Why You Need Your CRM To Fit the Way You Work

New software frequently brings new benefits, but it can also bring new difficulties if it forces you to change the way you work to fit the software. In addition to being disruptive, if rigid new software is “imposed” on your workers, this can breed resentment against the latest tools and hinder user adoption. With CRM system, where success is closely linked to user adoption, this can present a significant obstacle.

Moreover, your business processes have often been built up over years of experience and honed and refined over time. In many cases, they are part of your competitive distinction. Consequently, changing how you work to fit a software system is not just a nuisance; it can be seriously detrimental to your operations.

CRM needs to work how you do, how your employees work, and how your business operates without changing the processes that make you unique. Your employees must access all the customer data they require, whenever and wherever they require it, and in their preferred view to make their job easier. While CRM may bring about process refinements and new efficiencies, it should still mold to the unique characteristics of your business processes.

Business processes, however, are not static. A company’s capability to reconfigure processes quickly in reaction to changing needs, priorities and external factors can produce a significant competitive advantage. A CRM solution built on a flexible technology platform can easily be modified to suit your current workflows and business needs while also providing the flexibility to respond quickly to future events and evolving demands. By prioritizing flexibility in your software selection, you can support a more adaptive and active enterprise.

Deploying the right CRM solution should enable you to bring all of your existing, time-proven customer-facing processes and procedures under a single umbrella. From lead management through quote and contract generation, the sales process, and customer service, your integrated system makes your operations more adaptable, not rigid.

If your organization requires robust sales, marketing, service, and channel management capabilities, the ability to customize your CRM solution easily and cost-effectively is essential. CRM systems gain value if you model your unique business processes within it, using it to standardize, streamline, and refine these processes rather than override them. You will also benefit from integrating your CRM solution with other enterprise applications, such as your back-office systems, helping to make all relevant information available through a single application.

The flexibility of a CRM solution, or lack thereof, is determined by its underlying architecture, which directly affects the extent it can be customized and integrated. Numerous CRM customers have taken advantage of its flexible architecture to model their unique processes and consider themselves well positioned to meet evolving demands.

Companies with complex processes and customer relationship cycles stand to benefit considerably from CRM, provided it is capable of modeling this complexity. CRM can streamline and simplify complex processes with features that improve the way users target new customers, drive sales activities, and respond to service requests. With the right CRM system, modeling even the most complex of processes is simply a matter of modifying application forms, data fields, relationships, and adding new activities and objects. In less flexible systems, a high degree of complexity can take many months and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to accomplish. Thus, companies with complex business processes should pay particular attention to system flexibility in their CRM evaluation process.

Unfortunately, more and more companies today fit into this category. Nearly every industry has evolving regulatory demands, requiring companies to assess and report on mounting numbers of internal controls. Rather than implementing standalone applications to support each regulation, many companies are investing in broader technology applications that enhance their ability to comply and further improve efficiency. In many cases, companies can leverage their CRM system to automate compliance with changing regulations, extending the value of their investment.

CRM technology must capture current requirements and retain the flexibility to change and evolve with your business quickly. While highly desirable, growth tends to strain many businesses’ available resources and systems. Thus, a CRM system’s ability to scale and adapt to support business change and growth can be critical. Similarly, at the outset of a company’s CRM project, it might not be possible to foresee how a CRM system’s features can be applied. Therefore, a good system will enable you to build upon and enhance your initial deployment over time, rather than restricting you to a single opportunity to create the perfect CRM system.

Choose a CRM solution that includes a flexible architecture and platform technology. This allows organizations to tailor the system more cost-effectively to their unique business process and to be adaptable and competitive as needs change. Growth, evolving regulatory pressures, competitive changes, and new mandates can place a strain on some companies as they struggle to accommodate these changes within an inflexible technology structure. Forward-thinking enterprises use select flexible CRM systems that will enhance their business agility.

How Tokara Solutions is ready to help you get the most out of your CRM: 

The business landscape is anything but static. Having a fully integrated, end-to-end CRM for every step in the customer journey is essential for any business looking to achieve the most while maintaining an ease of mind! Tokara Solutions offers help in providing the best CRM for you and your company! With an average of over 18 years of CRM consulting, Tokara’s wealth of knowledge in integrating and maintaining CRM systems is rooted in our devotion to supporting small, medium and large size enterprises.

FOR THE FULL FREE WHITEPAPERS, CLICK HERE!