CRM implementation: A complete process

Source: Unsplash.

CRM - Customer relationship management software, according to its acronym - is one of the most valuable AI tools to efficiently manage relationships with your audience and understand their needs clearly and profoundly. Thanks to its good results, every company that wants to maintain a competitive level wish to implement a CRM system in its company to enjoy its benefits.

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You could work with CodeDesign for CRM implementation to improve your marketing campaign and sales. Codedesign has a physical presence in Lisbon, Zurich and Manchester, but we consider anywhere there's WiFi to be our digital office space.

Implementing CRM software in your company allows you to centralize all the essential data about your audience in a single platform, providing real-time data-driven insights. Its popularity is such that it is now the most prominent software market worldwide, and its value expects to reach more than $80 billion in revenue by 2025. This article will give you a practical and complete guide to CRM implementation in your company and study its benefits and current trends for 2022.

Let's keep reading!

Why Do You Need a CRM Software?

CRM software combines your audience's important information in one easily accessible and organized place. It will be able to give you eyes and ears on all the platforms with which you interact with them. This ranges from phone calls, emails, social networks and any other. These data-driven insights go from their likes, orders made or in process, to the products more or less requested. The software will help you create personalized experiences or campaigns that meet their needs, strengthening their relationship with you and more loyalty to your brand. Creating unique experiences for your buyers is crucial nowadays since 72% of them say that they don't engage with messaging that isn't personalized.

Remember, "customer is king," and if you have a platform that helps you manage them better, you are taking care of what is essential. Find this complete guide on the digital marketing funnel.

But the most exciting thing about CRM is that it can perceive the unseen by humans - in a few words, it may know the customers better than they know themselves. For example, by studying spending habits, you can predict what your users will buy, when they'll do it, or even the next item they purchase.

You can use all this information to make intelligent data-driven decisions on what you should develop next or how you could better market your products.

As you can see, the benefits of this technology are countless, so let's look at how you can integrate it into your business.

Source: YouTube.

Benefits of CRM

Increase Your Customer Retention Rates

 As companies, we know that acquiring new clients can be difficult. However, maintaining quality clients for our company is more critical than quantity since they keep us with a constant flow. In a Hubspot Blog, keeping a client is 5 to 25 times more complicated; however, with the help of the CRM, it is easier to anticipate problems and thus solve them. In the same way, if you have a dissatisfied client who has stopped being in contact, the program maintains the interaction with them by sending emails from time to time or notifying your team so that they can get in touch with this person.

Make accurate data-driven decisions.

As we mentioned above, these customer relationship platforms can unlock information that is unperceived by us. It goes deep into human aspects like customer sentiment or more technical ones like how your last marketing campaign performed.

Within the software, you can organize buyer personas based on their characteristics and demographics and even automate lead qualification. This allows you to target precise parts of your audience with the campaigns that will impact them most.

All this information will also help you make accurate decisions about your company's plans. When the software gives you information about future trends or the current behaviour of your products, you will be able to know where you should invest more or even what you should eliminate from your strategy once and for all.

Helps You Make More Money

Perhaps the one that excites us all the most, but let's explain it a little better. The ZOHO portal - a CRM software - claims that these programs can help businesses increase their conversion rate by up to 300%, shorten sales cycles by 24% and increase user loyalty by 27%. In the long run, investing in this technology will bring better results to your company.

Customer Retention Management.

Create your CRM team

First, you have to assemble your CRM, whose job is to ensure your CRM is in its optimal function. This team doesn't need to be dedicated to managing the CRM 24/7. They could have existing roles in your organization and add some CRM areas to their duties. Read this guide on PPC campaign strategy.

To find the accurate quarterbacks for your CRM team, ask them what kind of CRM projects they have worked on and for what kind of companies to know if they match your business requirements.

The key members you need in your team are:

• CRM project manager: The person in charge of the system is involved in the entire process. They ensure that the system is used as planned, providing vital administrative details and giving access to end-users.
• IT manager: This position could be remote or in-house, and it's responsible for supporting the implementation of all the technological tools and assisting the project manager in any issue the software may face.
• Sales team managers: this team oversees the data and information that the system processes once it's rolled out.

If you are on the next level and you decide to implement a highly complex CRM system, you should consider having these members to make your process easier:

• Software analyst: This team member is responsible for migrating and cleansing all your data. They are pros at understanding how each function works and solving software issues.
• Software or app developer:  Your software developer will customize the program to ensure that all pipelines and processes configured in the system match your business processes and needs. For example, you can hire Salesforce developers who customize Salesforce CRM and make sure that you get the most benefit from using it.
• Software test engineer: CRM implementation is a process of creating and testing. That's why a software test engineer is fundamental for your success. This person should work closely with all central team members to ensure that it works smoothly before the process ends.

