Are you afraid to implement a CRM system? Your business may be sick
Is there a place for fear in business? The question is not the simplest - what kind of fear can people who once abandoned the idea of ​​stable work, salary and office routine have set up their own business for their own purposes: to earn money, stop working “for an uncle”, make the world a better place or save him. But no, any entrepreneur counts money and buying something for corporate needs is a cost, and it is important to understand whether it will pay off or not. Sometimes the situation gets interesting distortions: the head is ready to buy the most expensive phones and laptops, but does not dare to buy CRM, because it seems to him an excess, because everything works like that. And then you buy it, but it "will not take off", will not bring income, will cause indignation among employees, will become an extra asset. Often the only reason for this behavior is greed, in second place is fear. And if about the first reason we can only recall that greed fraer ruined, then it is more interesting to deal with fears.
Before implementing a CRM system, it is important to understand how it will fit into your long-term strategy, in other words, why do you need it? You must be aware that it can actually work inside your business, satisfy internal demand and internal requirements. First of all, try to answer the questions:
After that, you can start choosing a vendor and a specific system. But it almost never goes so smoothly. The reason is the very fears. We counted seven main ones.
If the guy took the tablet and put the notebook in the table,
This means that the seller found a way to hit.
It means money is flowing past your hands
So do not be surprised if the data goes away.
CRM they decided to implement, yeah. Customers to consider.
Often there is a situation where employees in the company act as a lobby and can “push” the head to a cool corporate party, the whole company’s summer trip somewhere, to some not very necessary office entertainment. In principle, this is normal: a person spends 9 hours a day at work, and sometimes more, and he wants comfort, convenience and a few amenities such as an office kitchen, partitions at tables, a refrigerator, board games or a coffee machine. But when it comes to operational and managerial decisions, pressure from employees should not interfere with the development of the company.
If the decision to implement CRM / ERP or any other corporate system is made from above (and most often this is how it is made), employees can boycott the new software. This is easy to do - it’s quite simple not to work in the system and not to enter data into it, referring to an inconvenient interface, excessive waste of time or workload. And that’s all, the leader can not do anything: the work is going on as usual, no one is messing around, it's just uncomfortable for colleagues, bad, they choose the old method of work. Such an IT strike is fraught with many problems: a decrease in the speed of work, lost costs, corporate conflicts. If company employees allow themselves to refuse a compromise and organize such a protest lobby, think about how strong you are as a manager and what you are doing wrong.
In practice, there are quite a few painless exits from this situation. We list some tips that will help you adapt CRM in a team and not cause negative.
And most importantly, do not be afraid of your employees and their reactions. Any deviant behavior has its own reason and its root cause. Look for them and work on both layers of motives for not working with automation. This is the case when you do not need either a stick or a carrot - you need a competent analysis and corrective actions.
If the investment is zero in your profitable business,
Most likely the crisis will crash for you.
Without investments, the business is waiting, oh, the result is simple:
Was profitable - exhausted - suddenly became profitable.
Money? What kind of money?
The popular belief: why do we need a CRM system, if there is Excel, also pay for it! In extreme cases, take a free or open source on the knee to collect. In fact, there is exactly one way not to spend money on CRM - just do not use it. In other cases, you still have to pay for licenses, for the work of a programmer, for paid technical support for a free system, etc. You don’t give away the product of your business for free, for some reason you still have revenue, right? So why should CRM vendors be altruistic and feed employees dew? They provide you with a complex software solution, which took a huge amount of man-hours and material costs, which has a fairly high cost. It doesn’t even occur to you to demand that the dealership give the car for it? Those. we figured out the first part of the thought - you have to pay in any case. Even if you manage not to contact the vendor, but simply use CRM, you will pay for it with the time spent by the employees on setting up and self-training, on numerous primary errors and sudden discoveries “oh, that's how it works”.
