CRM for the Starters

Is your business partially based on services you cater and partially on how you manage your relation with the customers? Or you have Sales Person/Account Managers who need constant reminders to call up your customers? At the same time, not being a complete service based industry you can’t afford to buy a full-fledged CRM but wish to use some functionality of your regular accounting software to cater to this nitty-gritty.  Well you are in luck because the Comments feature of Sage Accpac AR (i.e. Accounts Receivable) Module is just what you need. You write and store comments, add validity period for these comments, Flag various teams to access these comments to perform mentioned activities, Use them in printing of reports, Store Birthdays or a ticket that is currently being solved for the Customer.

How Comments work:

It’s as simple as it sounds, just go to Comments tab of the A/R Customers and insert a new comment by pressing the ‘Insert’ key. Basic list of fields it stores is Date Inserted, Date Expiration, Date Follow-up, Comment Type, User Id and Comment. A Comment can be up to 2500 Characters long (which is almost as long as this articleJ). Comments can be segregated using Comment Type, Let’s say Action Points or Reminders or Follow-ups or segregate them based on Teams just by giving them names of Teams who are responsible for the task.

Now say if you need to view the entire history of comments for a particular customer, then all you need to do is go to A/R Customer Reports and print the Customer Report with Report Type as Customer Comments which can be filtered by Follow-up dates, Customer Number and other similar criteria. This sorting will help in more than one ways, e.g. my billing department uses this report to process follow-ups to Customers based on due dates of invoices hence selecting the Sort type as ‘Billing Cycle’ and then running the report will give me sorted output of Customers that I need to follow-up for payments.

Apart from this the same feature can be used in printing reports. Let’s say you need to print various messages based on status of the payments or period of the year. Then you can ask your report developers to print the comment while printing each customer Invoice and update the same comment as and when the status changes or so does the seasonJ and you save lot of money on constantly updating your crystal reports.

One can also link it to the Macros and use to print/record it with transactions. Save Birthday reminders and earn brownie points by wishing clients on their birthdays, don’t forget to promote your latest product before ending the call.

All said and done, whenever you are done exploiting the full functionality of this feature you can proudly say you are ready to move on to a full-fledged ERP-CRM Integrated product and thy company’s IT  investments are safe in your hands.

Keep visiting for more.

Sage CRM in Business Services

Sage CRM software for Business Services offer complete solution that enables leading Business Service providers to discover and sustain the reliability of their most profitable clients. It provides some of the most in-depth yet easy to use functionality which allows business to seamlessly coordinate between sales, marketing and client services etc.

Sage CRM is highly configurable and can be easily tailored to match your individual business needs and help you streamline your internal processes. As it is a full-featured, web-based CRM solution which achieve task associated with customers such as managing leads, calls, appointments, and tasks, to automating your daily sales reports, Sage CRM has made users more effective at their job and helped them communicate with their customers better.

Any Business Service Company’s key objectives in selecting a customer relationship management solution are that the software should be able to enhance customer relationships, cut costs and grow sales in any case.

Let’s elaborate all the three objectives in detail: -

Sage CRM- To Enhance Customer Relationship.

Sage CRM enables you to target prospects and build strong relationships with customers by helping its users with the data and processes they need to work effectively, as it allows staff to share vital customer information. Along with this, Sage CRM also supports effective marketing campaigns, manages sales and helps improve customer service.

Sage CRM- To Cut Costs.

Sage CRM can put an end to poor working practices that waste time. By that we mean to say that “Sage CRM keeps track of all the invoices”. For every misplaced or lost invoice that is floating round unnoticed in a business is losing money. Using Sage CRM means that all outstanding invoices are alerted for chasing immediately so that a quick decision can be taken on what to do with them instantly.

Sage CRM-  To Grow Sales.

The information that you can get with Sage CRM definitely has a lot of value. When you want to manage the relationship with your customers, Sage CRM can actually help you to see any problems early as well. Your sales team will be able to use the information provided by Sage CRM software, which may help out to work on cross selling as well as up-selling.

Here are the few direct ways in which a well planned CRM like Sage CRM can help you increase revenue:

·         Personalize offerings to close more business, faster.