Once you create your CRM team, gather all of them as identified end-users. By doing this, you can get feedback from them to help you determine which features are crucial for your business, how much training they need, and all the extra features and data points to implement your new customer retention management system.

Source: Unsplash.

Set Up your CRM goals & Objectives

It's always better to start a project with the end goals, and CRM is no exception. Define your goals by laying out statements of how your team will be measured within the system and how it is expected to work.

Your goals must include tangible results to measure your business performance and a period to do it. It is more viable to create an action plan to do it when you define it.

A good example could be:

OBJECTIVE	ACTION PLAN
Increase monthly revenue by 20%	Find companies that have a larger budget and that need your services.

Choose the proper CRM application.

 After you have set clear goals, it is time to choose the software that best suits them. The features of this program must support the functions of the vendors. Also, ensure they can be integrated and supported by other departments within your company. For example, the sales team should be able to show the reports to all the different departments, so they are on the same page.

Source: YouTube.

Determine what data needs to migrate

Usually, when programmers do CRM implementation, they forget to determine what data needs to be migrated into the new system. The most critical information is contact, company and deals data exported from other systems using a comma-separated values (CSV) file to the new platform. 

CRMs tend to come with an import tool to automate all these processes. Nevertheless, each system handles data migration differently, so evaluating which data is needed from the start is critical. Our recommendation is not to move all your data at once. Instead, test the integrity of your data using a small sample first.

Source: Unsplash.

Establish CRM settings customizations

Next, you have to create a CRM implementation plan that defines the settings and processes you need for your business; you have:

• Profile settings of your company
• Dropdown menu selections
• Custom fields
• Permissions and management for users
• Mailing sending policy
• Admin settings

To upgrade your CRM, you can offer customizable options for reports, roles, pipelines, work automation and mailing lists. Before you consider adding these, evaluate your customer journey to see how this fixes your organization. The typical steps for these journeys are:

• Awareness: customers discover your company's services through social media channels or ads.
• Consideration: The customer evaluates your products and services to see if you fit their needs.
• Decision: Customer decides to go ahead with your company
• Retention and nurturing: You engage with your customer through emails and newsletters to cultivate your relationship marketing.
• Customer loyalty: Your customers are happy with your services, and your company is their first thought when demanding your services.

When you evaluate your customer journey with your team, you can get guidance on what CRM settings, permission and customizations you need.

 

Source: YouTube.

Include third-party apps

When you include your CRM with third-party apps like Mailchimp, Slack or Facebook, you can maximize your business' efficiency. This part of the implementation will allow your team to switch between apps and access critical customer data without leaving the CRM platform.

CRM systems offer a lot of third-party integrations, and the idea is to prioritize according to the needs of your sales team. The most popular integrations are:

• Email apps
• Lead generation tools
• Project management tools
• Messaging and communication platforms
• Social media management tools
• Live chat programs
• Help desk apps
• Marketing and email automation programs
• Support and ticketing apps
• Analytics tools

Source: Unsplash.

Evaluate Your CRM Environment

Now that you have arrived at this part, your CRM implementation is almost complete, and now it's time to verify if the software is ready to work according to your requirements. When you start testing, you'll learn how all components work and evaluate customer touchpoints to check their effectiveness.

There are several components to test, including:

Component	What should you test?
Migrated Data	Check all imported records to see if they match the correct files, which means no duplicated data.
Contacts	All the data fields are recognizable and fillable.
Email Capture	Check if all your email exchanges are associated with the correct contact, and two-way email sync works correctly.
Lead Routing	According to your settings, evaluate if your leads go to the correct sales rep.
Pipeline Management	Check that each pipeline matches the sales process.
Automated Tasks	See that each task triggers work as expected.
Integrations	Check that all business apps work correctly.
Reports	Confirm that each data matches the expected results.
Website Forms	Reconfirm that each form displays correctly, fields are fillable, and your completed form is routed perfectly.

Train Your Users

Now that you have tested all components of your CRM, it is time to show your team how everything works. Ask your team for feedback to get insights on how further improvements can be added to the system and report any issue your system could have.

