Researching which Customer Relationship Management system is right for you? It’s tough isn’t it? Cutting through the marketing hype and getting to the crux of which CRM does what – it’s challenging and confusing and probably making your brain hurt.
What’s more … what the heck is this customisation they’re trying to make you pay for on top of licencing the software? Surely, if you buy the right CRM, you’ll just download the software, log in and you’re off.
Well sure, it’s possible. But not likely to work out for the best. Here’s why.
The bad news is there is no CRM that’s perfect for every (or any) business, straight out of the box. That’s because no business is exactly the same as another. A hairdresser and a lawyer couldn’t possibly have same needs. And if there was a business out there just like yours, you’d have a tough time differentiating and competing in any industry. After all, what makes you unique is what makes you successful.
What you can find, however, are CRM solutions that a flexible enough to adapt to different businesses, the way they’re structured, how they do business externally and interact internally.
That adaptability of CRM systems comes from customisability. And customisation, is where the real power and value of CRM comes from.
Of course, new businesses or one man bands, who don’t have established processes or a common language among their teams, are probably more willing and able to adapt their processes to the way a generic CRM works – rather than the other way around – adapting their CRM to their business. But if you’ve been in business for any length of time and have a team of people, you’d be surprised at how you’ve created your own ways and your own language. So, your CRM needs to match that.
It’s like a continuum. At one end is a CRM that is inflexible and non-customised. You need to adapt to the way the CRM works. At the other end is a fully flexible, customised solution that is nirvana matching exactly to the way you work. As with any continuum, there’s plenty of space that can be occupied between those two polar ends, where some things are customised and some things you just adapt to.
The truth is, if it doesn’t match the way you work at least to some extent, your quest to get people to use the system will be undermined before you even start. Little frustrations caused by a system that doesn’t behave like you want it to or doesn’t use your language, can drive your people batty … fast. They’ll yearn for the days when they used that dodgy spreadsheet instead. They won’t want to use it. They’ll find another way. Your money is wasted.
You also need to collect the information that you need about your customers and prospects. You need do this in fields you’ve defined and that exist in places that make sense to you. And they need to feed into the reports and dashboards you need for meaningful oversight.
Not to mention your processes. A great CRM solution allows you to model your processes in the system and guide the user through the process – so everyone is working consistently. Your CRM can be automated to create alerts and reminders at specific milestones to specific people, so nothing gets missed. Your processes are completely unique. Customisation to your process is simply the only way to extract this kind of value.
But customisation is expensive, right? It can be, yes. The cost is in the process of having someone learn about how your organisation works and how you do things, design your customised solution to fit and then build it. That takes time (measured in months, not days). And time is money. What’s more, you’re expected to think of everything you’ll need now and in the future, right now, so you can optimise the value. You’re not likely to have much idea of what that looks like, especially if this is your first CRM.
I think you can see where this article is heading. This is the part where we pitch ourselves as the knight in shining armour to cure your budgetary blues.
Not to be flippant – we’ve actually thought about this a lot. The CRM market has not been kind to the smaller business. Affordable and customised CRMs have been like unicorns to a small business on a budget. They didn’t exist.
So we’ve taken one of the world’s most powerful and flexible CRMs – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online – and created a customised solution that small businesses can afford. It’s called CRM Kickstart.
In terms of the continuum we talked about before, the solution sits somewhere around here.
We’ve already customised the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solution to a baseline configuration that suits most small businesses. Then we layer your customisations over the top. We give you a workbook which contains key questions you need to answer about how your business works. We interpret your answers and configure your CRM accordingly. This saves you money and means you don’t have to understand too much about how the CRM works.
The beauty of CRM Kickstart is you don’t lose any of the flexibility inherent in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It’s all there when you’re ready to unlock new features, add to your solution or customise further. Once you’ve been using the system, learn more, and accumulate more budget, you’ll be able to work towards the ultimate solution and push your solution as far to the right on the continuum as you need to.
It’s the best of both worlds. Who needs customisation? You do. And you can have your cake and eat it too.
Watch our video here.
