What comes ready to use 

There is no shortage of customer relationship management (CRM) software available out there. A CRM’s out-of-the-box capabilities are often where you can begin to draw differences in determining which one best meets your business needs. Some are free and others of course are not.

In this post we are going to take a look at the out-the-box capabilities of a relatively popular and free CRM, HubSpot CRM along with the Infor CRM system. Previously we wrote about Comparing Infor CRM to HubSpot CRM + Sales Pro.  

Before having to worry about add-ons and upgrades, it’s important to not only know what you’re going to get from the start but also where you can get the most for your investment. It also helps you to determine what you don’t need because there’s no need to add unnecessary complexity.

#8 of our 18 requirements for business success with CRM states "First, Use as Much Out-of-Box Functionality as You Can"

Recently Erik Tavenner from Infor wrote an important article on 3 benefits of CRM that point out the essence of the value of CRM in building trust, gaining loyalty and engaging customers.  We'd like to share this with our readers.  Also note the additional resource links listed at the end.

Enjoy,

Dick

3 Benefits of CRM

In a world where everyone is fighting for attention and then trying to keep it, companies need to put the customer first in order to build trust, gain loyalty and engage in a meaningful way.  It’s no longer enough to simply connect with your customer and expect that you will be met with willingness to do business – you have to earn it.  Using CRM is key to helping you do just that.

Here are 3 key benefits of using CRM that will put you on the road to building lasting relationships with your customers.

HubSpot CRM and Sales Productivity platform

HubSpot launched a CRM back in 2014.  The goal: Provide an easy way for sales teams to track and organize its interactions, and to manage its pipeline -- without breaking your budget.  Since its launch, HubSpot CRM has been adopted by tens of thousands of sales teams. Millions of deals have been created and closed.  HubSpot built two other 100% free tools that plug seamlessly into HubSpot CRM: a powerful sales productivity platform and a lead generation engine.  They have made huge strides around the biggest pain points of their partners (like us) and customers: a sleek new reporting dashboard, parent-child company relationships. company merging, and a whole lot more.

In doing so, HubSpot let one critical component of CRM collect dust far too long: task management.  If you or someone you know uses HubSpot CRM, you'll agree with us: Tasks in HubSpot have been adequate, but not exceptional.  They're like having 30% battery left on your iPhone. Or getting six hours of sleep. Or eating leafy lettuce.  Not the end of the world, but not mind-blowing awesome either.

Today, that changes.  Task management in HubSpot has a brand-new look, and a slew of new functionality to boot.  Staying on top of to-dos is pivotal to your sales team's success.  Every missed follow-up is a lost change at a connection with your prospects and customers.  With HubSpot's new Tasks interface, you'll never let a task slip through the cracks.

Advantages

• Get more done in fewer clicks

Time spent fumbling around to manage follow-ups is time spent away from selling.  In a world in which salespeople spend only 30% of their time actually selling, every second saved means more deals closed. Image a world in which you never had to leave your to-do list, in which you never had to manually schedule your next follow-up, in which you never had to click into a CRM record to figure what to do next. Your sales reps productivity using HubSpot CRM will increase exponentially, and their adoption will improve as well.  Tasks will ensure that the sales process you implement is engrained in their routine from day one.

• Ditch distractions. Don't get overwhelmed

From our experiences implementing CRM for businesses, one thing has been abundantly clear: focused sales reps are productive sales reps. With Task Queues, sales reps won't need to open dozens of tabs at the beginning of the day: they won't need to sort through pages of to-dos's at a time; they won't need to scroll a million ways to get to the next thing. Walk into work. Build your Task Queue. Press Play. Run through your tasks. Go home.  Rinse, wash, repeat.

• Always have your next steps in order

80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone call after the meeting, yet 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up. As a best practice, every deal in your database should have a next step. No ifs, ands, or buts.  With HubSpot's new Task interface, you'll never let another follow-up slip through the cracks.

• Track new leads on same timeline

If a lead comes in off your website through HubSpot Marketing tools, all the sales tasks and activities are logged in the same timeline as the marketing engagements.  Everything is in one place, so your reps will never have a call without the right context again.  Plus, they can @-mention their colleagues on individual tasks, to start the dialogue around follow-up strategy.

Gartner says we spent $18 billion on CRM software in 2012, and $20.4 billion on CRM software in 2013. Its vice president of research, Joanne Correia, says that CRM “will be at the heart of digital initiatives in the coming years”. 

The future is bright for the industry, and businesses clearly see the benefit of CRMs: better returns, better staff morale, increased productivity. 

However, there’s a silent virus lurking in many CRMs. It’s a virus that slowly gets a foothold in the system, then slowly starts to deprive it of oxygen, choking it until it can no longer breathe. As the CRM starts to suffer, the business starts to falter. It wastes time and money, and it spends more and more time trying to stick a Band-Aid on the problem. 

So what is the virus? The secret assassin of the CRM? It’s poor quality data. Since the CRM system is simply a framework, the data within it holds the key to its success.

