sophisticated this type of software is. CRM consolidates a wealth of information under one roof and hence frequently strikes a balance between being valuable and overwhelming for clients. Product design may assist CRM apps in becoming more useful.

Tracking of Leads

Lead loss is the most serious issue for businesses who do not use CRM. Leads frequently fall out of the sales funnel as a result of inconsistent follow-up from the marketing and sales teams.

Time-saving

Wasting time working out difficult workflows is not getting the organisation any closer to meeting its business objectives. CRM users can be more productive with a decent UX.

Consistency in Communication

It is difficult to envision anything else that can destroy sales effectiveness as viciously as disorganised critical information about a lead. CRM UX, when intelligently designed, encourages information sharing and ensures that everyone knows how to find and readily access the information they require.