·         Identify up sell and cross-sell opportunities for targeted selling.

·         Deliver the products and services customers want, when they want them, through the channel that                 serves those best.            

With many CRM systems available in the market, you need to be clear about what you want yours to do. Too often, CRM systems are just rolled out to sales staff and miss other opportunities across the organization where you can gather data to build customer loyalty. For CRM to be effective, all staff should have input. Using Sage CRM award -winning software results in greater visibility and collaboration across organizations, increases productivity and accountability, and enables the effortless exchange of information throughout your organization.  

Schedule a Demo today! If you would like more information on Sage CRM, please don't hesitate to contact us on sales@greytrix.com we will get back to you with the related information or call us on 022-67687800 

Migrate your Documents to Sage CRM using GUMU

In our last blog we read about Migrating Notes to Sage CRM today lets see how documents are migrated to Sage CRM during the GUMU Migration process.

GUMU migrates documents from Sage ACT!, Goldmine, Maximizer, Salesforce.com, Custom DB’s as Library in Sage CRM for the corresponding company or person. You have to physically copy the documents from its source destination to the library path on the Sage CRM server.

After migration of Source data to target Sage CRM, you will see only the document name under theDocument tab of Person / Company entity. In order to view the attached documents, you need to copy all the attachments from the Source directories server to Sage CRM library folder.

Follow the procedure given below to view attached documents.

1)      Copy all the contents of the Source Attachment folder
2)      Paste the content of this folder in the CRM library Folder
3)      To get the CRM library folder path logon to your CRM

Below is the Physical root directory for mail merged documents:  which will be your Default library path for CRM.  

Administration ->E-mail and Documents ->Documents & Reports Configuration

 This process is very important since data migration happens only on database level from Source to Target and not on data directories. Now go to the Documents tab of Person or Company and click onView attachment option. Here you will be able to view the source documents in SageCRM.

Maximize Technology with Sage CRM

Out of the many CRM solution providers, very few like Sage CRM can actually support centralization of customer data that can be used to improve service right through the entire customer relationship, from sales to support and even through implementation which are highly essential by IT companies .

Sage CRM being one of the top contenders in the category provides sales and customer service representatives with easy Web based access to comprehensive data about prospects, customers, and products. Additionally, Sage CRM allows every employee within the company with an access to a shared database containing customer contact information and employee calendars. “With Sage CRM functionalities, you get a real-time access to information about any aspect of your business “and when it comes to other aspects, Sage CRM has surpassed the competition in terms of features, user-friendliness and web accessibility.

The majority of the IT companies have their main focus moreover on development or implementation or on the services part, which if truth be told affects their sales and marketing section to the core. As a result they end up losing key customers which can play a big role in their success Thus there was a realization, that to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of sales efforts is by centralizing sales and customer data.

There are variety of highly innovative features within Sage CRM version 7 which Greytrix believe really make the software stand out from other CRM applications.These include

1.      Sales Forecasting and

2.      Reporting

Sales Forecasting has made Sage CRM the obvious choice for small and medium enterprises (SME) as it helps them to have an accurate, timely forecast allowing sales representatives and managers to make their own assessments of all leads, ensuring leads are never forgotten about.

Reporting is never a tedious task anymore as Sage CRM provides reporting and graphs that allow sales teams to access data for on the spot analysis and decision-making. Reports in Sage CRM are very easy to run and allow creation of your own reports from scratch with very little 'IT skills'.

Most of the companies in IT sector who have implemented Sage CRM are able to achieve and/or achieved the tasks linked to: -

·         Managing all internal sales and marketing activities

·         Allowing system to store companies, contacts and all related activities, opportunities, proposals, and even notes of all phone conversations with clients

·         Sharing of employees schedule as well, making it easier to set up meetings and increase visibility among team members.

Sage CRM has an extensive range of features for your entire customer facing roles, people and departments, and Greytrix can configure Sage CRM to meet the precise needs of your business or organization. 