Having an optimal CRM system in place — one that addresses your business needs, serves your customers well and pleases your employees — is a high-stakes proposition.  The right solution and partner can bring it all together.

In planning for a well-used CRM system consider the various involvement with your CRM users. 

(Our thanks to Jeff Hanrahan, Infor CRM product manager, assoc., for his input.)

Capturing User Feedback 

Once a user group is in place, your CRM partner will get his hands dirty. That involves spending some time with members to see how they use the system and how it can be tailored to their needs. The partner can offer insights from a different perspective along with best practices that can be applied. Knowing the CRM system's capabilities will provide the pilot members with better ways of doing things that have occurred in the past.

People:  An Opportunity, Not a Roadblock 

Previously we talked about CRM Implementation being a team effort and to think of the people involved as an opportunity and not a roadblock, read more here.

A CRM system can make or break a growing company. The right one can boost your business development efforts, helping you grow revenue from existing customers while cost-effectively identifying and winning new "ideal" customers.  The wrong one? Well, we'd rather not go there … 

Having an optimal CRM system in place — one that addresses your business needs, serves your customers well and pleases your employees — is a high-stakes proposition. Unless you have dedicated staff to handle everything from choosing and customizing a solution to implementing the software and training users, you're going to need a qualified partner to do much of the heavy lifting.

We recently met with a client's IT department director, the director of customer service and key sales managers.  As we finished up our next 90 day planning, the IT director turned and stated - "CRM is the glue".  He had come to more deeply realize that a well-used CRM system ties their information and how they work together. It helps to make sense of the accumulated knowledge of our customers and how they want to be served.  Within their CRM system, they can tell who are their best customers, how they best connect with them and how valuable their offering is to them. 

A well-used CRM allows each of us to make a powerful impact on people we communicate with daily and those we serve.  Within our CRM system, we can find all the past historical communications between customers and employees.  This become our one, main trusted version of the truth.  It shows how professionally we followed up and how we best connected the value of our offerings in solving their needs and full filling their improvement opportunities. 

Your CRM system helps to keep all your staff accountable to customers, fellow employees and most importantly to yourselves.  It shows when, why and who each person connected with. It shows where someone dropped the ball and delivered expectations fell short.  The CRM knowledgebase tells what is working and where improvement is needed.

Continued Improvement with more power to users

Since the Spring 2014 purchase of Saleslogix 8.1 by Infor, there have been 6 updates and now version 8.2 is soon to be released which focuses around the improvement of a Purpose Built CRM Application.  "Beauty at work" is not just a saying, but is coming to life with the continual improvements of Infor CRM.  

Additionally there are improvements that lower the Total Cost of Ownership and increase the value of the out-of-box Infor CRM solution. More easily create a CRM environment that you can control and configure without having to pay a ton of money on customizations.

Summary of what has changed in Infor CRM 8.2:

• Enriched User Interface and behaviors with adjusted text boxes, grids, navigation menu and personalization options.
• New import tools for contacts and accounts using CSV, Outlook, and other delimited file formats with configurable field mapping.
• New filters and new metrics via Web Admin roles.
• Developments with Group Manager allowing you to share groups and group ownership, delete groups, and reassign groups.

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is now a central focus of many businesses. The CRM system is responsible for holding contact details, communications, social media profile data and valuable leads – the data that sales teams live and breathe every day. In theory, the CRM acts as a colossal ‘brain’, or hub: an application everyone can dip into for data.

Yet the CRM is, in itself, a framework: a holding bay for data. It cannot function if it is not populated correctly. Yes – everyone uses the CRM, but who owns it? Ask any user, and they will likely say: “not me”.

The opposite is true. And here’s the challenge: up to 46 percent of CRM systems are failing. That’s a figure no sales department can work with. But there is one way to turn it around.

Causes of CRM Failure

CRM systems are central to productivity across organisations. They are also not cheap. Gartner estimates that the CRM industry was worth $18 billion in 2012, and will be worth $36 billion by 2017.

Clearly, adoption is accelerating, and more businesses are storing data in CRM software. Yet we are no better at managing that data. Why?

#1 Succeed where others fail with CRM

Just a decade ago, fewer than half of sales organizaions took advantage of CRM, but today, nearly 83% have implemented CRM.₁ Achieving a competitive advantage is no longer about being the first of your peers to deploy a CRM system; it's about making the wisest use of customer information to evolve your sales, marketing, and customer service best practices.

CRM can only help improve sales and the customer experience if it’s fully and consistently adopted throughout the organization. Many companies have implemented CRM solutions, but too often, actual adoption and usage among employees remains low.

In a recent survey of sales and marketing professionals, 87% indicated they were required to use CRM, but 79% of those professionals admit they just “check the box” to satisfy their bosses.₂  Adoption requires more than forcing employees to check the box. Employees need to add real value by inputting useful information into the CRM system and following business processes that take advantage of its capabilities.