Customer relationship management (CRM). What’s the point? Where’s it’s value? Well, according to Forrester, the value of a good CRM investment means everything. In fact, the research firm describes it as the “heart of every business”, as it goes well beyond optimizing the front office and into the realm of transforming the customer journey, relationship, and business revenue. It is such a powerful success metric and business tool that Statista predicts it will reach $69.12 billion in 2022 with a CAGR of 11.72% to $120.30 billion by 2027.
It’s juicy. It’s tasty. It’s got litres of benefits.
The right CRM platform will help you support your customers and your business, and will help you to refine business processes, reshape and optimise operations, and build an engaged workforce.
However, a CRM investment is not a one-size-fits-all problem solver
There are several key metrics that you need to assess to ensure that you choose the right CRM platform for your business. The first is to really know the expectations and realities that shape your business and its operations.
CRM has long since evolved past the point of simply organizing your business life and is now a feature-rich stack that spans sales, marketing, reporting, eCommerce, contact center tooling, workflows, customer service, and more. And each of these capabilities can be added on or customized to work with one another to build an increasingly holistic ecosystem that blends your data and business processes into a highly agile and flexible environment. This means that you need to dig deep into the depths of your business and find out exactly what you need so your CRM maps back precisely to that need.
There are tools and services designed to help you unpack precisely what features, functionalities and capabilities your business wants from your CRM investment. The Mint ProActive Discover platform is designed to help you prioritize your business requirements so you invest into a solid CRM foundation for your business.
The second metric is to unpack how easily a specific CRM platform will integrate within your existing business architecture and how easy it is for employees to use it. If people find a system to complicated to use or if the barrier to entry is too high, then you will immediately lose a significant percentage of its value to the business. The key word here is ‘easy’. Easy to use, easy to integrate, easy to train people, easy to optimize – the list goes on. Look for a CRM platform that meets the expectations of your business and that your people will enjoy using.
The third metric is found in the data and the insights. A well-designed, easy-to-use CRM solution is one thing, but a platform that can pull the information from across multiple touchpoints and provide actionable insights is another thing entirely. Like compound interest, data-led decision-making is a kind of magic. As McKinsey points out, CRM should form part of a holistic business learning journey so as to meet the hybrid needs of a changing customer base.
The final metric is the implementation. You want to work with a partner that will ensure you ask the right questions of your CRM software, and that the solution implemented is the one that actually answers these questions. A partner that will help you to implement it properly, smooth over the inevitable bumps in the implementation road, and provide ongoing technical support to ensure the value you expected is the value you always get. Mint can help you transform your CRM investment with our expertise and, let’s face it, our passion for technology and innovative customer engagement.
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