p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Trebuchet MS} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Trebuchet MS; min-height: 14.0px}

If you’ve had enough of that Access database that keeps falling over, if you often find yourself wasting time looking for those important client notes in your complex and disorganized filing system, or find that your staff don’t communication as well as they could about important customer information….. it doesn’t matter how small your business is, you need a CRM system. 

 

Some of the benefits of integrating a CRM system into your business are increased office organization, increased customer retention, better information sharing and collaboration, increased efficiency in the sales and support processes and the list goes on. Lately I have seen many small companies benefiting big time from the use of CRM (when I say small, I mean a 3 man business). 

 

Gone are the days where all CRM systems were incredibly complex and expensive, now they come in varying magnitudes, sizes and shapes to fit any sized business. Your challenge is to find one that suits the specific needs of yours, we’ve given you some tips below to follow when you are looking around for a CRM system.   

 

SELECT THE RIGHT CRM FOR YOUR BUSINESS

 

Your customers are the lifeblood of your company.  Effectively managing existing as well as prospective customers requires robust processes that define how you interact with your customers, a good CRM system should support these processes and ideally make them more efficient. Therefore, it is imperative that you choose a CRM system that is going to meet the unique needs of your business. Do your homework, identify the problems you need to solve and the processes a system needs to support before you start looking around.  

 

Before you commit to a CRM system, it’s a good idea to use it in your business for a period of time before upgrading to a licensed version. You may find that features you thought you required are actually not going to be used or on the flip side - features you really do require are not available.

 

COMPLEX VS SIMPLE

 

Small businesses are not all created equally, some have a complex business model and require more advanced features within their CRM while some are fairly straight forward and only really need a customer information portal. 

 

CRM systems also differ greatly, the functionality they offer ranges from a simple contact database and integrated calendar to more complex end to end software that provide salesforce automation and reporting, case management, financial management and Knowledgebank Libraries.

 

Providers such as out there such as cloud based DIMENSION CRM offer a free 30 day trial for both of their versions, those with a more complex requirement should trial the Enterprise version, while those who simply require an easy to use calendar and contacts database should sign up to the Vanilla Dimension CRM trial.

 

Once you’ve experienced a good CRM system you’ll never go back. Good luck for your search and remember that without customers you wouldn’t have a business, therefore investment in a tool that is going to help manage the relationship between your business and your customers has got to be a wise one.