PUTTING THE i IN CRM The benefits to the individual and the entire firm
Table of Contents The Power of CRM for the Individual 3 Creating a Unified Voice to Your Customers 4-5 The Value of CRM 6 Conclusion 7 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Client relationship management (CRM) software has been used by organizations of all types and sizes for over 20 years. However, few have managed to tap into the true potential of CRM. Many businesses have used CRM tools inside their sales and marketing departments. But this often creates silos of data and expertise that are not widely shared with the rest of the company making it impossible to fully streamline client processes. The lack of widespread CRM deployment stems from organisations choosing inflexible tools that cannot be integrated, or ones that are too expensive to get every client-facing team member synchronized, regardless of department. That s because traditional CRM systems were designed to give managers reports to provide visibility into sales and business performance. They weren t created to improve the performance of individual employees with client-facing responsibilities. As a result, most people who use CRM software view it as a time drain instead of a powerful, efficient tool to help them be more effective. When organisations deploy a CRM system that is designed with individuals in mind, both internal users and external customers win. Employees become more productive when they gain access to more insightful business data. In addition, this more personalized approach to CRM can lead to increased customer satisfaction because customers feel like they are being treated as valued individuals with unique requirements. And when the CRM system is priced so that every customer-facing employee can now have access, these benefits are significantly magnified. 2
When organisations deploy a CRM system that is designed with the individuals in mind, both internal users and clients win. Organisations gain more productive employees and more insightful business data. POWER OF CRM FOR THE INDIVIDUAL To fully reap the benefits of CRM for the entire client-facing organization, those who use the system every day must actually want to use it. No matter how grand your plans are for CRM, they will fall short unless every user is committed. Getting every employee on board who support clients means giving them a solution that works the way they do as individuals. Each individual needs to see the system as a personalised, powerful tool to perform his or her job more effectively. Then, the organisation can start to behave as a single, organised entity towards every client. CRM that individuals actually want to use has to render information quickly and easily. To start, users should see all of the most relevant information about a client on a single page without having to navigate several windows or screens. They must be able from a single system to use and share data easily across departments to foster a culture of collaboration. Individuals need an easy way to make the system their own, configuring it in just a few clicks without involving IT resources. Additionally, they should also be able to consume data from their own social and professional networks right inside the system to connect on a more meaningful level with every client. And CRM for the individual must be highly mobile. Not only must the user have access to their CRM data anytime, anywhere, but the experience must also be uniform across every device. Users should not have to learn how to use a different system for every CRM touchpoint. The experience must be simple and consistent, yet powerful and effective regardless of device 3
A UNIFIED VOICE TO CLIENTS In addition to offering innovative, individualised CRM, it is also important to equip more than just business development team with access to CRM functionality and data. Today, many more individuals are part of a client-facing process. By equipping everyone who interacts with clients, organisations can further optimise processes, increase service levels, and boost client loyalty. Today, many more individuals are part of the client-facing process. By equipping everyone who interacts with clients, organizations can further optimise processes, increase service levels, and boost client loyalty.. Let s take a look at some examples of how CRM built for the individual can and should include more than just core business development and marketing professionals. Again, to fully leverage the benefits of CRM, all employees that touch the client must have access to core client data, with the ability to connect and share information and expertise across the entire business. Leadership Managing Partners and Boards have the primary role of leading the business and delivering the firms business plan and articulating it to the business. A secondary role, in the context of the business plan, is to react and adapt to situations as they occur to keep the business running at an optimum level of performance. Actively leading the team in the understanding of goals builds confidence and drives performance. Working closely with the COO Managing Partners can effect genuine change in business process as well as ensuring that the information flows with respect to business development and client management are supporting the desired goals in the business plan. Client Management Client facing employees are a valuable resource, and need access to critical data in CRM. By using CRM as a complete view or repository of client data, employees can better understand each client. Employees can have instant access to client history and improve the recording of client interactions and actions providing improved personalised support. Workflows with CRM can increase responsiveness and escalation through electronic flows to support desired client service levels, ensure best practice is shared and nothing falls through the cracks. 4