In order to meet all the above requirements, by providing your entire enterprise an access to the data needed to close sales, satisfy customers, and build long-lasting relationships

Contact us on sales@greytrix.com we will get back to you with a solution or call us on 022-67687800 

Sage CRM to Channelize Your Transport Network

Channelize your transport network with Sage CRM which puts your business in cruise control. Greytrix, Sage Development Partner located in Mumbai and Delhi configured Sage CRM for Transport Business.

Transportation is one of the world’s largest industries. Transport volumes still remain much less  because of various reasons, one of the most important reasons is that the countries transportation network suffers from several inadequacies when it comes to Managing and leveraging market information and maintaining customer relationships.

Transportation has realized the importance of having happy customers and is therefore focusing on customer relationship management (CRM) as a tool for managing customer relationships. Previously these companies had been relying on separate LANs to contact data from each of their offices for performing local operations such as accessing customer and sales account data from different branches.

Most of the companies from this sector looking for the overall operational improvements. CEO’s, CFO’s, CTO’s were eagerly searching for a solution which can take them out of this complexity; the solution they required had to have the following features:-

•  It should be Web-based so that the entire network can be on board in spite of the geographic locations.
• The system should be scalable and flexible to accommodate ever enhancing business visions.
• It should provide an end to end tracking of transactions.
• Ecommerce, customer portal, financial tracking should be included.
• Billing according to pick up and drop points.

One of the best options available to these industries for CRM solutions is “Sage CRM for Transportation Industry” product of Sage Group plc, commonly known as Sage Software, is a global enterprise software company. It is the world's third-largest supplier to larger enterprises, and the largest supplier to small businesses, and has over 3.1 million Sage CRM Solutions users worldwide.

The key features provided by Sage CRM for Transportation world will: -

Capability: - Sage CRM for the transport sector promises to be an international system capable of delivering a consolidated view of customer activities to every staff member involved with clients including sales staff.

Remote Access: -In addition, the transport industries also look for a solution which supports sales force automation tasks; for example, delivering information remotely through a wireless PDA devices such as critical information used by field sales staff to convert prospects

to customers and ensure customer satisfaction.

Tracking tool: -It also acts as a management tools to allow regional sales managers the ability to track and analyze each stage of the field sales effort and share data.

 High-level Security: - The Sage CRM for Transport includes a robust security aspect that would limit “read” and/or “write” access features to specific individuals.

These are few advantages transportation industries must be interested in, the list is endless! With Sage CRM for Transport industry you can extend the functionality as far across your organization as you need, since it allows configurations and customization to meet your business needs.

 For assistance in determining if a technology solution can help your organization better serve your business needs call 022-67687800 or mail us at sales@greytrix.com

Sage CRM for Travel and Tourism

Greytrix, Sage Partner based in Mumbai and Delhi configures the Sage CRM for Tourism industry.

Travel and tourist sector can now upgrade their association with their customers and that further result with better optimization of tourism business with the Sage CRM and also Sage ACCPAC ERP.

Sage CRM for Tourism helps in keeping up the business of travel industries on track and up to mark with its advanced and unique features. It offers flexible deployments methods and gives you the freedom to move from on-demand to on-premise through seamless migration options.

Benefits driven through Sage CRM:

1. Automated Workflow
2. Configurable / customizable
3. Flexible deployment methods
4. Computer telephony integration
5. Out-of-box integration with Sage Accpac ERP
6. Mobile device access
7. Web self service

Sage CRM for Tourism excels in delivering its potential to these industries through Lead Management, Data Management, Customer Management, Finance Management and case management. The performance oriented tools of Sage CRM makes the workflow happening and productive for the tours and travel industry and thereby improves the retention and turnover.

The source of revenue generation is the qualified leads which are monitored by the Campaign management whether it is done through advertisement, media or newspaper. Travelers choose their mode of transportation (air, road, rail, and water), occasion of travel (trade, media, event, and vacation), etc, Sage CRM excels in keeping up the workflow.

Campaign management: marketing activities are managed like breeze. And further it results in lead management.

Data management:

1. Monitors high volume booking engine to manage information and reservation and thereby resulting in flexibility, scalability and 360 view.
2. Keeps the records updated since it is integrated with call centers and captures old records instantly and saves the time.

