CRM-system: a tool for business 80 lvl

We are on Habré for 2 years with a tail. During this time, we wrote more than 50 articles in which we passed on our experience: working with technical specifications, managing development, using CRM in serious companies, touched upon employment and education issues, answered the most simple and very difficult questions (already beyond Habr) . And still, our managers and implementers hear the same question: why CRM business, what will it change specifically in my company? Of course, to answer this question is not easy: a lot depends on the industry and the size of each business. But we will try - sincerely, without calculations, schemes and other difficulties.

What is business?

It is always a complex system consisting of people, the means of production, the object of production, money and information. The interactions between these elements are called business processes. The goal of a business in 99% of cases is to make a profit. Profit is most often brought by consumers of a product, product or service - customers, partners, etc., another element of the business system. Well, for the sake of completeness, there are competitors that need to be circumvented - by quality, functionality, speed, maintenance, retention methods.

Any business had a moment when the first client appeared - this is a real holiday, the first awareness of the right path, the first payment. This client is remembered and often loved. But over time, more and more clients appear, relations with them are getting worse - not because the employees are lazy, but because the probability theory works: the larger the sample, the higher the likelihood of an adverse event. There will always be someone unhappy, angry, someone will not like the voice of the support person or the salesman’s tone, someone will not cope with the product and will be angry with himself, pouring discontent on the head of the company.

Time goes on - simple and intelligible business processes are overgrown with parameters, stages, responsible (sometimes very irresponsible) and then chaos ensues. Business understands that it is impossible to return to the original order, a new “cosmos” of development must come, there must be some kind of leap. And then, as a joke, they start moving the beds, changing the girls. While in the XXI century there is a fairly simple tool for restoring order in the native chaos - automation. And the automation of everything: development and testing, work with texts and documentation, technical support, warehouse, logistics, advertising, sales.

Indeed, companies automate production, because you produce more, automate development, because there is so much order, automate advertising, because so much lower than the rate and higher conversion ... But how does it come to automate the entire management and customer service — the notebooks open, exelki and google calendars. Are you seriously? CRM-system has long been not a luxury, but a tool for end-to-end automation.

What is losing business, abandoning the CRM-system?

More precisely, we will tell you what the CRM system gives and, if you don’t have it, you lose it.

CRM is a look into the future of business. The fact is that the system accumulates and saves data on operational activities and, using embedded and custom reports, allows you to see trends, predict events, classify the client more "on the way".

CRM - this is no contact by , in the truest sense of the word. A good CRM system can collect data from the site (for example, applications), record calls, work with online chat rooms and email. By the way, we went further - some of these functions were implemented by the standard means of the RegionSoft CRM , some of them with the help of a cool and convenient script server RegionSoft Application Server . In addition, the CRM system should be an assistant in creating mailings - segmented, thoughtful, well laid out for each situation (you must agree, congratulations on the new year and notification of the release of a new version of your product should look different). Thus, you collect a maximum of people who are interested in your company (and sometimes those who have passed by) and, again, have a better chance of converting contacts into money, into loyal customers, partners, etc. (depends on the goals).


goods.com

And yes, customer management is not only marketing in the sense that we are all used to seeing it. This, if you will, is the transformation of a group of people into friends of a business - that is, those who not only buy, but also value the purchase beyond the material aspect. This is the future of the whole sphere of advancement. Today, this alignment is available not only to Apple or Chanel, but also to everyone who is willing to work on loyalty on the data, and not by simple pairing.

The CRM-system accumulates the best practices and helps to access them really in one click. And again - I emphasize - we are not talking about dry and boring sales personnel scripts, but about document templates, designed business processes, accumulated information about incidents (yes, do not be surprised, we also manage technical support in our RegionSoft CRM and backlog, and developer tasks). Why is it good:

• All information is aggregated in a single center and can be given access to any employee.
  
• Adaptation of newcomers as quickly as possible - in addition to training and mentoring, he can learn the experience of his colleagues, and at the same time get used to the new working interface
  
• what is really the best that is preserved is what enhances the skills
  
• history of information is kept, data is not lost.
  

CRM is an easy management of the ever-growing flow of tasks. The implementation varies from one CRM system to another, but in general, each more or less well-known solution has developed a good planning functionality. We are slightly perfectionists and hate the request ... deadlines, so we were particularly confused with the planning and management of tasks in RegionSoft CRM : we developed several types of tools, including a three-week pass -through planner, which perfectly views the entire employment horizon for each specialist.

Task management, notifications, tasks embedded in business processes are a very important automation mechanism. Thus, the team works smoothly and on time, dramatically reducing the number of customer complaints in this direction. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine and it’s better not to recall how it is - the non-automated management of the affairs of each and the team as a whole. And here CRM bypasses all sorts of calendars and project management systems in that everything is tied to clients, projects, resources, and the entire array of information is available in a single environment (thanks to the relational storage organization model - all objects within the software are interrelated).


Yandeks.Kartinki

CRM is risk management. An extremely important functionality, which is undocumented in manuals, but has served not one hundred companies. It's all on the points.

