CRM or customer relationship management is a strategic approach aimed at establishing of the long-term and profitable interaction with Customers with regard to deep understanding of their individual demands.

The client-centred philosophy enables a company arranging its business in such a manner that makes each stuff member be engaged personally in the relationships with customers. The company strengthens its position in the market by means of figuring out a way to meet expectations of the customers in due time providing any grounds to explore other service providers.

CRM-system brings all company’s data in a coherent whole for constructing on its basis a simple and clear model of efficiency.

Basic principles of CRM-system include the following:

• Unified data repository granting immediate access to the entire information about the client relationships;
• Interaction channels management;
• Continuous review of the customers’ information captured;
• Decision-making based on CRM data (prioritizing, determining efficiency indicators, etc.)

CRM embraces the information about customers, sales, marketing efficiency, feedback, and market trends.

Being well-chosen for particular corporate needs, CRM is a component of the company’s success.

The well-chosen CRM may offer the following opportunities to a company:

 

• Customer service improvement;
• Increased efficiency of requests’ processing;
• Simplification of sales.

Which necessary steps should be taken to make CRM acting like ally rather than enemy for a company’s activity?

• The company’s business processes should be analysed to select those ones, which are to be implemented in CRM at their best.
• The most appropriate CRM is to be selected for better responding to the company’s needs and requirements.

The availability of different systems, both commercial and free, is worth mentioning. We consider the expensive commercial CRM is not essential for a small company taking first steps in business. The available high-quality free CRM can cover the company’s needs completely. Selecting a system for serving your company may take a while. Practice shows the selection period of between 1 month and 1 year, sometimes longer. The choice is up to you.

Often, the chosen CRM meets the main goals of a company (sales, analytics, or others). While purchasing a system after recognition of all characteristics, a company expects the system running like clockwork.

In fact, CRM would not be able to carry out its functions without been administrated.

The most attractive contemporary CRM solutions are listed below.

HRS Requirement CRM. British system which has been evolving since 2000. HRS is a powerful integrated CRM providing the entire requirement workflow. Being integrated with emailing, social media (LinkedIn), and job boards, the system provides HR managers with advanced flexibility (mobile version is present) and high level of automation. HRS offers different payment plans depending on the complexity and the scale of business. Free Demo is downloadable.

Awarded with BOSSIE 2016, SuiteCRM introduces a well-developed open source CRM system for business process automation . The license is free, the deploy options include private clouds, Kindle, or their own OnDemand service. The innovative system promises 80% implementation cost reduction. The scale embraces thousands of users. The enterprise-class support is included.

Vtiger CRM software company has offices in the USA and India. They offer three editions of CRM. The Sales edition provides the entire from-lead-to-payment sales workflow. The Support edition offers the streamlined customer support across every channel. The Ultimate edition includes sales, support and marketing for the advanced fully featured all-in-one CRM. Free 15-days trial is available for every edition.

Zurmo free open source CRM modile application introduces itself as the first cloud-based CRM platform. Can be deployed in 55 seconds as the developers promise. The peculiar features of the system are characterised as mobile, social and gamified. Free trial and Demo are available.

The reasons of unsuccessful CRM implementation may vastly vary. From experience, the most frequent ones concern the following oversights:

• Redundant re-engineering of business processes;
• Incorrect assessment of CRM implementation’s cost efficiency;
• Undervaluation of implementing process complexity.

Inability of separate automation means to interact may deter the sustainable use of data systems.

Conclusion:

Applied for management, CRM significantly benefits the company’s activity that allows responding timely to changes in the workflow.

Visionary executives believe that implementation of data systems nowadays provides better flexibility along with overhead cost reduction for their organizations.

This is the opportunity of taking shortcuts being well-informed.

“He who owns the information – owns the world” (Francis Bacon, British philosopher)