Sage CRM performs well when it comes to technical and operational solutions; it integrates and manages the supply chain. It has excellent contact management, so agents can quickly capture and handle hundreds of inquiries per day. Follow-up is the imperative part for any activity to be proactive, which is just click task in Sage CRM.

The unique tool of Sage CRM, DASHBOARD acts as the cover page for all the important activities and user can customize it according to his priorities.

Web-Portal:

E-commerce which is the backbone for any successful business is now available on Sage CRM.

1. It offers e-ticketing services, billing, account inquiries, package selection etc.
2. Itineraries are generated and sent to the customers spontaneously.

For further details or DEMO, please contact sales@greytrix.com .

Sage CRM for Hospitality Industry

Hospitality industry incorporates many sub domains such as restaurants, lodging and boarding, accommodation facilities, tours and travel, tourism, event management, spas and salons, etc.
Any domain you pick from the hospitality sector it works effectively only when there is customer retention. If you maintain the customer loyalty towards your products and service you will have a recurring business.
To understand your target audience, their needs and wants and there on give them what they desire is an endless cycle which has to be followed in order to run the business smoothly. You have to maintain your relations with your customer.

Sage CRM helps in achieving three major challenges of hospitality industry:

OPERATIONAL EXECELLENCE
It helps in leading the industry in price and convenience through achieving increased average revenue per user integrated with your operational ERP or you can also pick Sage ACCAPC ERP which is seamlessly integrated with Sage CRM. It gives 360 degree visibility of end to end business activities and further accelerates your business performance.

CUSTOMER INTIMACY
Hospitality industry focuses on long term loyalty and lifetime value of customers. Sage CRM helps in shaping the products and services to fit the expectation and definition of their customers. Sage CRM system recognizes the customer and summarizes their preferences.

PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
Product quality is constantly received and is kept at the leading edge of the industry. Especially in the hotel and tourism industry, the basic product (hotel room and trip) are very similar, when comparing the comparing the same quality level. The customer’s focus is more on soft factors like personal treatment and attention. Internally, corporations try to streamline business processes. Sage CRM helps this process through report automation and technologically supported business flows.


WHY SAGE CRM IS RIGHT OPTION FOR YOU?
• It is easy to use and fast to deploy and maintain with flexible deployment options.
• Advanced feature –rich and comes with low cost.
• It is configurable and customizable.
• It offers customer service web portal.

SAGE CRM FUNCTIONALITY
Personal Data: Guest’s contact information and memberships details are registered once and recorded for next decade, whenever the same guest arrives, CRM quickly identifies with the complete information of the person. It helps in saving time and makes the guest arrival convenient.
Transactions: Sage CRM offers activity management which includes complete listing of stays and reservations, check-ins and check-outs as well as the customer’s interactions throughout all channels.
Customer contacts: through Sage CRM, organization can use Sales Force Automation tools and company contracts in which each customer contract (sales call) is logged and linked.
Descriptive Information: Sage CRM managed additional information for more detailed analysis of the customer (e.g. Preferences or complaints like room size, room view, meal menu, spa and gym offers)
Dashboard: Sage CRM offers simple and easiest way to keep track of your priorities and important tasks on Dashboard Tool. It enables to view the data in the way you want to and to view key performance indicators at glance.
The two main accompanying modules are de-duping of guest profiles and system –supported data cleansing. These three items actually build the core functionality to manage profiles successfully and provide a clean starting point for any CRM activity
Guest activity tracking is the most important from the operational point of view. Complaint management in particular is seen critical rated higher than general customer survey tracking. Proper problem follow-up and quick resolution actually bonds guests to the company as they proved professional in problem solution and the last activity in the guest mind has a positive touch.

Sage CRM objective:
• Guest management
• Data analysis
• Marketing management
• Sales Automation
• Automated process workflow
• In-depth reporting
• Customer communication management
• Tight integration with back office

Contact sales@greytrix.com for a demo of Sage CRM for Hotels, Sage CRM for Tours and Travels or Sage CRM for Hospitality.

Require CRM? Ask for Sage CRM.

