Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions are an important part of the corporate culture. When leveraged correctly, CRM software delivers considerable value to the enterprise as it helps the organization to better understand and interact with customers so as to drive healthier revenues and wider profits margins.
A recent NetSuite (News - Alert) white paper focused on the importance of CRM software and what considerations are at stake any time an organization needs to decide on the right CRM software platform. The company believes this is an important focus due to the 80/20 rule, which dictates that 80 percent of the business’s profits are typically generated by 20 percent of its customers.
As a result, it is critical to know who that 20 percent of customers are and how to maximize the value of those relationships, while also driving cost-effective new customer acquisition initiatives. This is not an easy task, but one that can be streamlined with the right CRM software in place.
According to a recent Gartner (News 
- Alert) survey, companies will implement CRM solutions to improve customer satisfaction and experience; to provide a consistent organization-wide view of customers; and to enhance cross-selling and up-selling of products and services to existing customers. As a result, it is imperative that mid-size businesses focus directly on customers.
A Forrester (News - Alert) report showed that nearly three-quarters of medium-sized businesses implement CRM to focus on customer data management – or getting to a single version of the truth for their customer data.
To make the best selection and effective implementation in CRM software, every company must determine the anticipated business benefits; the impact on current and future IT costs; whether or not the solution is flexible enough to meet near- and longer-term needs; and how the solution can be positioned for near-term success.
The main focus for any CRM software implementation should be to extract every dollar from every customer relationship. To do so, the company must target fruitful customer segments; maximize lead conversions; up-sell existing customers; and renew existing customers. At the same time, the organization has to be sure the CRM software implementation is not just a heavy price tag (News - Alert)- but actually delivers value.
A focused strategy for implementing robust CRM software should examine whether the organization should implement an on-premise or SaaS (News - Alert) solution, and whether the choice should be a best-of-breed or suite.
There are no across-the-board answers that apply to every organization and instead, each company has to do its own assessment. By determining a clear strategy ahead of time, however, the company is more likely to drive success in its CRM software selection.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jamie Epstein
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