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Written by Elisabetta Marini on . Posted in Blog.

How a Well-Implemented CRM Makes Your Business More Competitive

Woman working at a laptop in customer support
  • Written By: Elisabetta Marini
  • Blog Post Blurb: CRM is more than just software. It's a strategic approach to managing customer relationships. Discover how a CRM strategy, powered by advanced CRM software, can revolutionize your business, improve customer satisfaction, and drive growth.
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Description: Start growing your business with the right technology.
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Button Text: Book a consult now
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Link: https://meetings.hubspot.com/andrea-hill/15-minute-consult-with-andrea

Building and maintaining customer relationships is what business is all about. So it should be no surprise that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy (yes, it’s a strategy … not just a software!) that can revolutionize how you interact with your customers.

CRM  (Customer Relationship Management) has been around since the 1980s, but has really come into its own in the past 10 years as technology has rapidly evolved.  But let’s be clear: CRM is not “just” software. Even though the term CRM is the type of software used to deploy customer relationship strategies at scale, companies that don’t understand the strategy and application of CRM tend to end up with an expensive digital rolodex.

When you choose CRM as your business strategy, you are setting the "effective management of customer relationships" as a primary strategic objective.

While you can have good customer relationships without software, to pursue a strategy of CRM you need a CRM system. 

Let’s take a look at ways a CRM strategy can empower your business, from enhancing customer satisfaction to driving revenue growth.  

Understand your Business Goals

As with any technology, you must implement your CRM system with your business goals and objectives in mind. 

The main benefit of a CRM strategy is that it will help you understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors better, so you can be more responsive, deliver personalized experiences, and build lasting connections.

Start by asking yourself some of these questions:

  • Are we struggling to track leads and opportunities effectively?
  • Do we struggle to get customers to understand why they need us?
  • Do our salespeople experience very long sales cycles that eventually fizzle out?
  • Are we receiving customer complaints or experiencing slow response times? 
  • Do we need to improve communication and collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer service teams?

Asking and answering these questions can help you understand what you need to improve, and what you should expect your CRM to do.

Key Features of a CRM System

There are a lot of different CRM systems out there, but they aren’t all the same. We tend to think about them as CRM 1.0 through CRM 4.0.  

  • CRM 1.0 systems are those very basic digital rolodexes that track your customer purchases, and let you record notes and important dates (birthday card, anyone??). 
  • CRM 2.0 and 3.0 are a little more advanced, offering email marketing, or some sales pipeline tools, or basic sales automations.

But since CRM 1/2/3.0 costs about as much as CRM 4.0, we just skip to the 4.0 systems, or what we call “Smart CRM.” Systems like HubSpot and Keap will give you everything we’ve described above, and more. Complex business automation, content creation, sales playbooks, and more … all designed to make you more timely, relevant, and valuable to your customers. So when you’re looking for a CRM, don’t settle for a system that is doing the work of two or three generations ago.

Now to the specifics: What kinds of features should you expect your CRM system to do to support your CRM strategy?

  • Contact Management: Centralize all your customer information, making it easily accessible and organized. This includes contact details like names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails, as well as purchase history, preferences, and notes. But CRM 4.0 systems go beyond that, allowing you to do sophisticated opportunity analysis and behavioral segmentation as well as to identify where each contact falls in the sales pipeline. With powerful lead scoring tools your CRM can alert you immediately when it’s time to pay more attention to any individual contact!
  • Sales Automation: Your CRM system should streamline your sales processes and help you manage leads, track opportunities, and close deals more effectively. By automating tasks such as lead generation, qualification, and follow-up, sales teams can focus on building relationships and closing deals. Additionally, CRM analytics provide valuable insights into sales performance, enabling you to identify areas for improvement and optimize your sales strategies.
  • Marketing Automation: Marketing teams can use CRM to create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns to support sales. By tracking customer behavior and preferences, you can segment your audience, deliver personalized messages, measure campaign performance, nurture leads and optimize marketing efforts. 
  • Customer Service: A CRM system empowers your customer service team to build stronger and more personalized relationships with customers. By having a centralized comprehensive view of customer interactions, history, and preferences, your team will be able to quickly address customer inquiries and resolve issues.
  • Analytics and Reporting: CRM systems provide valuable insights into customer behavior, sales performance, and marketing effectiveness. You can do a better job identifying trends, adjust your strategies to exploit current and future conditions, and make data-driven decisions. 
  • Integration Capabilities: 4.0-status CRM systems integrate with other business applications, like your work email, accounting, POS, ERP, and other vital business software to eliminate double data entry and create seamless workflows. 

CRM Strategy + CRM Software = Profitable Growth

If business 20 years ago was like driving on the Interstate, business today is like flying jet airplanes. When everything is moving so fast, you don’t have time to pick through multiple systems to understand your customers, and you certainly can’t rely on assumptions and intuition to anticipate future needs. A modern CRM system, implemented with a deep understanding of CRM strategy, will help you understand customers needs, deliver personalized experiences, and improve customer relationships. It will help you be more competitive.

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Need a knowledgeable partner to support you on this journey? Let us help! We have deep CRM expertise, and we are dedicated to helping you make the right technology choices to achieve your growth goals.

Call us at 312.239.8820 X 704, or book a free consult.

CRM

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Written by Elisabetta Marini on . Posted in Blog.

