Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software adoption has been on a steady growth path for the last 20 or so years. What once was just a small, overlooked portion of larger ERP systems has begun to overtake ERP as the focal point for organizations in the emerging “age of the customer”. Now, more so than ever, it is important for organizations to focus on their customer relationships as customers are becoming more complex and have more buying options than ever before. This holds true for pretty much every industry out there, including Manufacturing.
When alas, you have decided to take the plunge and invest in a proper CRM system to run your sales organization and be the glue that ties sales, customer service, and operations together, you have many options to choose from. Due to the growing popularity of CRMs and overall CRM market growth, there are dozens if not hundreds of options to choose from. Many of the options on the market have overlapping features, some may be touted as being industry specific, and others are bolt-on afterthoughts to other systems to simply check the box that their solution has CRM.
With all these options in the marketplace, it can be daunting to figure out what you should focus on as selection criteria when deciding what would be best for YOUR organization. Below we’ll outline some general criteria to be on the lookout for and weigh in on which areas we feel are most important to ensure you are not going down a path that will require you to re-implement a different CRM system in just a few years.
Mobile Enabled
Having a CRM that is not mobile enabled is such an elementary aspect that I hesitate even mentioning it, but it is absolutely critical in these times. Even if the majority of your staff is in inside sales, they still need a mobile enabled CRM. We all lead busy lives, and the lines of work and family time are constantly being blurred, whether we like it or approve of it. Having a mobile enabled CRM allows reps to quickly prepare or react out in the field when they need critical information about their customers, order history, customer service cases, etc. so that they may have an informed conversation with customers and prospects.
Maybe more important than having the CRM simply be “mobile enabled” is how “mobile proficient” it is. The quality and configurability of the mobile version should definitely be evaluated, especially when considering a CRM for a manufacturing company. In manufacturing, you may have your sales team utilizing the CRM out in the field while dealing with customers, and you also may have various individuals out on the production floor utilizing the CRM to review progress of work orders, production plans, etc. These two individuals have drastically different needs from the mobile application and as such you need to be able to configure their experience to allow them to do their core jobs with the least amount of friction possible and allow them to be as productive on their mobile as they would be sitting in their office. You don’t get this with many “mobile enabled” CRM systems out on the market.
In addition to the convenience and utility of having a mobile enabled CRM, research studies show that the presence of a mobile enabled CRM has the common effect of increasing quota attainment and productivity by double digits while also reducing average sales cycles by a similar margin. Think about that for a minute. Dramatically reducing sales cycles while at the same time increasing quota attainment. Who wouldn’t want that?
Extensibility
This is taking the “long term” view. Do you “need” a system that is infinitely configurable and extensible now? Maybe not, but let’s just assume that you are in business to win and grow your business. As you grow, your needs change, and this is where it is critical to have a system that you can grow with. This can sometimes be a controversial topic because there are people that will argue that you don’t need a system with all the bells and whistles if you are either small or your needs very simple. There is merit to this argument. However, it is my opinion that it is worse to commit and implement a system that is a great fit for you today, but you find yourself painted into a corner in a matter of a few years and need to go back to the drawing board. Modern platforms of today allow you to start small and not pay for or take advantage of the full set of features they offer, but are there for you when you DO need to take advantage of them and also allow you to mold the system to your business to limit the number of compromises you have to make in YOUR business processes to fit that of the system.
Examples of where this may or could come into play is if you wanted to either create some additional custom fields related your customers, products, opportunities etc. At a minimum, you should be able to create additional fields to store vital information to YOUR business. In addition, the ability to create entirely new sets of data or workflows can be the difference between your system being adopted or abandoned. This could be something like building the ability to create and store capacity plans, production work orders, schedules, etc. that are generally not part of a typical CRM program. Having these capabilities allows you to mature and grow with the platform and prevents you from having to integrate other systems that may only add one capability to your processes. You can quickly and cost-effectively build these into your business processes without integration or additional licensing costs.
Another very key concern with extensibility is the robustness of the integration capability the system provides. You need to ensure that the system can be integrated with other external systems, chief among them is your ERP. ERP integration into CRM systems today is a critical component to providing a true 360 degree view of your customer and needs to be near the top of your list of concerns or you will either be looking to re-implement another CRM system that does have this capability in a few years or live with the fact that you constantly have to cobble together information from two different systems and deal with the negative impact on your customers and the service you provide them.
Available Integrations/Complimentary Solutions
With the wide array of purpose-built software solutions on the market, it is rare that you will find one system that within it has ALL the capabilities you will need now or in the future. For example, maybe you need the ability to process credit card payments, send invoices, solicit feedback from your customers in the form of surveys, etc. and have that information stored in your CRM so you can enable your sales, services, and operations. In these situations, you have a few options. If you went with a system that is extendable and the technical staff to execute, you could build the solution you need directly within the product you have already purchased. Probably more accurate, you’d want to find something that can easily integrate with your CRM to give you these capabilities without hiring an army of developers. The point here is that in many cases you will need other solutions that are outside of the core of what the CRM solution itself provides, and you need a CRM solution that is visible enough in the market to have ample third party solutions that easily integrate in with it to allow you to effectively execute your business processes without double entry or rework in external systems.
Some CRM systems actually have modern ERP and Manufacturing Execution Systems that sit directly on the CRM in a “native” fashion, meaning that all of the data that is created by the ERP/MES sits directly with your core CRM information and can be used together in workflows and reporting, eliminating the need for any “integration” between the systems that need to build and maintained.
Ecosystem of Partners and Professionals
You will undoubtedly run into situations with any software solution where you will need assistance outside of your organization to either make improvements to the software to drive increased efficiencies within your organization or simply to have someone assist in maintaining or administering the software if you do not want to take that on internally. In these cases, you will want to be able to call upon a network of professionals that partner with the software provider and focus on the solution at hand as one of their core competencies. Be sure to consider this when considering an unproven solution where you are not able to easily find a list of partners that you can reach out to for assistance.
Availability of Training Resources
This is very often overlooked, but extremely important. You need to make sure the vendor you go with has easily accessible (I.e. online and free) comprehensive training material that do not just show you how to operate the system, but have resources that also share with you best practices and points of view of how to configure the system to get the most out of it and realize the ROI of your investment. I’m in the consulting business, so this may seem contrary to my interests, but without these types of resources, you have no option but to hire consultants or seek an expert that you bring on full-time to get the most out of your investment. Even when consulting on these solutions, the presence of well-established training material reduces the amount of time a consultant will need to spend on developing or delivering training for your organization.
Conclusion
You’ll notice that we didn’t focus on specific features that the various CRM systems tout. The truth is that many of these systems do similar things. Some do them better than others, some are more opinionated and others vanilla in their approach. As a prospective buyer, you have an important decision to make when purchasing a CRM. Most vendors will have multiple tiers of offerings that you can use to ramp up/down the features and associated costs. It is up to you to decide which of the criteria above are most important to your unique situation, however, go with the system that not only meets your needs today, but is able to be modified to meet all of your unexpected needs of tomorrow.