Another thing, if the only motive to abandon the CRM-system is the need for investment. In principle, for Russian medium and small businesses this is often not surprising: the main thing is to get a margin, and what kind of method is it, intensive or extensive, is that you leave for abstruse posts on Habr. But no, in 2019 this approach rolls less and less, and soon it will not work at all. We all have competitors, in many industries price methods of competition are no longer working, it remains to choose non-price methods, among which the main one is service. If you find an approach to each client as a friend, revenue will grow. And CRM is now a forced investment, a fee for an organized customer base that is easy to manage, convenient to analyze, and guarantees personalization. Plus, CRM systems today are a key element of information security, that is, the safety of your data with you, and not with competitors and attackers. If you are not ready to pay for order, security and process control, you clearly do not like your business and do not appreciate the work of employees.
We do not know. If you think that a horse with a cart is cooler than GAZelle Next for transporting goods, consider it further.
If ROP, CIO and CTO averted their eyes,
This means that a thunderstorm is waiting for the processes soon.
You do not need flies, regulations, decency -
Business will lead to the hell of tops indifference.
Fear is very close to the previous one, but less pronounced, which is why it is more dangerous and almost unpredictable. The decision to implement the CRM system has been made, work is ongoing to collect requirements, employees are ready to accept a new automated reality, but there are a group of people who simply wash their hands and move away from the process - top managers (department heads, department heads, etc.). ) Moreover, this can be done either by the commercial department (we did not ask, we don’t need), and the technical one (see how to implement and maintain it). There are several reasons:
Alas, when managers are afraid to take responsibility and get involved in the process, subordinates unwittingly copy their behavior and also begin to be wary of innovations. This attitude of tops is a pernicious phenomenon, it is a sign of broken communications in business, problems with the hierarchy and distribution of work tasks.
The path is again similar to the previous one - to work closely with a doubting leader, find out the real reasons and help to understand complex issues. However, an additional task appears here - to develop a roadmap for the interaction of the leader and his subordinates. And it is desirable in the literal sense of the word: to prescribe and talk about how the employee will work with implementation in the entrusted unit. During the implementation, it is necessary to hold meetings and verify the status of work for each unit - this is important even in non-crisis situations.
If you are not an IT business, far from implementation,
It may seem that software is not for you.
If you don’t have an admin, a programmer, it’s not a problem,
The vendor will come to your aid - true, for a fee, but always.
This is a very common and largely justifiable fear - the company does not want to get involved in the implementation of CRM or ERP, because it is software, and it requires certain technical skills. Many non-technical small and medium-sized companies do not have full-time programmers or system administrators, and sometimes the whole staff is there: director, accountant, and sales people. This raises concerns: who will implement, configure mail and telephony, and how to program processes and understand this damn BPMN 2.0 notation, configure templates, make additional reports, organize mailings? And if the Internet falls off or the server crashes? No, we didn’t live well, there’s nothing to start - such a front of the company’s worries simply cannot be pulled without a technical background.
This fear begets the second: how to choose a contractor? Outsourcers are asking for money for every step, freelancers are doing a lot of mistakes and disappearing from the radar, enikeys on the ad can’t cope with the tasks, large system integrators are some people from another galaxy, judging by the price lists. Taking an employee is also a dubious decision, because there are not so many tasks, and you need to pay wages every month (although this is the best solution for organizing IT infrastructure in any company, you can agree with an employee: either lower the salary and let him do his projects in the office, or assign him additional tasks) .
As a result, the company is lost and refuses to introduce CRM systems in the face of possible technological difficulties.
The solution is as simple as possible: contact the vendor. Do not buy CRM from coaches and trainers, advertising agencies, journalists, etc., use the services of professional companies and their technology partners (these are those for whom implementation and development is the main activity). The vendor has extensive experience in implementation and knows in advance where there will be problems, what to look for, where to play safe and what to explain to the client (that is, you) additionally. Yes, the services of the vendor are paid, but these are professional services for which you will pay once and will be able to live peacefully for a long time. Consider an approximate set of vendor services that will come in handy and will not cost you too much.