The Benefits of a Streamlined Tech Stack for Business Growth

Smiling African American man using laptop with headphones
  • Written By: Jason Robinson
  • Blog Post Blurb: A streamlined tech stack can significantly improve business efficiency, reduce costs, and drive growth by enabling better data insights, automation, and security.
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Description: Start growing your business with the right technology.
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Button Text: Book a consult now
  • Blog Post Offer 1 Link: https://meetings.hubspot.com/andrea-hill/15-minute-consult-with-andrea

Most companies rely on technology to help them operate effectively. Businesses need to run like a well-tuned engine, with every part functioning in sync to reach its full potential. And it's possible! If you have the right collection of software and hardware tools, you can do more than just improve your operations; you can set the stage for significant growth. Let's take a look at the key benefits of streamlining your tech stack in this article.

Benefits of a Streamlined Tech Stack

A streamlined tech stack will increase your efficiency. When your tools work together properly, there's less wasted time, fewer errors, and a more effective workflow. A well-put-together tech stack is like having another member on your team that can assist you with data assembly, administrative support, triggering communications… etc.

Your tech stack should be scalable as your business grows, and designed to accommodate increased demand. A well-structured tech stack can handle a lot without breaking a sweat. This will leave you time to make sure that your operations remain efficient and effective.

When your tech stack is effectively streamlined, it turns all the data your business generates into insights. This consolidated data enables you to track key performance indicators, identify emerging trends, and make informed decisions to drive growth. But the true magic lies in predictive analytics. Through the use of statistical models and historical data, you can predict demand, detect potential risks, and make informed decisions that boost business growth. When you connect sales data with details about inventory levels, supplier performance, and other relevant factors, you get a holistic view of our business. By adding a bit of machine learning and AI to your stack, you can use your data to forecast, helping you predict future customer behavior, market shifts, and potential risks. With this kind of foresight you can be proactive about optimizing operations, identifying opportunities, and anticipating problems. These insights become much more helpful with a simplified tech stack. You will improve your ability to forecast future demand, modify your buying plans, and cut expenses, reduce shortages, and raise customer happiness - all as a result of building your tech stack effectively.

Streamlining your tech stack can also reduce your costs. By eliminating unnecessary tools and optimizing existing ones, you can save money on software licenses, hardware, and the maintenance for them. A well-integrated tech stack is essential for modern businesses to operate efficiently and grow effectively. Integrations, such as APIs and webhooks, play an important role in connecting different software systems and enabling seamless data flow. 

APIs
APIs act as bridges between different applications. They're like translators, helping apps understand and talk to each other. APIs make it easier for businesses to connect different systems like websites, databases, and apps. It also handles automating tasks like updating inventory or sending emails.

Webhooks
Think of webhooks as a way for apps to send each other instant messages. When something happens in one app, it can send an alert to another app. For example, when a customer buys a product on an online store, the store can send a webhook to its warehouse. The warehouse receives the webhook and knows to ship the order right away. Webhooks help apps communicate and react to events quickly, making things more efficient.

Finally, when your tools are well integrated, it is easier to implement security measures that will protect your sensitive data and prevent cyber threats from causing havoc on your business.

Examples of Tech Stacks for Growth

Let's look at some examples of how businesses are using streamlined tech stacks to drive their growth. 

  1. Retail: A retailer with a point-of-sale (POS) system might add a 3rd party testimonial system to request a review after each sale, or integrate the POS with a Smart CRM system to trigger a variety of communications based on customer purchase, wish list, or customer service behaviors.  
  2. Manufacturing: A manufacturing company with an ERP system may decide to integrate a CAD/CAM system to support product development, an MES to provide greater production control than the ERP can do natively, and an SCM to provide deeper supply chain controls than most ERPs do out-of-the-box.
  3. Healthcare: A healthcare provider with an older patient management system may defer upgrading that system by adding on a 3rd party telemedicine software. They may also add a marketing automation and testimonial/endorsement system to improve customer communications and content-sharing.

Here are some best practices to follow when streamlining your tech stack

Begin streamlining your tech stack by assessing your business needs and identifying the essential tools you use or need. We strongly recommend mapping your processes to gain the greatest clarity about what systems you need and how to use them (here’s a link to a video we produced on process mapping to walk you through it). Give top priority to fully integrated tools in order to prevent data disparities and increase workflow effectiveness. Invest in good onboarding and training to ensure your team can get the most out of their tools. 

Something we always emphasize to our clients is the importance of thoroughly vetting software vendors. Cutting-edge features won’t mean much if the company behind them lacks the financial stability or technological vision to support your business in the long run. Make sure your tools are not only current, but also built with integration in mind. Prioritize solutions that offer robust APIs, webhooks, or compatibility with platforms like Zapier or Piesync. This is the kind of flexibility that will safeguard your tech stack against obsolescence, and helps you to adapt swiftly as your business — and the market and technology! — evolve.

In our fast-paced business world, a streamlined tech stack isn't just an advantage—it's a necessity. When your tools work in harmony, the added efficiency will be like music to your ears. Wasted time fades away, errors become rare, and productivity soars. Your team can focus on what matters most: delivering exceptional work and delighting clients.

But the benefits go even deeper. A well-integrated tech stack becomes a window into the heart of your operations. It reveals hidden patterns, highlights areas for improvement, and helps you make better decisions. Of course, all this adds up to growth! A streamlined tech stack is more than just a collection of tools - it's the foundation for a thriving, agile, and future-ready enterprise.

Growth, Tech Strategy

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