Tech Trends


CRM Solutions Continue to Evolve Giving MWBEs More Options to Strengthen Customer Relationships

For maintaining a successful business, maintaining good customer relationship is an important requisite. Customer Relationship Management or CRM is the process or methodology that offers valuable insights into customer needs and behaviors based on which businesses can design solutions for developing stronger and long lasting relationships with customers.

Even small business owners should never doubt the necessity of CRM--even if they feel they know all their customers. But irrespective of size, all businesses need to contact customers, then contract with them, realize cash and then continue serving customers with care.

CRM encompasses various technological components and it combines all details regarding customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. CRM helps businesses leverage technology and human resources to gain knowledge about customers to serve them better.

The key for success in implementing a CRM solution is to first determine specific internal needs, and then to find the solution that provides the best way to increase profitability. The factors to be considered in a good CRM solution are: online marketing campaigns, e-mail availability, generation of reports based on sales data, easy import and export of data, social media capability like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; privacy and data security, easy set up and use and, above all, operating cost.

eCRM or Web-based CRM is a form of self service software that enables Web-based customer interaction, automation of e-mail, call logs, campaign management and Web site analytics.

On-demand CRM solutions help businesses strengthen their sales, service and marketing personnel to efficiently serve customers, to close a deal fast and to ensure their customer loyalty. Such solutions are easily deployable and are available as a Web-based subscription service. The CRM solution enables an organization to improve sales effectiveness, target the right customer with the right message and enhance the customer service quality.

Oracle Siebel OnDemand CRM

Siebel started with CRM solutions for large enterprises and is now encouraging small businesses to also benefit from Web-based CRM software. Oracle’s Siebel CRM Professional Edition is a scaled-down version of its Siebel Enterprise Edition so small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) can use just the functionality they require in an easy-to-use, less complex package than the enterprise product. Since it’s from a large well-known company, it a safe buy.

Siebel OnDemand makes it easier to share calendars and information across accounts, sales opportunities and contacts. Users can view team calendars and task lists to coordinate schedules and balance workloads. Sales representatives get visibility into sales order history and customer-specific pricing, which allows them to make accurate quotes, make predictable delivery commitments and gain orders, quickly reducing time between order and cash, which is very important in the case of small businesses.

The program also provides built-in integration to applications like Microsoft Outlook. In addition, users can quickly adapt Siebel CRM OnDemand. The solution leverages contact networking similar to social networking. This tracks business and social relationships between contacts which will lead to new revenue streams. SMBs can launch targeted marketing campaigns using the Marketing Segmentation Wizard, which offers more sales opportunities. This helps customizing campaigns based on demographics and past behavior.

NetSuite Small Business

NetSuite Small Business provides an all encompassing view of customer interactions with their complete transaction history, deciphering their needs and what they bought. This data helps in building accurate forecasts. It also offers a view of service issues such as inventory, order status, overdue invoices. It also allows placing real orders with built-in order management, and provides real-time dashboards to reveal key performance indicators (KPIs), including new leads, opportunities, sales orders and forecasts.

The hosted CRM application offers order management and fulfillment, commission and incentive management, channel and partner management, web site and analytics, and project tracking all in one single integrated solution. Employees get any access anytime or anywhere to the company’s business software. Sales force automation, customer service and support, marketing automation, incentive management are other employee and customer friendly solutions.

NetSuite Small Business is the only hosted CRM application that provides company representatives with a 360 degree customer-centric view to manage initial and on-going relationships over the phone, in person or on the web. It provides both front-office CRM and back-office accounting besides an optimized e-commerce storefront engine. It’s most suitable for only small businesses so it may not be able to serve as well as the client company grows in size. It lacks strong backup data centers for customer data and services and help desk support.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is a powerful CRM package for small businesses, that are starting out because it eliminates the need to deal with internal IT infrastructure. It allows small businesses to offer more functionality to customers and also helps customize offerings. Costing less than most other solutions, and working on a pay-as-you go model, it does not need upfront investment, and the browser-based tool is easy to learn.

Small businesses do not remain small. As they grow, they can leverage the investments and enhancements made by Salesforce.com at a reasonable monthly fee and still enjoy the benefits of an enterprise-level system.

Being a strong brand, Salesforce.com provides solutions like Apex development platform, ContentExchange for content management and a Sucessforce user community.

Despite its many strengths, Salesforce.com also has its weaknesses. The solutions are not flexible enough to be customized to a larger extent. It also lacks functionality so the company uses a tools approach. Salesforce.com does not provide service level agreements or SLAs to small businesses.

Although the shared multi-tenant architecture is touted by many as an advantage, its serves as a cost saving measure for the CRM hosting company only. It reduces autonomy, flexibility and customization capabilities for customers when compared to a single tenancy alternative. But for small businesses, single tenancy becomes an expensive solution.

Like large enterprises, small businesses also have to deal with acquisition, marketing and managing the customer experience as well as tracking orders and products. Using CRM implementations, sales personnel can keep track of and manage all sales activities, generate accurate quotes and leverage the analytics dashboard to track sale performance. The tools offered by the CRM solution are knowledge based management and rule-based distribution of service.

In spite of this, many small-business owners may decide they don’t need CRM at all because they think they know their customers as individuals. But experts believe that fundamental business concepts remain the same irrespective of the size of the business. Regardless of the product, CRM helps automate any business process.