• Preventive measures to retain customers - for example, in the low season, you can do pre-sales, announce promotions and all sorts of bonuses to shake doubters. CRM also makes it possible for clients to make personalized (and quasi-personalized) offers that create one-on-one conversation (and often they are). Why is it important? Attracting each lead and each client has its price, sometimes quite tangible. You communicate with the client, explain the features of the product or service, conduct all the pre-sale activities, and then because of the annoying little things he breaks down and goes to competitors in fact at your expense. And this client is immediately ready for purchase. CRM helps to calculate such situations in advance and save the client, who invested so much effort, money and time. This minimization of outflow is one of the most solid economic risks.
  
• Rotation of the base - the CRM-system helps to quickly find those customers and leads that were last contacted long ago or never and initiate communication. Such clients are good because you don’t need to spend money on attracting and informing them - they are already with you at least a little, but are familiar with them. We, for example, like the way the rotation works in the Russian branch of the WWF Wildlife Fund - if you transferred money or transferred one-time, you are not particularly disturbed, occasionally letters about animals come. And then at the right time (and as close as possible to the number of the previous installment), an ordinary person calls and just talks like a friend, recalling help along the way. It's cool because 1) says not the scripted girl from the call center, but a living person; 2) before the rotation, time passes and you already feel that you have not watched for a long time how the leopards and tigers are there; 3) the date is usually close to salary :-) So, we suspect that the guys have comprehended Zen CRM, well done.
  
• The safety of the base from the human factor. The information contained in the CRM system is the most important asset of the business: customer base + significant events + negotiations, deals, prices, nomenclature. In general, the entire commercial life of the company. And, regardless of whether you are a tire retailer or a retailer, this is a tasty morsel for your competitors, and at the same time a rather serious increase in the cost of a sales manager in the market (if you look at the websites of vacancies, you will see that without hesitation they are looking for a manager with a base or contacts "). Care of the manager with the base can be easily equated with the loss of market share. Of course, if you want to hack and divert everything, you can, but the CRM system is capable of logging actions and grabbing an unscrupulous employee literally by the hand.
  

A CRM system is data security. Today it is an extremely important factor determining the choice of software. That is why more and more large companies are avoiding the cloud and come to us and others like us behind the desktop. If desired, the CRM system will provide a fairly high level of information and economic security: both the internal security regulations in the company, the logging of actions, the differentiation of access rights, and even the mechanism for coordinating and conducting documents will work for this (in any case, in our CRM). the system is exactly like this).

CRM-system is personnel management. Not those frantic fashionable mechanisms for monitoring working time and tracking trips to the kitchen and to the toilet, but adequate mechanisms for control, planning and self-control. For example, we in our RegionSoft CRM filed down a KPI monitor and a progress bar for performing tasks - the employee sees where he is slack and manages to correct within the reporting period, while maintaining the premium. He sees these monitors and a manager who can reorient the employee, change tasks or motivate to work more efficiently.

Well, the bonus goes to employee cards, not forgotten birthdays, adaptation of newbies, private clients, streamlined business processes with personal responsibility at the stages. All this works solely on the loyalty of employees, giving them freedom in exchange for responsibility.


A CRM system is an automated business process. The severity of routine work is shared with CRM, in which business processes are designed and debugged, and employees have more time to work with their head, which can not but affect the revenue.

CRM-system is organized data. It accumulates a single information available to all team members (depending on access rights), as a result, the business is not drained of blood due to the lack of information and its abominable circulation within the company.

And also CRM is a connection, integration with third-party services and 1C, a warehouse, a cash desk, and sometimes even production management, logistics, and complex projects. It all depends on your chosen configuration for a specific vendor. Someone seeks to make CRM contact manager, someone goes into universality and power. We have tried to make CRM for everyone, only each has its own edition , depending on the requirements of the business.

Summing up the listing of CRM documented and not-very-possible capabilities, we can safely say that the CRM system is a guarantee of continuous improvement in all business processes affected by it and many good team habits, such as entering correct and complete information, performing tasks on time, reasoned shifts time and personal responsibility for their work, but not their favorite, “the logisticians didn’t bring in time, the driver was late, the secretary did not pour coffee, and in general the weather is pressing”.

In short - why is CRM important for any company?

Small and smallest - to develop automatically, not to lose a single commercial opportunity and build business processes, until they turned into a mess.

The middle one is to turn chaos into space, manage a company on data, form a pool of loyal customers who are the key to a stable cash flow. Keep data and monitor the work of staff in the framework of their duties.

Big - if the CRM issue is still before you, then we have bad news: you are already behind your competitors. A large company must devote more time to automation than finances.


Yandeks.Kartinki

So, CRM is essentially a growth point for a company, especially if it is a serious CRM that can cover the needs and tasks of several departments at once. It is time to look at the CRM system as a tool, overcome myths in the head and simply work with high efficiency. In general, to correspond to the century and the universal digital transformation, as it is usually said at high-sounding conferences.

And if it is simpler to say, then enough chisel, grab a punch soon!

PS: until June 30, we have -15% discounts and cool rental terms and installment plans for all of the software developed by RegionSoft Developer Studio , of course, including the flagship RegionSoft CRM.