Replacing The Excel CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
The question seems obscure? Maybe but the truth is that there are many companies relying on simple Excel sheets when it comes to customer relationship management. While Excel is a great tool for many calculation based tasks it is simply not the right one to use it everywhere. Simply because many people don't know that there are many affordable solutions that perfectly meet their needs.
That's where the problem starts: Because we know how to use Excel and we have started it so many times before, we tend to leave out the question for an alternative to it. Is that program really the right thing to manage your customers? What do you do if you want to edit the list on the way? You take a copy of the list (if you knew that you will need it - otherwise you can only create a plain new file) and make your changes. If two or more people do this it gets really hard to merge all the new data to back to the original.
Now let us have look at the major improvements that CRM software will bring to our everyday workflow. With a CRM it is possible to make assignments between appointments and contacts. This way you get a journal that can be looked up by co-workers. Now everyone can check what has been done with a customer before. Since professional CRM applications are network enabled and can handle multiple users, it is possible to manage user restrictions as well. Not everyone needs to have access to your VIP customers.
It's not only basic advantages that come from using a network enabled CRM. You could be much more efficient if you can find the customer by hitting three keys and then let your software place a call without having to dial. The same can be said for email integration. How often do you have something to tell to your customers / leads that will be left unsaid simply because there's no easy way to filter the right recipients and then write a serial mail to them? Truly professional CRM solutions with multiuser support have much more useful functions. They can help with automated creation of contact items by parsing your emails or let you do quick instant messaging with your team members.
So why do we need to think about all this? Isn't everyone using such profitable software? No - even nowadays most small to medium size companies rely on the usage of standard tools like Excel. And this is mainly because people do not know that there are solutions that offer an easy user interface and can be installed for networked, multiuser work by an average PC user.
Dominik Sapinski is lead tech developer of the Pimero Free Edition.
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