CRM - What's that?

CRMs are a vital part of efficiently managing your customers. I am no longer surprised by the lack of deployment of such systems by most SME's here.

Most managers would shrug it off as something only large corporations use. They are very mistaken. That is rather unfortunate, as it is such a valuable tool.

When we first started, I didn't know why I would need a Customer Relations Management tool. I could name all my clients off the top of my head with most of their contact details. As we started grow, this exercise proved to be far more challenging. No, it isn't because I'm aging, it's because you shouldn't have to do it like that. Keeping contact details in an excel sheet or in an address book are also not efficient.

There are many solutions out there, some of which are free. I have grown to particularly like SugarCRM. Imagine being able to track every lead you generate, every call you made, every quotation you sent.. follow-ups, etc. Imagine being able to measure the time it takes to convert a lead into an opportunity (quotation) into a customer. Excessive? I think not. You don't have to do much more than what you normally do.

We have gotten to a point now where I can pull out an agreement or quotation we have with a customer, at any given moment from anywhere. I can see the entire process. I can see who the contact person was for which quotation, I can see the correspondence between us and them.. I can track everything!

Why stop there? I can also pull up information on our suppliers in the same fashion.

I would highly recommend that you spend a lot of time learning on how to make a CRM solution work for you. It's well worth the time and effort spent on it. Go ahead, try it!