An impressive list, which is actually much wider than it looks - we built it on our example, from a vendor to a vendor the services are significantly different. Meanwhile, you yourself can save on services without the help of a vendor, programmer or system administrator. To do this, carefully test your chosen CRM, study the documentation, understand the logic and you will understand that it’s easy to cope with settings, access rights, directories, business processes and even mailings. It will take much less time than you think. Well, for further service, we always recommend forming an internal expert and taking advantage of the extended technical support package. It is not so expensive, but fast, convenient and professional - you will not notice the simple in business.
If the boss does not understand techno-innovation at all,
Then manually you have to conduct transactions,
Wasting time, money, nerves and, of course, strength.
As a result - a sad business and a frail employee.
Which, on, CRM, on? Go work, loafers.
A rare but terrible situation: employees themselves want order in their work, convenient calls, mailings, reminders, customer cards with complete information, and get the answer “what the hell is that”.
Let's do an experiment. We go to google.co.uk, enter “how persuade boss to buy crm”, we get such a list of topics in the top:
We go to google.ru, enter "how to convince the boss to implement crm", we get such a list of topics in the top -
And this, my friends, is very revealing - rarely in which Russian company does the business automation initiative come from below. Accordingly, if the manager does not know about CRM, such a company will sooner or later have problems with working with clients. Yes, tables, personal records and human memory can last a very long time, but sooner or later a crisis situation will occur in which the company will be unprotected. After that, operational risks and problems will be flooded with a serious wave, and a reaction-minded leader will not be able to quickly deploy the control vector. Therefore, if you read this post and understand that you want to work in a company, earn more, save colleagues, try to initiate automation - it is quite possible you will become a hero. Well, or the initiative will have an initiator. We here do not give any guarantees.
If these curves, if the numbers are malfunctioning,
This is very, very bad: it means that the business is not in order.
So you have no strategies and no success,
Because only analysis on the process pours light.
You have a large amount of accumulated information about transactions, customers, employees, sales results, etc. All this information is scattered and practically does not work. It can be scary to get all this data into CRM and start working with various slices - after all, such an analysis can lead to a revision of at least the sales paradigm, as an extreme measure - of all operational activities. Deep analytics of even small data of small and medium-sized businesses is really capable of turning things upside down (or rather, finally putting them on their feet and shaking them).
In addition, analytics requires a different approach on the part of employees: in addition to the usual plan-fact, slices appear, a sales funnel starts to be evaluated in a completely different way. It is necessary to be able to interpret the obtained data and apply it for real daily work, and not for beautiful schedules at meetings and in reports to the general. So fears appear: not to cope, to make mistakes, to burn.
CRM is the most convenient analytics tool that works for you. You and your employees enter detailed data on each significant transaction within the transaction, fill out directories, keep customers, plan, etc., and at the output you get many different reports that show both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the processes (for example, we developed above 100 ready-made reports for small and medium-sized businesses, which are included in the base delivery of RegionSoft CRM ).
Therefore, you have a few simple tasks in order to have a complete picture in numbers:
It’s as if the introduction took away tons of money -
This means that you have a misunderstanding.
Because if correctly and thoughtfully implemented,
Your money will not decrease - they will only grow ;-)
An organized grouping of business applications and add-ons is trying to catch up with CRM.
But this fear is based on real events - there are really a lot of CRM systems on the market that, in addition to the monthly fee, will entail many one-time and periodic payments: the purchase of connectors, plug-ins, external applications from the marketplace, and so on. This approach is related to the business model of specific vendors, and you either accept this or are looking for a vendor that announces the entire list :-)
Companies fear that they will have to purchase or rent various software that will be integrated with CRM: a virtual telephone exchange, a mailing list service, a warehouse program, a program for accounting purchases, etc. The purpose of such purchases is the desire to build a single end-to-end IT infrastructure with full automation. In addition, the question arises: how effectively will all this work together, can it be integrated and how high will the cost of ownership be?