A UNIFIED VOICE TO CLIENTS COO & Business Transformation The COO of the modern professional service firm is charged with delivering change within the business to enable delivery of strategy and drive operational efficiencies. CRM solutions must provide a platform to support the required change. Setting the future requires changes to pipeline management to include technology and improve the commercial relationship management and procurement processes. A key component of this change is using the CRM platform to facilitate the integration of disparate data silos that exist between practice management, HR, tax, accounting and external data intelligence sources. These changes drive efficiency and ROI but they also facilitate behavior change across the business that unifies individual users feel more connected and confident in tune with the service delivery standards required. Marketing Aside from making a firm look good and win more work marketing are also concerned with how the firm is perceived through the delivery of the desired brand and positioning. This will impact marketing communications both in content and how it is delivered. CRM must integrate to these electronic marketing campaigns avoiding duplication of lists and receiving key statistics regarding the buyer behavior. Today, many more individuals are part of the client-facing process. By equipping everyone who interacts with clients, organizations can further optimise processes, increase service levels, and boost client loyalty.. Business Development CRM must facilitate the implementation of clear business development processes across the business, to ensure consistent relevant data capture for accurate forecasting and reporting needed to support growth in the business. A key component of this is ensuring that business has a platform to engage all the relevant teams who work on new opportunities as well as the creation of personal business development plans for partners to use their time effectively and in developing relationships that lead to work 5
THE VALUE OF CRM Expanding CRM usage to a wider set of users might seem like a costly endeavor. And with many CRM systems, this can absolutely be the case. A lot of CRM providers simply look to squeeze every last license fee they can out of their clients. However, some suppliers understand the power of making CRM accessible to a broader range of individuals inside every organisation, and have priced their offerings to be more affordable and thus more widely deployed. The price should also be transparent. Not just for the initial deployment, but for the foreseeable future as well. This means no hidden fees, forced upgrades to more expensive editions based on arbitrary limitations, or nickel and dime fees for required features such as mobile access To broadly deploy a CRM system that can bring value to your entire organization, it s not just critical to make sure the cost is clear, but the right benefits need to be provided as part of the base cost. To broadly deploy a CRM system that can bring value to your entire organisation, it s not just critical to make sure the cost is clear, but the right benefits need to be provided as part of the base cost. The system must offer more than business development automation: No organisation should have to buy three or four different systems to manage core client data. The CRM system needs to provide client management, integrated marketing and robust reporting tools in order to deliver a true 360- degree view of the client. It needs to integrate easily and costeffectively with internal and third party systems. Also, be sure that the CRM provider does not place arbitrary limitations on the product, which can lead to excessive additional charges or force unnecessary upgrades to more expensive versions. If you take a closer look at costs and capabilities, it becomes clear that all CRM systems are not equal in value received for the price paid 6
CONCLUSION Your business is unique. Individual. Just like every employee in your organisation. To truly stand out, you need to differentiate from your competitors and delight your clients. In today s fast-paced world, it is becoming harder and harder to do with traditional, old guard technology. By deploying modern CRM tools designed with individual users and individual organisations in mind, you can take a giant leap in the right direction. That is because empowered users ultimately equate to more informed business decisions. And when IT has flexible, powerful tools to work with, they can easily develop the kinds of user experiences and optimised processes that ensure you will have a true competitive edge The good news is that the ease of today s cloud-based technology makes it even more cost effective and painless than ever to get started. When the technology works the way you work, and within your budget your only limitation is your imagination 7
Comprehensive Business Transformation for Professional Services Firms We aim to see the whole picture. We analyse, we work to understand all the issues that are holding you back. It s not just about CRM, we re here to build a coherent, comprehensive transformation strategy aligned to your business ambitions The Symphony design methodology is logical, clear, and incisive. It identifies precisely what s required to make things right and why. This ultimately makes your business technology work to maximum advantage We analyse your business in forensic detail. Because when you ve factually defined the issues in full, you can fully understand what changes must be made and why. Moving forward, we maintain the momentum, building on our partnership with you to develop new solutions that deliver ROI and support the changes and growth of your firm. We ll get your CRM, processes and systems all aligned and future-ready. So every part of your business can be easily harnessed to deliver growth - and to enable change, not hinder it. Content in this ebook has been created from marketing material from SugarCRM - Putting the i in CRM. NWS House 1e High Street Purley Surrey CR8 2AF UK T: +44 207 246 9990 www.whysymphony.com Copyright 2016 Symphony Professional Solutions Limited. SymphonyCRM is distributed under an OEM license with SugarCRM 8