CRM (Customer Relations Management) software helps businesses manage the customer data and streamline customer support/sales/marketing within the company. Traditionally, CRM was sort of a “fancy” expensive tool mainly targeted toward larger businesses with 500+ employees. However, as data gained such an essential part in many industries, the need for CRM for SMEs has rapidly grown. Below, I will introduce the benefits of installing CRM for small businesses through my internship experience.
Since 2018, I was fortunate enough to work on CRM as an intern for We Spark Growth LLC, an organization that hosts Twin Cities Women’s Expo. The event brings in women-identified entrepreneurs from Minnesota and neighboring states to promote their products and organizations and create a supporting platform for these aspiring entrepreneurs. Before I started working, the company was using software called ZOHO CRM.
Zoho provides CRM and other business management software at cheaper prices than their competitors, such as Salesforce. It is a rapidly growing startup based in India and its target clients are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We Spark Growth is a small organization with less than 5 employees but they deal with a lot of data, clients, leads, and sponsors. Therefore, the company was considering switching their management to Zoho CRM completely. Through this experience, I learned the importance of data management for small businesses and the potential growth of CRM software in SMEs.
Here are some benefits that I found very impactful after installing Zoho CRM for We Spark Growth.
Zoho CRM allows the company to record pretty much any information about the clients and lead (potential clients). Lead can be someone referred by other customers, website visitors, or employee’s friends. Before CRM was implemented, these people were rarely recorded so the company had little access to their information. With CRM, however, pretty much anyone in the company is able to see their information and add leads as they find more potential customers. This is a very powerful tool for an SME to expand its reach.
CRM makes it significantly easy for everyone to see what they have accomplished and trach their performance. For example, each lead has a lead owner, who will be responsible for converting them to customers. After they become client, client owner communicates with them directly, responds to their request, and close the deals with them. This process will be completely recorded on CRM and easily be used to measure its performance level. This will not only help the evaluation of each employee but helps the employee to perform better with clear daily goals.
The better-managed customer data and clear distribution of tasks and responsibilities for each employee lead to better customer experience. Customers know who is the one to talk to within the company and employees won’t miss deadlines and communications with each customer with a well-designed CRM dashboard.
Despite these advantages of using CRM, it had been only used by large corporations due to the high risk of installation. However, the recent development of software and more competition between the providers, the cost of CRM can be significantly affordable for SMEs. Zoho, for example, offers a one-for-all package called Zoho One, which includes CRM and all other applications available at a price of $30/month per employee, with one condition that everyone in the company will have to buy one license. The company, therefore, has to invest in the system so that it will be used by everyone within the organization. The return to investment, however, seems pretty reasonable. For most SMEs, $30/month per employee is a negligible cost, which only adds up to a couple of hundred dollars per year. The reduction in the cost, on the other hand, can be tremendous.
The experience at We Spark Growth introduced me to the world of CRM and to be frank, I was surprised by the CRM's potential to make pretty much any small businesses perform more efficiently and effecitively. Although Salesforce has been a leading platform at least in the US, we have seen less costly alternative platforms such as Zoho CRM that would allow small businesses to install CRM and take advantage of the benefits. I believe the power of CRM will keep attracting more small businesses and the demand for business professionals who understand how CRM works will keep increasing as well.