There is a very common opinion that CRM is only for sales, so often a company chooses the first software available (and almost any CRM is able to cope with the basic parameters of sales at the client - transaction - amount) and does not seek to choose a comprehensive, universal solution. This is bad. Complex solutions can provide cool automation, cover most of the requirements and save money. For example, our senior-edition CRM system includes warehouse management, production, business processes, numerous directories, three levels of planners, integration with retail equipment, and much more. That is, it alone at the price of a CRM license closes a bunch of questions.
Although there are tasks when the acquisition of additional software solutions is advisable, but these are special cases, and they need to be negotiated with the vendor. But buy CRM to pay separately for warehouse + integration, email client + connector, business processes + integration, etc. it is strange and terribly disadvantageous. Choose complete, universal solutions, they are cooler.
The reasons for the emergence of such fears are many, they are very different from company to company, but there are 4 of the most common.
We have listed the most common fears of implementing CRM. Did you recognize yourself in something? We have bad news for you - if your company has these fears, then, in principle, something is wrong with it and, perhaps, problems will shoot at the most inopportune moment. And we will be desperate liars if we say that it’s worth buying a CRM and everything will pass. The problems are much more systemic. It’s good if you are ready to overcome them.
However, the role of automation in bringing order to business should not be underestimated. CRM-system helps to take into account transactions, ensures data security, partially eliminates routine and reduces the time spent on individual processes and operations. The implementation of CRM can be both the result of a review of business processes and organizational changes, and the basis that will form the basis of future changes (this path is a bit more complicated). But the experience of our customers shows: with CRM is better than without it.
RegionSoft CRM is a powerful desktop CRM system for small and medium-sized businesses. Until September 30, -15% and a bunch of other goodies.
NEW! ZEDLine Support is a cloud help desk with a user-friendly interface and high speed. Now, taking into account labor costs, and until September 30, we ourselves will replenish your balance by adding 50% to your payment to your personal account.
Write, call, contact - we automate to the teeth! :-)
Before implementing a CRM system, it is important to understand how it will fit into your long-term strategy, in other words, why do you need it? You must be aware that it can actually work inside your business, satisfy internal demand and internal requirements. First of all, try to answer the questions:
- What drives my need for CRM?
- What do I want to do with this CRM?
- What CRM features do I need?
- What problems will CRM solve?
After that, you can start choosing a vendor and a specific system. But it almost never goes so smoothly. The reason is the very fears. We counted seven main ones.
Your employees resist implementing CRM and other software
If the guy took the tablet and put the notebook in the table,
This means that the seller found a way to hit.
It means money is flowing past your hands
So do not be surprised if the data goes away.
CRM they decided to implement, yeah. Customers to consider.
Often there is a situation where employees in the company act as a lobby and can “push” the head to a cool corporate party, the whole company’s summer trip somewhere, to some not very necessary office entertainment. In principle, this is normal: a person spends 9 hours a day at work, and sometimes more, and he wants comfort, convenience and a few amenities such as an office kitchen, partitions at tables, a refrigerator, board games or a coffee machine. But when it comes to operational and managerial decisions, pressure from employees should not interfere with the development of the company.
If the decision to implement CRM / ERP or any other corporate system is made from above (and most often this is how it is made), employees can boycott the new software. This is easy to do - it’s quite simple not to work in the system and not to enter data into it, referring to an inconvenient interface, excessive waste of time or workload. And that’s all, the leader can not do anything: the work is going on as usual, no one is messing around, it's just uncomfortable for colleagues, bad, they choose the old method of work. Such an IT strike is fraught with many problems: a decrease in the speed of work, lost costs, corporate conflicts. If company employees allow themselves to refuse a compromise and organize such a protest lobby, think about how strong you are as a manager and what you are doing wrong.
How to fight
In practice, there are quite a few painless exits from this situation. We list some tips that will help you adapt CRM in a team and not cause negative.
- The CRM system within the team needs to be sold - just like the vendors sold it to you. Gather employees, tell about advantages and opportunities, answer exciting questions, clearly indicate the control line for which CRM will not go (relatively speaking, almost all employees will be afraid that CRM logs site visits and “writes” a keyboard, but this one system doesn’t - say it directly, show the admin panel on a large monitor).
