TMCnews Featured Article
November 04, 2010
Hosted CRM Solutions Should Streamline Processes, Not Complicate Them
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions are meant to provide streamlined benefits for your company as they enable you to better manage customer relationships. One of these benefits is the ability to drive revenues through a solid and loyal customer base. If the CRM system in place creates more work that it eliminates, however, it may not be the right solution. Hosted CRM may be worth considering if you need to streamline operations.
A recent Soffront post focused on the power of hosted CRM and what it can mean for the enterprise – both good and bad. During a sales training attended by this author, one trainee shared that he was able to make 60-80 calls per day before he started using hosted CRM solutions from Salesforce.com (News - Alert). When that implementation was complete, he was only about to make 30-40 calls per day, yet was working the same number of hours, if not more. His assumption was that Salesforce.com actually slows him down.
Hosted CRM solutions are powerful tools when managing the pipeline and reporting; but they can present challenges in daily activities. One of the reasons for these challenges is the fact that users have to spend a lot of time clicking to get to the information they need before they make the call and then to document information from the call.
The ideal hosted CRM solution should allow the sales team to follow up with leads and prospects quickly without jumping across a number of different screens. You should be able to bring up an activity and review it and have access to all communications with the customer. Contact history and opportunity history should also capture all information and not require you to take multiple steps to get there.
Soffront CRM is one hosted CRM solution that addresses this challenge and allows the user to work from one screen for all activities. The user can review daily activities, make calls, send e-mails, look at account and opportunity history and contact notes directly from the daily task list. This is possible as all related notes and history from all places are collected by the solution and made available within this activity.
With this approach to hosted CRM, the sales team can work with one list and one screen, while also keeping all the information they need readily available. This is a much more effective way to manage information as it allows the sales team to focus on what is important – prospecting, making contacts and closing.
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 Juliana Kenny
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