1. What is my lead pipeline? 2. What is the possible closures I have in the next month? 3. Where is my sales team located? 4. What exactly do my customers want and need? 5. What do we need to do to be able to produce and deliver it to our customers? As a Business owner or a Sales person do these questions haunt you? The answer to all these questions is a CRM Solution. To run your business you require new customers and retain the old ones. Your sales team should know what was the last interaction with your prospect who had interest in your products and service 6 months back. ERP systems focused on back office operations only, which did not directly affect customers and other departments. These gave rise to customer relationship management (CRM) and has become must for every organization who are directly or indirectly involved in sales process. According to a study by IT consulting firm - "The winners in this new economy will be those companies that can effectively leverage the Internet to redesign, automate and integrate all business operations". The ultimate goal of any organization is to generate profit; this can be done by getting more and more clients and maintaining existing ones. All the two criteria’s can be easily handled with the help of CRM. CRM acts as an effective way to handle your sales team by allotting them with particular task, timeline to complete that task, thus making successful completion of task on given time. Sage CRM which comes with two different editions 100 & 200 provides you with core functionality, Sales force, marketing & customer Care Automation facilities etc. is an important tool which can take your business to another level, and overall the organization's service flows and teams work more efficiently and more happily. To get your demo copy of Sage CRM call 022-67687800 or mail us at sales@greytrix.com

Sage CRM for Education Management: Education Service providers, Talent Academies and Institutes

Sage CRM can be configured to capture the requirements of education sector entities like schools, colleges, universities and also for private institutes note just for traditional academic teaching but also for dance and music classes for managing information.

Information which is related to student, teacher/instructors or the courses offered in the institute. School, universities and institutes require information capturing system which would brief them about details of student, teachers and courses along with calendar management system, marketing campaign tools, business intelligence, workflow and escalations according to business process also accompanied with the current trends even SMS & email management system.

Sage CRM with its wonderful calendar management system helps the management assign various instructors to various courses for a defined batch of students. Through the Groups in Sage CRM one can define dynamic groups which can include credential of the student grouped in a particular batch or class or any other user defined selection. Need to inform the change in class timings? Just select groups and launch a sms blast or even an email blast and inform students or their parents the changed scheduled.

We know you plan to announce a new batch and are expecting a huge response and enquiries on the toll free number. You would like to set up a mini call centre and track new student’s information and also suggest them alternative courses and batch timings based on their location and requirements. If an old student wants to enroll then Sage CRM will track the old student’s details through it CTI integration system and pop the details of the existing student. The call centre agent will just have to process further transactions.

More than one marketing campaigns are launched to attract new enquiries but then you do want your analysis of which was the most revenue generating advertising campaign. Systematic marketing campaign management in Sage CRM gives an insight of the various marketing activities conducted in an event or campaign along with the budgetary and timeline analysis.
Combine Sage CRM with a seamless integrated Sage ACCPAC ERP system and get even the monetary transaction details. Schedule the fee reminders and dispatch payment reminder mails and sms to student through the system itself.

If you have any pre requisite business process you want to capture for your Education Institute in Sage CRM do contact us on sales@greytrix.com we will get back to you with a solution.

How to successfully complete London Marathon or a CRM project (not so different)

How to successfully complete London Marathon or a CRM project (not so different)

7 Reasons Why Sage CRM v7 is Right for You

• It takes more than great products to drive sales in today’s challenging economic environment. Acquiring and retaining customers is essential for business success and great customer service is the driving-force that differentiates one business from another. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) helps businesses attract and retain customers, and deliver an exceptional customer experience every time.

• Sage CRM manages every aspect of your customer interactions, provides powerful insight into the performance of your business and your staff, and drives user productivity. Sage CRM v7 will revolutionize how you manage your business and your employees manage their day.

 Read Further:
7 Reasons Why Sage CRM v7 Is Right For You

ACT By Sage linked to Sage Accpac ERP!

Extended Enterprise solutions or integrated business solutions are the need of the hour in this globalised and competitive market especially for small business units. Small business entrepreneurs should understand the benefits bought in by implementing integrated business solutions. Integrated business solutions help reduce the needless costs and increases profitability and in turn solidify customer relationship. Hence nowadays firms in the SME segment like finance firms, trading and distribution firms, retailers, etc, who have to maintain their contacts and inventory both equally, require an end to end integrated solution to get an overall view of their business.