- Reveal the core of resistance. In a small company, this is usually one, less often two people. Meet with this employee, explain the reasons for implementation, ask to become your ally and early adopter of CRM, suggest the role of an internal expert. If you feel that you didn’t understand, or understand that his area of ​​interest lies in the possibilities of lefting on a client base, taking kickbacks, selling bypassing companies, etc., turn the anthill to the end: look for all those interested, calculate its deals, and, if you have indisputable facts in your hands, make it clear to the person that it is impossible to steal and go to the left in your business, and if the person does not accept these rules, he must decide on dismissal. In the process of dismissing such an employee, do not forget about the set of information security measures in order to avoid data leakage and leaving the customer base.
- Conduct a good, comprehensive training with and without a vendor, form internal experts, provide employees with printed manuals - company employees should be comfortable with new software, they should know that they will be helped even with the most stupid question.
- In general, sometimes employees do not know what they are struggling with, so just do usability testing (more than one day!) To show them how cool and convenient it is to use CRM. They will get involved. When we studied foreign experience in implementing CRM systems, we liked the Day in Life exercise: employees switch to CRM at once and work with it (in the demo version) for a day, two, three, a week, and then write / talk in detail about it what they did, what was good and what didn’t like, how they would like to work with the CRM system. So you kill two birds with one stone: introduce the system and at the same time collect the requirements.
- Implement CRM together with your employees: test demos, form work groups, collect requirements from all departments involved in automation.
And most importantly, do not be afraid of your employees and their reactions. Any deviant behavior has its own reason and its root cause. Look for them and work on both layers of motives for not working with automation. This is the case when you do not need either a stick or a carrot - you need a competent analysis and corrective actions.
Do you find CRM expenses an unnecessary investment
If the investment is zero in your profitable business,
Most likely the crisis will crash for you.
Without investments, the business is waiting, oh, the result is simple:
Was profitable - exhausted - suddenly became profitable.
Money? What kind of money?
The popular belief: why do we need a CRM system, if there is Excel, also pay for it! In extreme cases, take a free or open source on the knee to collect. In fact, there is exactly one way not to spend money on CRM - just do not use it. In other cases, you still have to pay for licenses, for the work of a programmer, for paid technical support for a free system, etc. You don’t give away the product of your business for free, for some reason you still have revenue, right? So why should CRM vendors be altruistic and feed employees dew? They provide you with a complex software solution, which took a huge amount of man-hours and material costs, which has a fairly high cost. It doesn’t even occur to you to demand that the dealership give the car for it? Those. we figured out the first part of the thought - you have to pay in any case. Even if you manage not to contact the vendor, but simply use CRM, you will pay for it with the time spent by the employees on setting up and self-training, on numerous primary errors and sudden discoveries “oh, that's how it works”.
Another thing, if the only motive to abandon the CRM-system is the need for investment. In principle, for Russian medium and small businesses this is often not surprising: the main thing is to get a margin, and what kind of method is it, intensive or extensive, is that you leave for abstruse posts on Habr. But no, in 2019 this approach rolls less and less, and soon it will not work at all. We all have competitors, in many industries price methods of competition are no longer working, it remains to choose non-price methods, among which the main one is service. If you find an approach to each client as a friend, revenue will grow. And CRM is now a forced investment, a fee for an organized customer base that is easy to manage, convenient to analyze, and guarantees personalization. Plus, CRM systems today are a key element of information security, that is, the safety of your data with you, and not with competitors and attackers. If you are not ready to pay for order, security and process control, you clearly do not like your business and do not appreciate the work of employees.
How to fight
We do not know. If you think that a horse with a cart is cooler than GAZelle Next for transporting goods, consider it further.
Top managers ignore implementation
If ROP, CIO and CTO averted their eyes,
This means that a thunderstorm is waiting for the processes soon.
You do not need flies, regulations, decency -
Business will lead to the hell of tops indifference.
