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Choosing the CRM Solution for Your Business

Team Talisma
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Team Talisma
With customer satisfaction and customer delight being the cornerstone of success in today’s corporate world, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plays a vital role in ensuring organizational efficiency and success. From enhancing relationships with existing customers, identification of potential customers, assessing customer needs, serving as a sales and marketing enabler to ensuring efficient dissemination of customer information throughout an organization, Customer Relationship Management is an efficient business strategy that uses technology to not only organize and automate customer-centric business processes but also strengthen customer relationships and offer increased customer value.

In today’s highly competent CRM vendors market, choosing an ideal CRM solution can be challenging. The key to identifying the right CRM solution lies in understanding how it will address your overall corporate goals and objectives. The first step in selecting an ideal CRM solution is to identify the specific CRM objectives to be addressed. How can customer relationships be strengthened? Is there a need for marketing, sales and service activity automation? How can customer service be improved? How can operating costs be reduced? Is there a unified source of customer information available to employees across the organization? Identifying these CRM objectives, linking them with the overall corporate objectives and ensuring active leadership involvement from day one will determine how effective a CRM solution can be to your business.

Perhaps the most important factor to consider when choosing a CRM solution is the level of functionality required. Does the solution offer real-time updates of customer information and feature detailed analysis, tracking and forecasting capabilities? Does it address the automation of each module in the marketing, sales and service lifecycles? What are the various customer touch points or communication channels supported? Does the solution offer a complete, unified view of customer information and interaction? These are some of the key functionality considerations to be observed.

Cost efficiency is another major deciding factor while considering a CRM solution. As in the case of any investment, the ROI should justify the investment. In today’s era of customer experience, fostering customer relationships yields bigger returns. CRM solutions enable considerable reductions in operating costs and contribute to higher revenues. Conducting a cost-benefit analysis plays a vital role in realizing the need of a CRM solution.

Ascertaining if the CRM solution is to be On-Premise or Hosted should also be factored in while considering a CRM solution. Data security considerations should be given paramount importance while deciding on an on-premise or hosted solution. While hosted solutions yield a faster return on investment, on-promise solutions ensures data security. Organizations should, therefore, weigh out the balance between faster ROI versus security considerations.


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