ACT! By Sage, a world renowned contact management solution catered for business owners, sale professionals and company representatives, is the #1 selling Contact and Customer Manager in the world with 2.8 million users. When combined with a robust accounting package like Sage Accpac ERP which not only handles your financial worries but also takes care of your entire stock distribution together helps you attain optimum efficiency in your business.

Greytrix has developed an ACT link to Sage Accpac ERP that brings a complete 3600 views of your organization connecting your front end to your back office in real time. When your front office like your sales persons, customer support has a clear view of the customer transactional history with real time information on inventory status they are more efficient in serving the clients thus gaining customer loyalty.

ACT offers Sales opportunity management, data sharing and security, calendar and activity management along with an intuitive Dashboard features. With ACT! you always know exactly which opportunities are open, what stage they’re in, and what is the probability of closing them. Not only does this help your sales team, but also helps in accurate forecasting for your production and manufacturing units since it is combined with Sage Accpac ERP.

Sage Accpac ERP combined with ACT by Sage clears out the quote-to cash cycle. If a member of the sales team, for example, generates a quote based on out-of-date pricing information or stock availability, and subsequently converts this quote into a customer order, it is likely that this error will only be identified later at the order approval or shipping stage. The order will need to be passed back to the salesperson for correction and then re-processed by the finance department. As a result, order completion is delayed for the customer, administrative cost increased for the company and workload is unnecessarily duplicated for sales and finance staff. Clearly, where this scenario arises on a regular basis, it will impact negatively, and significantly, on overall customer satisfaction, as well as increasing transactional cost on an exponential basis.

Enabling users to view combined financial and non-financial customer information within a single application, regardless of where the information is generated or stored is another key requirement for front-to-back-office integration. 360 degree customer visibility is particularly useful for account managers, that may require access to a customer's purchase history or for customer service representatives that may need to update a customer on the status of an order. Providing these users with access to both financial and non-financial information eliminates the customer data 'blind spots'.

Many business organizations back out of enterprise solution evaluation due to the misconception that such solutions would be very expensive and time consuming.
With an affordable combo of ACT! and Sage Accpac ERP you can now have two world class solutions working in synch to better your business. Mail us at sales@greytrix.com to enquire how you can achieve this deadly duo at an affordable pricing.

Sage CRM- Marketing made Easy.

“Good marketing is no accident, but a result of careful planning and execution.” - CKP

Need for an end to end system in sales & marketing is always felt by the business owners who aim for consistent growth in their business. CRM helps you to target right customer at right time. SME can be benefited with CRM system in many ways such as:

• 360-degree view of your market & customer.
• Improve the output of marketing campaigns ,by wise distribution of marketing development fund.
• Timely identification of potential opportunities and plan accordingly.
• Cross departmental coordination between marketing, sales, and support departments for better results.
• Proper customer segmentation and prioritization.
• Improve customer service when handling customer queries.
• Reduced customer handling cost.
• Ability to measure, analyze and improve marketing activities.

Today, many SMEs plan, execute and analyze their marketing activities through CRM system. Once the marketing strategy is finalized next step is to plan the marketing campaigns and budget the campaigns. CRM helps the marketing department with historic data while planning the dates and budgeting the campaigns. While running a marketing campaign multiple departments get involved thus complicating the responsibility during execution phase, CRM helps the planners to set list the marketing activities involved in campaign with deadlines and facilities to allocate resource for each activity.

Since planning is centralized and execution is decentralized, communication of marketing plan on time is still an issue. CRM facilitate real time access to marketing action plan which gives clear idea to marketing personnel’s regarding their responsibilities & tasks, individually and as a team. Once the execution is completed successfully, collating the result is another cumbersome task, feedback from marketing campaign does not come directly to marketing department.

CRM helps to capture the feedback in form of enquires or leads and relate the same with the marketing campaign, this results in getting a clear picture on the ROI on marketing campaigns. The marketing module in Sage CRM completes the full circle in marketing starting from planning, execution, analysis, reviewing and reworking marketing activities.