Fear is very close to the previous one, but less pronounced, which is why it is more dangerous and almost unpredictable. The decision to implement the CRM system has been made, work is ongoing to collect requirements, employees are ready to accept a new automated reality, but there are a group of people who simply wash their hands and move away from the process - top managers (department heads, department heads, etc.). ) Moreover, this can be done either by the commercial department (we did not ask, we don’t need), and the technical one (see how to implement and maintain it). There are several reasons:
- a specific manager had the opportunity to deliver "his" CRM-system with any personal bonus (rollback);
- the manager is afraid of a new level of transparency of the client base and transactions, reduction of personal informal contacts with customers (it is more convenient to fish in troubled waters);
- the manager is not used to working and he does not want to get involved in a complex, time-consuming and responsible process;
- the technical manager / system administrator does not want to learn, implement, and then maintain complex corporate software, which requires configuration and constant internal consultations;
- the employees had a negative experience with automation systems at the previous work, they do not believe that CRM / ERP will help this time.
Alas, when managers are afraid to take responsibility and get involved in the process, subordinates unwittingly copy their behavior and also begin to be wary of innovations. This attitude of tops is a pernicious phenomenon, it is a sign of broken communications in business, problems with the hierarchy and distribution of work tasks.
How to fight
The path is again similar to the previous one - to work closely with a doubting leader, find out the real reasons and help to understand complex issues. However, an additional task appears here - to develop a roadmap for the interaction of the leader and his subordinates. And it is desirable in the literal sense of the word: to prescribe and talk about how the employee will work with implementation in the entrusted unit. During the implementation, it is necessary to hold meetings and verify the status of work for each unit - this is important even in non-crisis situations.
Are you afraid of CRM as technology
If you are not an IT business, far from implementation,
It may seem that software is not for you.
If you don’t have an admin, a programmer, it’s not a problem,
The vendor will come to your aid - true, for a fee, but always.
This is a very common and largely justifiable fear - the company does not want to get involved in the implementation of CRM or ERP, because it is software, and it requires certain technical skills. Many non-technical small and medium-sized companies do not have full-time programmers or system administrators, and sometimes the whole staff is there: director, accountant, and sales people. This raises concerns: who will implement, configure mail and telephony, and how to program processes and understand this damn BPMN 2.0 notation, configure templates, make additional reports, organize mailings? And if the Internet falls off or the server crashes? No, we didn’t live well, there’s nothing to start - such a front of the company’s worries simply cannot be pulled without a technical background.
This fear begets the second: how to choose a contractor? Outsourcers are asking for money for every step, freelancers are doing a lot of mistakes and disappearing from the radar, enikeys on the ad can’t cope with the tasks, large system integrators are some people from another galaxy, judging by the price lists. Taking an employee is also a dubious decision, because there are not so many tasks, and you need to pay wages every month (although this is the best solution for organizing IT infrastructure in any company, you can agree with an employee: either lower the salary and let him do his projects in the office, or assign him additional tasks) .
As a result, the company is lost and refuses to introduce CRM systems in the face of possible technological difficulties.
How to fight
The solution is as simple as possible: contact the vendor. Do not buy CRM from coaches and trainers, advertising agencies, journalists, etc., use the services of professional companies and their technology partners (these are those for whom implementation and development is the main activity). The vendor has extensive experience in implementation and knows in advance where there will be problems, what to look for, where to play safe and what to explain to the client (that is, you) additionally. Yes, the services of the vendor are paid, but these are professional services for which you will pay once and will be able to live peacefully for a long time. Consider an approximate set of vendor services that will come in handy and will not cost you too much.
- Basic setup of CRM, distribution of access rights, if necessary, setting up additional security measures.
- User training, including online.
- Connecting and integrating a virtual PBX, setting up telephony in relation to CRM, and, if necessary, setting up IVR.
- Setting up a mail client, instant messengers, integration with the site, including using additional software.
- Creation of templates for contracts, commercial offers, primary documentation, etc .; If you have the technical ability to set up calculators.
- Modeling and tuning business processes.
