[fusion_text]Make your CRM technology pay for itself

Many organizations are frequently challenged when they think about the budgeting process for implementing or revamping their CRM solution. With smaller and smaller sales and marketing teams, the budget for systems keeps shrinking as well. Operating in this context is clearly not very easy for Directors and VPs of Sales and Marketing.

Does your current CRM technology solution clearly help reduce bottom line costs and grow top line revenue, or does it feel like a leaky boat with too many holes to fill? If it’s the latter, you know that you are falling behind your peers who are leading the market, winning more opportunities and generating the profits and cash flow to succeed even more.

Budget driven thinking as opposed to ROI driven thinking has often caused companies to make poor decisions and continue throwing good money after bad. Making change happen in this environment is challenging, but there are some simple sounding, but very important steps that companies can follow to invest in technology the right way.

• Take time to step back and look at your technology investments over the last couple of years
• Understand the ROI of existing investments, as well as the value of opportunities that are being  missed
• Define your most important business goals and the key metrics that will drive your success
• Understand the technology solutions that are needed to track those metrics to reach those goals
• Select an experienced partner if needed, and implement the right technology platform

A lot of companies get hung up on the price of software licenses and the hourly rates for implementation. Companies that are game changers go beyond that to understand the total cost of the solution and the ROI that it can deliver. Your ROI analysis should take into account both cost savings and growth, as well as alignment with the long term business goals. The analysis, whether done with internal or external resources, should also be viewed as a strategic investment into the business.

Beyond this strategic process of moving from being budget focused to becoming ROI focused, you will need to pay a lot of attention to the planning and implementation of your CRM solution. They key objectives that you set for the solution, and the metrics that you demand of it are going to be the drivers of your success and the reason why the solution will deliver ROI.

There are three focus areas for ensuring success with your CRM solution.

1. The first is to understand how the solution will help your sales and marketing teams get closer to your customers.
2. Secondly, your solution must support a two way engagement channel between each of sales, marketing and customer service so that they are always working with each other and not independent of each other.
3. Lastly, reports and metrics are useful only when supervisors and manager really pay close attention to them.

Following the investment strategy and the implementation methodology above are certainly going to produce the right kind of ROI that companies look for in their technology investments.

Please contact us if you would like to understand how we can help you with the analysis and implementation of your strategic CRM initiatives.[/fusion_text]