Measure CRM Adoption

The CRM implementation process doesn't end when your employees learn how to operate the system. The next step is to make sure they put it to good use. Below are some metrics you can track to measure the usage rate among your end-users:

• Track user logins: The easiest way to measure your system usage is to check how many team members are login in and how regularly. Nevertheless, this is only an indicator of use, not quality.
• Monitor data inputs: Evaluate how employees manage business and customer data in your CRM system like leads, contact information, task and activities. 
• Track CRM-generated reports:  When all your team gets familiar with the CRM system, encourage them to process all data and reports using analytics tools in the CRM. This will contribute to moving all your sales and business information into your new system.
• Measure KPIs using the system:  Use your CRM system to evaluate your sales team's performance and key performance indicators. This includes calls made, deals closed, and all the revenue you generate.

But remember, all this information will not be available overnight. It takes time, so wait until you have time to use your new CRM system to see the information you need.

Source: Unsplash.

CRM Trends for 2022

In 2022, many enterprises will spend more on CRM systems, and since we have seen its benefits, we'll show you the trends in this field so that you can maximize your profits and surpass other competitors in your area. 

Let's see!

CRM Software for Mobile

Cell phones are already part of our daily life, and we could say that we use them more than even our computers, so it is essential for any website, business, and software with a mobile version. For this reason, CRM software is increasingly making inroads into the smartphone space to allow us to manage our business outside and inside the offices. The industry has learned a lot during COVID; because of this, every platform offers us mobile versions to work from every corner where we can find a wi-fi signal.

Statistics from Forester demonstrate that 50% of work teams improved their productivity using mobile CRM and a Nucleus Research Report found that 65% of companies using it achieved their sales quotas.

Perhaps the only downside of this trend is that mobile phones are more susceptible to hacking, so all this valuable information could be at risk. Experts continue working on these security issues to provide more efficient service.  Take a look at some of the best CRM Mobile Apps.

CRM Software.

Artificial Intelligence & Predictive Analytics

In our article "Will AI Replace Digital Marketers," we see how technology is becoming increasingly part of our daily work. In the same way, the incursion of these innovations in the field of CRM could not be missed, and its uses will significantly help your company. For example, with the help of predictive analytics, you will have accurate insights into the following trends in your market, and you will be able to predict customer buying trends more quickly.

In the same way, AI will help you segment your customers by offering insights into how they act and buy so that you can create better sales and marketing campaigns. For example, the technology will offer real-time insights into your users' interests, preferences, demographics and world views. With this information in your hands, you'll be able to focus on those who are your most potential buyers. Then, you have another great addition to your AI team: the chatbot. With the help of it, you can answer customer queries and drives sales no matter if your team is working or not. This is great for increasing out-of-hours sales.

AI & CRM

Voice Recognition

Nowadays, we use voice assistants like Siri or Amazon Alexa to play music while doing other chores in our houses, but their use goes further to help us with our business. In an article from Find My CRM, we found that in 2018 the sales for voice devices hit 1 million. This is understandable since these devices can help you make more money by using better track data and allowing you to understand your target audience better. These machines are so intelligent that you can set them to track entire conversations or, even more impressive, track users' emotions, gathering valuable insights into how they feel about your company.

Final Thoughts

Customers represent a significant part of our success as a company. Therefore, if we can take advantage of the use of technology to strengthen our relationship with them, it is an investment that is worth every penny. This is what you need to know about B2B sales outsourcing.

However, let us remember that we cannot make hasty decisions in business. Before implementing this strategy in your organization, you must study why you want it and deeply study your current situation as a business.

Finding suitable and reliable people for this task is essential, so they should extensively search for the best software developers who can carry your project forward.

Once you get it, inspire your team that this is a step forward for the entire company's success, so they can join the development of this implementation with their ideas on how this could help them develop a better job.

Technology has arrived to help us make our lives easier, so stay abreast of all the advances and study how they can help your company progress. Keep up with our blogs in CodeDesign, and contact us if you want to take your business to the next level.

Until a new article, see you!

About CodeDesign

Codedesign is a digital marketing agency specializing in e-commerce and B2B online marketing. Our digital team utilizes the latest digital marketing tools and strategies to help clients reach their business goals. We offer comprehensive services such as website design, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, performance marketing, social media marketing, CRM and marketing automation, email marketing, and more. Our experts create and implement customized digital marketing campaigns to increase website traffic, generate leads, and drive sales. Our expertise in e-commerce and B2B marketing allows us to understand the nuances of the digital marketplace and create effective marketing solutions tailored to their client's needs.
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- Digital Agency
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Feel free to contact us to see the unprecedented growth of your business.

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