- Integration with 1C, hardware, other software.
- Other work that may affect the operation of CRM.
An impressive list, which is actually much wider than it looks - we built it on our example, from a vendor to a vendor the services are significantly different. Meanwhile, you yourself can save on services without the help of a vendor, programmer or system administrator. To do this, carefully test your chosen CRM, study the documentation, understand the logic and you will understand that it’s easy to cope with settings, access rights, directories, business processes and even mailings. It will take much less time than you think. Well, for further service, we always recommend forming an internal expert and taking advantage of the extended technical support package. It is not so expensive, but fast, convenient and professional - you will not notice the simple in business.
The head of the company reacts to the word "CRM" "What-what?"
If the boss does not understand techno-innovation at all,
Then manually you have to conduct transactions,
Wasting time, money, nerves and, of course, strength.
As a result - a sad business and a frail employee.
Which, on, CRM, on? Go work, loafers.
A rare but terrible situation: employees themselves want order in their work, convenient calls, mailings, reminders, customer cards with complete information, and get the answer “what the hell is that”.
Let's do an experiment. We go to google.co.uk, enter “how persuade boss to buy crm”, we get such a list of topics in the top:
How To Persuade Boss That You Need CRM Software Convincing Your Boss You Need CRM Software 8 Arguments to convince your manager to adopt a CRM tool Persuading Your Boss to Invest in the Right Sales Tool
We go to google.ru, enter "how to convince the boss to implement crm", we get such a list of topics in the top -
, .
And this, my friends, is very revealing - rarely in which Russian company does the business automation initiative come from below. Accordingly, if the manager does not know about CRM, such a company will sooner or later have problems with working with clients. Yes, tables, personal records and human memory can last a very long time, but sooner or later a crisis situation will occur in which the company will be unprotected. After that, operational risks and problems will be flooded with a serious wave, and a reaction-minded leader will not be able to quickly deploy the control vector. Therefore, if you read this post and understand that you want to work in a company, earn more, save colleagues, try to initiate automation - it is quite possible you will become a hero. Well, or the initiative will have an initiator. We here do not give any guarantees.
Are you afraid to drown in data
If these curves, if the numbers are malfunctioning,
This is very, very bad: it means that the business is not in order.
So you have no strategies and no success,
Because only analysis on the process pours light.
You have a large amount of accumulated information about transactions, customers, employees, sales results, etc. All this information is scattered and practically does not work. It can be scary to get all this data into CRM and start working with various slices - after all, such an analysis can lead to a revision of at least the sales paradigm, as an extreme measure - of all operational activities. Deep analytics of even small data of small and medium-sized businesses is really capable of turning things upside down (or rather, finally putting them on their feet and shaking them).
In addition, analytics requires a different approach on the part of employees: in addition to the usual plan-fact, slices appear, a sales funnel starts to be evaluated in a completely different way. It is necessary to be able to interpret the obtained data and apply it for real daily work, and not for beautiful schedules at meetings and in reports to the general. So fears appear: not to cope, to make mistakes, to burn.
How to fight
CRM is the most convenient analytics tool that works for you. You and your employees enter detailed data on each significant transaction within the transaction, fill out directories, keep customers, plan, etc., and at the output you get many different reports that show both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the processes (for example, we developed above 100 ready-made reports for small and medium-sized businesses, which are included in the base delivery of RegionSoft CRM ).
Therefore, you have a few simple tasks in order to have a complete picture in numbers:
- always enter current and correct data
- have a single source of information input - CRM system
- monitor notifications from the CRM system and timely delete duplicates and erroneous data
- timely upload reports and track the dynamics
- make decisions based on analytics, not just intuition.
You think that CRM will lead to other software purchases
It’s as if the introduction took away tons of money -
This means that you have a misunderstanding.
Because if correctly and thoughtfully implemented,
Your money will not decrease - they will only grow ;-)
An organized grouping of business applications and add-ons is trying to catch up with CRM.