How CRM can help an organization to get to the next level?

While the world is undergoing rapid transformation with regards to collaboration, social interaction and Web 2.0, CRM still remains the most important aspect of any growing organization and the foundation of successful customer interaction remains the same. CRM is not just an application or a package but it’s a set of processes within the organization which has to be combined and integrated closely with communication methodologies and customer focused knowledge base to server the one thing important to any growing organization: its customers.

A good CRM process is about understanding preferences of your customers and leads, so you can:

• Provide just in time services and support to your customers so that you are way above your competitors
  
• Improve your sales, customer and ordering interaction processes.
  
• Reduce customer frustration by being proactive in anticipating his needs and queries rather than repeatedly asking for same information.
  
• Improving customer relationships to have repeat customers by keeping customer service, sales and marketing information with regards to him on fingertips
  

A properly installed and implemented CRM system can contribute many benefits to your organization but four major area stands out where there is going to definite improvement on an immediate basis by deployment of a right CRM system

Prospects to Sales Closer Cycle

The more information you have with regards to a lead, the more advantageous your position will be over your competitors to close sales. A major wealth management company** in India using Sage CRM has made a 10 stage process from a lead to sales closure activity workflow with tracking in each stage as to the lead turning into cold and capturing of data. The managers always know which relationship manager is working on which prospect and always have the pipeline with various stages. All levels of management have escalations with regards to particular actions like a particular prospect not contacted even while he is in stage 9 for more than 2 days. Without making it complicated for sales person who would rather work on “making sales happen” than entering data, the work flow makes sales process automated and every relationship manager has the task cut out as to what the next step is going to be in each stage. This system not only gives powerful post analytics capabilities but acts as a sales assistant to help the company automate sales tasks – allowing the managers to spend more time focusing on strategic sales issues and new sales closers.

Just in Time Customer Service

Customer satisfaction is a critical success factor for all businesses. The right system allows your team to take a proactive approach to customer service. With up-to date customer information at their fingertips, your employees can resolve customer issues more quickly and successfully. A major IT software product** company is utilizing the power of Sage CRM by using Sage CRM’s self service portal to log on cases over web and SMS/Email gateway to immediately inform them of status updates. It is also serving as the “knowledge hub” where all critical documents and updates/patches of software are stored on a real time basis for their distributors. The turnaround time and manpower energy saved with such a system in place for your customers where you proactively give support to the customer and inform them of their status.

Better Forecasting and Decision Making

A well designed CRM system provides comprehensive views of customer across all major touch points including marketing campaign and sales activity. Sales forecasting and Sales Targets can be aligned within the organization to give better decision making power to top management. At lower levels, the decision making comes with better coordination and collaboration with different teams because of collation of the customer data at a single repository. A prime example for this kind of collaboration can be seen in an implementation of Sage CRM at Engineering Project organization** which is into waterproofing projects where sales people know the status of the projects and invoices done by operations and financial teams because of the integration with the ERP software and it helps them make informed decision at their end while pitching new sales to the customers.

Greater Organizational efficiency

With an integrated CRM system, you can gain immediate access to your organization’s critical customer information. A good CRM system also creates internal efficiencies by. One of the mobile distribution company** is utilizing Sage CRM to track purchase of mobile Sim cards and its activiation in CRM along with customer complaints through call center operations. The entire sales, cases, and financial data for that customer is at a finger tips of the entire organization. Each of the departments has a pre defined automated workflow processes which tends to reduce human error and decrease process time which in turn is providing consistency throughout the entire organization

In conclusion, CRM is a combination of a good software and process which will help you increase efficiency and customer satisfaction at your organization. There is a number of CRM software in the market which can help you achieve your goals. Sage Software has ACT!, Sage CRM and Saleslogix, which is meant for different set of customers according to their needs.

** For more information on companies mentioned in the article and how it is changing their approach towards customers either contact me at kumar@greytrix.com or contact Sage Software at www.sagesoftware.co.in

BY: Kumar Siddhartha, CEO Greytrix India Pvt. Ltd.