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05.31.07
Evaluating CRM Solutions For Your Business
 By Sayed Ally
Sometimes the most important business factors are overlooked when evaluating CRM solutions for your business. Too often we get so busy trying to make our business fit a product when we should make the product fit our business. When you know the objectives of your business and you follow them you will successfully choose the right CRM software.
It is also critical that the growth objectives of the business are defined clearly and concisely. You need to consider and define what the primary objective of the business is. You need to determine how you want to go about increasing your revenue. And you will want to analyze your decisions and their impact in real time.
It does you no good to analyze things a month or two down the road. When you interact on a real time basis you can see what works and what doesn’t, what’s effective and what’s not. You can find opportunities to improve your business just by analyzing on real time.
Choosing a CRM solution is!
a business decision like any other business decision. Once you decide to initiate a CRM solution you need to spend time analyzing the capability of the CRM technology you are looking at.
Web based or Client side that is the question. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Client hosted solutions are generally easy to install, easily accessed, and secure. However if you are a smaller company without an IT department and you have access to the internet a web based system might be the most advantageous to your company. With this system updates, data storage, and anything related to your company’s CRM system is dealt with by the host. Very convenient!
That said a larger business with an intranet of its own and IT staff or at least staff that is knowledgeable with software installation and implementation, will find that the client hosted system is probably a better choice being cheaper in the long run and offering more flexibility.
Of course yo!
ur budget plays an important role in which type of software yo!
u choose
, as well as which software package you want. There are many excellent products on the market such as Microsoft CRM. About 30% of your CRM budget will go to purchasing the software and 70% will go to integration, customization, maintenance, upgrades, and training.
Training is critical to a successful CRM system. Training may include in-house training, the hiring of a trainer or consultant, or a train yourself approach which may work with users that have a good computer skill level but could be very frustrating and ineffective for others.
Your growth strategy is also very important in your CRM software choice. If you know where you want to grow to in the future then you can ensure the software you purchase is capable of meeting those needs. There’s nothing worse than getting comfortable with a package to discover it will no longer meet the needs of our growing company. And having to change packages can become much more costly than if you had purchased right !
to begin with.
When you know where your business is going and what you expect out of your customer relationship management then evaluating your CRM solutions for your business becomes a breeze.
About the Author:
Sayed Ally, is the lead CRM Analyst. His company provides, Microsoft CRM Consulting. Sayed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email: aSayed@cqsolutions.com.
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