Why CRM Software is Important — 10 Key Benefits of a Good CRM

CRM software is a helpful tool for businesses of any size and it’s becoming more popular day by day. A Nuclear Research report shows that about 65% of companies using a CRM reach their sales goals. As CRM systems grow bigger, it’s time to find out what it is and how such a tool can benefit your business.

What is a CRM Software?

CRM is a frequently used acronym for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process of communication with leads and clients, so this term includes all activities related to customer management.

Therefore, CRM is a tool, designed for managing all customer-related activities, such as lead management, client analysis, sales management, accounting, information gathering and more. Since it’s impossible to manage all these activities manually, CRM software can streamline and automate these processes, so all you need to do is to observe the results and maintain the workflow.

As CRM software offers a wide-range of features, it’s a near-vital tool for businesses of all industries. But to get the most out of CRM software, you need to choose an appropriate one, with features that closely match your needs.

Why it is Important to Have a CRM Software

Annual statistics show that the CRM usage in businesses with more than 10 employees is about 91%, while small companies with less than 10 employees use the CRM in 50% of cases. This number is still increasing, because each dollar you spend on a good CRM returns about $ 8.71.

And as customer management becomes more personal, it’s important to keep all data related to each customer and carefully lead clients through each stage of the pipeline. The CRM software helps to deal with all these activities, that’s why it’s a high-value tool, essential for any business.

CRM software is a powerful tool for enhancing customer loyalty as well. When you can quickly analyze customers’ needs and solve their problems, you save your business from loss and prevent customers from being taken by your competitors.

Are you still wondering how a CRM system can improve your business and customer relationships? Then look through 10 key benefits and features of a good CRM solution.

10 Key Benefits of a Good CRM Software for Your Business

CRM benefits your business in a variety of ways, which vary depending on your industry. Anyway, good CRM software should bring particular benefits to your business, despite your needs or the field you’re working in.

Here are the top 10 benefits a good CRM can bring to your business:

Cloud-Based Data Storage

Switching between pages and applications looking for the needed information isn’t easy, so the CRM software is a good solution when it comes to centralized storage. It will save you lots of time, because you’ll have a single point of access to all the data related to your customers. As it’s cloud-based, it’ll also help to save space on your computer for more valuable data. The CRM system means that you no longer need to worry about physical data storage because everything is in the cloud.

Smooth Lead Generation

Manual CRM account creation and lead tracking isn’t possible without specific tools or you won’t be able to focus on more profitable activities. The CRM software tracks leads for the beginning and helps to automatically create accounts and opportunities. While the manual data filling takes up most of the time, let the CRM software take care of it. All you need to do is just create pipelines to accurately lead new clients to your final goal.

Sales Team Management

Remember the complete mess in the sales team from The Wolf of The Wall Street? That’s what happens when the sales team doesn’t have a CRM system. Organizational chaos won’t help your employees be more productive, it’ll just prevent them from focusing on sales. The good news is that the chaos can be brought to order with the CRM software. As everything is well-organized and the team can observe all previous activities of a client, emails and calls, it’ll become easier to organize the current workflow and onboard new sales hires.

Segmentation

Sometimes it’s necessary to focus on a specific segment of customers. It helps to focus your sales and promotional activities on people who are really interested in your products and services. While manual segmentation takes a lot of time and you can miss some important points, the CRM can automatically divide your clients into separate groups. All it takes is just to create filters to accurately match your needs and that’s all, the segment is ready.

Workflow Streamline

Automation is the most important feature of each CRM, because it saves time on repeated and regular tasks. Just imagine the manual export of an information from the web form to the spreadsheet and then to your CRM. Since such routine activities are automated, you can focus on more profitable tasks, such as analysis and planning. To put it simply, automations can transfer customers’ information to your CRM database, send emails and invoices, automatically create or repeat tasks, prepare reports and other regular to-dos, which are common for all businesses.

Smooth Team Collaboration

The sales team is regularly communicating with other departments, for example with marketing and customer support. As many businesses are switching to remote work because of the pandemic, how to maintain collaboration of different departments and even enhance it? Using messengers for interaction between departments is good, but what about project chats and document sharing? The CRM software is a tool not only for a sales team, but for everyone. Project chats will help to keep information organized and private chats are useful when you need to discuss some details with colleagues from other departments.

Online Financial Management

When business is turning online, there is no way to keep all your accounting on paper anymore. Moreover, it’s vital to get a whole overview of the finances. As financial management can be automated with the CRM software as well, it will also help you receive payment online, automatically send invoices and track cash flow. Some CRMs, such as Flowlu, can offer payments and financial tracking in multiple currencies, which can benefit businesses that work worldwide.

Sales Reports

Reporting is an important activity that shows the results of your hard work. But in most cases, it takes a lot of time to perform research, collect all the data from different resources and organize a comprehensive list of results. CRM software automatically collects all the information for a specific period. It’s better to choose the CRM with fully customizable reports, so you can show or hide lists and columns to get the kind of view you need. But CRM is not just about financial reporting. With a CRM, you can monitor the performance of each employee and observe pipelines to define weaknesses and opportunities to grow.

Customer Loyalty

It’s not enough just to sell your product or service once. Maintaining customer retention is also important, because a strong community of loyal clients is the base of any business. To closely understand the needs of your clients and improve communication with them, you have to analyze their actions and metrics, but also regularly receive feedback. CRM software will assist you in automating these processes and developing a customer relations strategy.

Save Money on Buying Different Applications

A good CRM has to grow with your business. As your business grows, the CRM software has to change to match your needs as well. In that case, it’s better to start with one-stop solutions, such as Flowlu. When the CRM solution has not just basic modules, but also business management tools for task and project tracking, accounting, knowledge management and communication, it’s more possible to stay with your business.

To Sum Up

CRM software can bring lots of benefits to your business and help you to grow. But to choose the right CRM, you have to clearly understand your needs and future goals.

To learn more about how CRM benefits your business and how to find the appropriate one, review our articles about Why CRM is the Ideal Solution for Every Small Business and 7 Ways Workflow Automation Benefits Your Business.

Since the CRM helps you to find new customers, it’s also a useful tool to build a strong connection with them, keep and analyze their data to boost your connection in the future. By investing in CRM today, you invest in the relationships with your current and soon-to-be customers.