6 considered factors as deploying CRM software

"CRM (Customer Relationship Management) appeared from the 70s of the twentieth century when businesses began to change their concentration from products to the customer."

Over the years, CRM has become a platform, a helpful customer management system to business. Software enterprises have developed CRM to help enterprises digitalize customer relationship management activities.

CRM is created based on the companies strategy in customer relationship development through research, understanding the habits and requirement of customers, approaching and communicating effectively, managing the information of the customer to give them the better service.

The statistic shows that enterprises deploying successfully CRM will increase 32% of sales, 32% of sale closing rate and 40% of productivity. Here are 6 factors needed to consider when purchasing CRM. 

1. Enterprise needs to understand the requirement.

It's seemed to be “Redundancy” when considering and finding a CRM having basic functions that your business needs such as automatize sale, storing contacts and support marketing report, but obviously, it is the most important.

Each enterprise will have a different core system which requires different functions. For the bank as an example: transferring, receiving money, transaction, recording, banking business, etc. are the core activities. Therefore, CRM software of this industry must meet the needs of these activities, called core banking. Besides, the bank should choose which additional functions needed, such as a note of teller, Internet banking, Mobile banking, scan autograph of customer or sending automation message, etc.

Do not look into a business and choose similar software. 

2. CRM must be customizable.

Business always changes and develops, as well as new technology is constantly updated. Therefore, the software must be customizable like the unlimited number of employees, business scale, product decentralization, upgrade, and additionally new component. 

3. Integration ability.

“All in one” software does exist, but the truth is that it is expensive and not every business can use them all, except for large corporations and enterprise. At a lower level, business needs a separated software solution like CRM, however, this software needs an important function: integration.

Integrating necessary function helps the business save their time effectively by eliminating information import from this system to another, for example, integrate CRM with KPI, personnel or business management software.   

4. Report establishment. 

An effective customer care software must eventually archive the development target of the enterprise. One of the development solutions is based on the business report in a period: month, quarter, year, etc. Therefore, a report is necessary to help enterprise monitor business then give timely adjustment.

Besides the standards of data which can export excel file, friendly dashboard report, vivid colour, the real-time update are the current administration trends. The highlight of the Dashboard report is the manager and mentor and executive can observe the chart and follow the general business performance of the enterprise.  

5. Easy to use

“Easy to use” function is seemed to be important to any software. A software application can almost replace the traditional workflow - on paper or excel. Therefore, not only the deployment team and administration team but also the whole enterprise must change the workflow.

If a staff previously had to note the customer information on paper or excel sheet, now, he can input data on the system instead. Similar to the manager, if he had to ask to handover the weekly report like before, now, he can get acquainted with checking directly information on the system. Unfriendly software will take time to get used to, thereby affecting the productivity of the business. 

Easy-to-use software is a highly logical software with standard UI, UX interface and matching with core activity process of business.

6. Cost

Cost is not an important factor in this short-list. However, it could be the considered factor through the process of finding the supplier.

From the beginning, the enterprise should set a budget for software deployment, which includes both software cost and building and deployment costs. When finding and comparing suppliers, the business will need to reconsider whether that cost is sufficient, otherwise, the option is to increase the cost or cut down the requirements.