But this fear is based on real events - there are really a lot of CRM systems on the market that, in addition to the monthly fee, will entail many one-time and periodic payments: the purchase of connectors, plug-ins, external applications from the marketplace, and so on. This approach is related to the business model of specific vendors, and you either accept this or are looking for a vendor that announces the entire list :-)
Companies fear that they will have to purchase or rent various software that will be integrated with CRM: a virtual telephone exchange, a mailing list service, a warehouse program, a program for accounting purchases, etc. The purpose of such purchases is the desire to build a single end-to-end IT infrastructure with full automation. In addition, the question arises: how effectively will all this work together, can it be integrated and how high will the cost of ownership be?
How to fight
There is a very common opinion that CRM is only for sales, so often a company chooses the first software available (and almost any CRM is able to cope with the basic parameters of sales at the client - transaction - amount) and does not seek to choose a comprehensive, universal solution. This is bad. Complex solutions can provide cool automation, cover most of the requirements and save money. For example, our senior-edition CRM system includes warehouse management, production, business processes, numerous directories, three levels of planners, integration with retail equipment, and much more. That is, it alone at the price of a CRM license closes a bunch of questions.
Although there are tasks when the acquisition of additional software solutions is advisable, but these are special cases, and they need to be negotiated with the vendor. But buy CRM to pay separately for warehouse + integration, email client + connector, business processes + integration, etc. it is strange and terribly disadvantageous. Choose complete, universal solutions, they are cooler.
Where do fears grow legs?
The reasons for the emergence of such fears are many, they are very different from company to company, but there are 4 of the most common.
- Lack of knowledge - when the opinion about automation is formed on the basis of the opinions of people on social networks, the opinions of those who could not figure out the software or completely false, fake reviews on websites (we conducted our investigation on this subject). Vendors receive a huge amount of information for which they are most often responsible, at least for a long time in the market. Study various sources, check information - it often happens that unscrupulous dealers of vendor A simply rewrite articles of vendor B and pass them off as their own, and expertise from B rather than dealer A. Critical thinking and trusted sources (Habr, websites and blogs of vendors ) Is the shortest way to educational program.
- The rejection of the implementation idea is a fundamental reluctance to even try to choose a CRM system. As a rule, the basis of such behavior is someone else's negative experience. Here you need to understand that business is different for business, and in each of the companies the implementation will go according to its own scenario, and the operation will bring its own result.
- Greed (not to be confused with prudence and foresight) is a big problem, which consists in a complete and unjustified refusal to invest in the development of the company. Ultimately, it leads to stagnation, personnel problems and lagging behind competitors. In the modern information stream and with new buying habits (meaningful choice, demand quality service, seek profit), the absence of advertising costs, corporate software, staff development is fraught with revenue sagging.
- Non-acceptance of the idea of ​​CRM by conviction (coaches, employees, etc. “helped”). There is nothing special to comment on: no - that's all. Think about what such a principle can cost in the business sphere and in life.
We have listed the most common fears of implementing CRM. Did you recognize yourself in something? We have bad news for you - if your company has these fears, then, in principle, something is wrong with it and, perhaps, problems will shoot at the most inopportune moment. And we will be desperate liars if we say that it’s worth buying a CRM and everything will pass. The problems are much more systemic. It’s good if you are ready to overcome them.
However, the role of automation in bringing order to business should not be underestimated. CRM-system helps to take into account transactions, ensures data security, partially eliminates routine and reduces the time spent on individual processes and operations. The implementation of CRM can be both the result of a review of business processes and organizational changes, and the basis that will form the basis of future changes (this path is a bit more complicated). But the experience of our customers shows: with CRM is better than without it.
Our arsenal for comprehensive business automation:
RegionSoft CRM is a powerful desktop CRM system for small and medium-sized businesses. Until September 30, -15% and a bunch of other goodies.
NEW! ZEDLine Support is a cloud help desk with a user-friendly interface and high speed. Now, taking into account labor costs, and until September 30, we ourselves will replenish your balance by adding 50% to your payment to your personal account.
Write, call, contact - we automate to the teeth! :-)
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