Replacing The Excel CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
The question seems obscure? Maybe but the truth is that there are many companies relying on simple Excel sheets when it comes to customer relationship management. While Excel is a great tool for many calculation based tasks it is simply not the right one to use it everywhere. Simply because many people don't know that there are many affordable solutions that perfectly meet their needs.
That's where the problem starts: Because we know how to use Excel and we have started it so many times before, we tend to leave out the question for an alternative to it. Is that program really the right thing to manage your customers? What do you do if you want to edit the list on the way? You take a copy of the list (if you knew that you will need it - otherwise you can only create a plain new file) and make your changes. If two or more people do this it gets really hard to merge all the new data to back to the original.
Beside the synchronization problem there are lots of benefits you gain by choosing a real CRM application. You can attach appointments to a specific customer. This way anyone who is interested can see a journal of the past meetings and their results. Using a multiuser, network enabled solution you can control every user's access rights. Some people may only see a part of all the company's contacts.
It's not only basic advantages that come from using a network enabled CRM. You could be much more efficient if you can find the customer by hitting three keys and then let your software place a call without having to dial. The same can be said for email integration. How often do you have something to tell to your customers / leads that will be left unsaid simply because there's no easy way to filter the right recipients and then write a serial mail to them? Truly professional CRM solutions with multiuser support have much more useful functions. They can help with automated creation of contact items by parsing your emails or let you do quick instant messaging with your team members.
So there's only one thing left for you to do: Find the program that can do all this for you and don't be afraid: Modern applications can do all this without the need for specialist who will install and configure it.
That's where the problem starts: Because we know how to use Excel and we have started it so many times before, we tend to leave out the question for an alternative to it. Is that program really the right thing to manage your customers? What do you do if you want to edit the list on the way? You take a copy of the list (if you knew that you will need it - otherwise you can only create a plain new file) and make your changes. If two or more people do this it gets really hard to merge all the new data to back to the original.
Beside the synchronization problem there are lots of benefits you gain by choosing a real CRM application. You can attach appointments to a specific customer. This way anyone who is interested can see a journal of the past meetings and their results. Using a multiuser, network enabled solution you can control every user's access rights. Some people may only see a part of all the company's contacts.
It's not only basic advantages that come from using a network enabled CRM. You could be much more efficient if you can find the customer by hitting three keys and then let your software place a call without having to dial. The same can be said for email integration. How often do you have something to tell to your customers / leads that will be left unsaid simply because there's no easy way to filter the right recipients and then write a serial mail to them? Truly professional CRM solutions with multiuser support have much more useful functions. They can help with automated creation of contact items by parsing your emails or let you do quick instant messaging with your team members.
So there's only one thing left for you to do: Find the program that can do all this for you and don't be afraid: Modern applications can do all this without the need for specialist who will install and configure it.
About the Author:
Frank Peters is lead tech developer at soft-evolution, a software company which has developed the network scheduler Pimero.
By Dimas Prast
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