Have you heard? Customer relationship management applications (CRM) can increase sales by up to 29%. For a small business, having a CRM is one of the most valuable systems you can get. These types of applications help manage client interactions, deal with future and current customers and optimize relationships.

Not only do these systems help your company better understand your users’ buying patterns, but they are able to be integrated with data from social media channels. The flexibility and adaptability of a CRM allow you to store everything you need to generate and manage your customers. Here’s why.

First Steps

According to Forbes, the CRM system a business uses is as important as the people a business hires. In the long run, it can have a more positive impact than any single employee. To maximize the business benefits of CRM, Forbes suggests taking the following steps:

• Keep your CRM system simple.
• Make sure it integrates with your other systems.
• Keep your employees trained on how to use it.
• Collect real-time reports from your data.

How To Grow A Business

The world has never been more connected than it is today. Social technology like forums, blogs, social networking and email has transformed the dynamic between businesses, partners, customers and prospects, which has opened doors for discovering new business opportunities. By using a well-implemented CRM, businesses can now connect easier and faster than ever before.

According to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, “In customer care, the impact of social media is widely felt. Customers have found their voice, and it is powerful. When a customer tweets about an issue with your product or service, your team needs the tools to listen and correctly analyze what is being said so that the team can identify opportunities and respond.”

Here are some of the business opportunities you can gain through using a social CRM:

• Listen, monitor and dissect social conversations to uncover trends and key influencers.
• Create a dialogue with stakeholders to inform, respond and influence.
• Utilize communities to broadcast your message and drive awareness.
• Harvest and reuse community knowledge to connect with customers to solve problems.
• Identify business opportunities and ideas through crowdsourcing communities.
• Measure buzz, calculate stakeholder sentiment and determine impact.

Microsoft also advises that a business’s initial objective should be to establish sincerity and credibility and that if you are seen engaging and listening to the community, the community will engage and listen to you.

CRM Governance Plan

Every department of a company knows the importance of a data-driven system and using that data in their day-to-day work. The bottom line, data is what drives a business. Having an effective data governance policy in place for your entire company is crucial for business growth. According to a Customer Think article, the advantages of using data governance include:

Eliminating Data Silos

Data silos can cause untold issues for modern companies. Miscommunication between the marketing and sales departments can occur by not targeting the right leads. A data governance system can help these companies who use a CRM share data across the whole organization seamlessly.

Encouraging The Sharing Of Insights

The entire company should benefit from the insight they receive from a CRM rather than only single departments. One department in the company can use and analyze the data while another can reveal and unfold insights that may benefit other departments. For example, your IT department can use certain insights found by marketing to boost your website’s usability, generating more deals and monitoring them quickly to turn into leads.

Boosting Accountability and Collaborations

A governance policy also encourages greater accountability among employees. Your staff is notified when data is updated or deleted in a CRM. It also allows all users to see when errors have been recorded, which allows companies to alleviate serious issues before they become major problems.

Keeping Data Clean

By having multiple people holding the CRM accountable, a governance policy can help keep data in shape. Data will stay clean, updated and errors will be eliminated by the employees who use the system on a day-to-day basis. With clean data, money and resources are not wasted on communicating with duplicated leads, prospects and customers.

MDL Technology Is Here To Help

Your company’s security is our top priority. We offer services such as 24/7 support, network monitoring, offsite data backups, auditing and compliance and more to help ensure that you don’t need to stress about your team’s private information becoming public.

Learn more about the services we offer by visiting our website.