Customers are the heart of any business. Maintaining great relationships with them can propel your business towards success. On the flip side, failing in this department could make all your other business efforts futile. How do you develop these quality relationships? Like with any relationship, it comes down to listening to them and connecting with them where they’re at. For example, remembering details about prior conversations with them and bringing those up can provide a personal touch. This often makes a customer feel heard and valued like a person, rather than simply a sales prospect. Customer Relationship Management software, also referred to as “CRM” software, makes this process easy. What is a CRM System? CRM software provides business owners with simple tools to efficiently manage customer interactions. They also result in greater alignment between marketing and sales efforts. CRM software stores all relevant information about a prospect in one location, where it can be easily accessed and updated. Rather than committing important customer dates to memory, CRM software stores the information digitally and alerts you to important pending customer dates. A CRM application also helps salespeople understand where a particular prospect is in their buyer’s journey and follow-up dates for important communications. CRM software systems are not limited to fostering customer relationships. Many CRM applications now offer the ability to include other adjoining business processes into their offerings. A great example of this would be project management. Project management software also improves relationships with vendors and team members by connecting them together and providing visibility to key tasks. When talking about CRM software, there are three important components to keep in mind: Process Strategy Technology CRM allows for a comprehensive process of managing interactions with loyal and potential customers alike. Every relationship evolves and having a background of information during this process is incredibly helpful. The strategic component of CRM represents the business philosophy of how to build long lasting customer relationships. Each business will be different, but any good customer relationship strategy has a foundation of a solid CRM. The technology used in a CRM application is often cloud based. It records and analyzes interactions between customers and company employees. By being on the cloud, access is from anywhere and can be granted to as many employees as needed. Why CRM is Important CRM software offers tools that keep track of prospects and improve the quality of your customer service. By having all customer data stored and organized in one digital location, you can make the most of that data. Businesses can customize dashboards that present to their end, user’s customer histories, order status, and service issues that require prompt attention. Experts at Gartner released results of a study that stated by 2021, CRM software will be the largest area of computer software spending for businesses of all sizes. If you want your business to sustain profitability, it is important to implement a compelling CRM strategy to attract and retain a growing loyal customer base. Benefits of a CRM System CRM software allows employees working in different departments to seamlessly forge bonds that lead to more phone calls with customers. With detailed CRM data, a business can develop tailored-made marketing strategies for a variety of customer demographics. By accessing contact information through a CRM application, every team member can move forward a conversation with a customer, without asking for repeat information. This allows customers to avoid irritation, and to actually feel valued. Clearly, CRM offers great value to a business. Here are 4 specific reasons a customer relationship management tool needs to be a part of your business strategy: 1. Improved Productivity Cloud based CRM software can accurately account for every email and phone call made to each of your customers. Thus, CRM applications eliminate redundant management and administrative tasks. This ensures that no potential customers fall through the cracks. Take our client, Defenshield, for example: our team at Trinity built a CRM application that tracked 100% of all their customer data according to their needs. CRM apps also will improve your productivity and efficiency. 2. More Accurate Reporting CRM platforms provide users with a one-stop place to analyze data. The software ensures important data is easy to obtain and, more importantly, easy to understand. For example, PatientNavigator is a CRM tool for healthcare professionals that simplifies compliance reporting. More accurate data reporting saves your team members time, which allows them to spend more time developing customer relationships by using the old school approach of the human touch. 3. Improved Understanding of Customers Before customer management software, many business operators wasted time by targeting the wrong customer prospects. CRM software highlights important sales metrics, which allows you to target the right customers for up-selling and cross-selling. This will optimize your ability to close deals, and also save your team time and resources. 4. Exceed Customer Expectations Employee retention is a key metric for any quality business. Well, the same retention principles apply to customers. There are many customer retention strategies that are easily applicable when using CRM software. CRM software presents clear information that describes customer interactions. Understanding these interactions leads to better anticipation of customer needs and a quicker response to customer complaints. By offering a more positive experience for your customers, you develop the kind of relationship that leads to customer loyalty and word of mouth promotion. How CRM Applications Benefit Different Business Functions As we mentioned, CRM software brings different organization departments together to form a cohesive team. Your sales team receives data from the marketing department that leads to enhanced service. In return, the marketing experts on your team receive data from the sales team, which present a much clearer picture of customer profiles and buying behavior. Marketing professionals can then create more effective campaigns. As you can see, CRM […]

What is Business Process Improvement? Business process improvement (BPI) is a practice of analyzing business procedures to identify where improvements can be made. After pinpointing those areas, the next step is to transform those procedures to allow for increased accuracy, effectiveness and efficiency. How Can Business Process Improvement Transform Your Business? A successful BPI campaign starts with defining a company’s goals and taking a look at the current processes in place. Are these processes supporting the goals? Oftentimes, they could actually be hindering them. Thus, company leaders must clearly identify every process within the organization that has room for improvement. Through the use of business process automation tools, companies can increase the ease and efficiency of various key processes. For example, a company might store its customer data on business spreadsheets. Locating a specific data point in the future could be challenging, especially if files aren’t organized or properly updated. The result will be inefficient and unsatisfying customer interactions. Data could be their best friend, if only it was quickly and easily discoverable. This is just one example where business process improvement could be leveraged. Regardless of field or niche, every business relies on key processes. Business leaders should look into revamping any processes that benefit from adjustments. Depending on the level of inefficiency, these adjustments could result in substantial improvements. 5 Benefits of Business Process Improvement What sets successful businesses apart? Successful companies consistently implement business process improvement solutions when needed, and they keep ongoing tabs on efficiency. Here are five compelling benefits of using project management tools to improve business processes: Organizational Agility Businesses of all sizes have to adapt quickly as the market changes. Companies that fail to keep up will eventually fall behind. This is why business agility is so important. Adopting software solutions that enable business process improvement is a key element of embodying agility. Trinity helps companies adapt to new technologies, such as advanced cloud services and scalable, flexible business software solutions. These innovative systems allow businesses to continually adjust processes as needed over time. Improve Productivity Improving productivity is a universal business goal. BPI solutions are great for automating processes that would otherwise be done manually. Not only does refusing to automate waste employees’ time, but these tasks are often prone to manual errors. By removing redundancies and troublesome bottlenecks, efficiency naturally skyrockets. Improved productivity permits team members to spend time working on more important projects and reduces operational costs. Lower Security Risk While we wish it wasn’t true, business come with a variety of security risks. To minimize vulnerability to fraudulent activities, leaders have to stay vigilant. At the heart of customer service is the protection of valuable data. Many business process improvement tools exist that have great security and monitoring measures built in. For more about cloud security, check out our blog: 5 Reasons Cloud Security is Safer Than Traditional Security Boost Employee Morale Nothing discourages employees more than having to deal with process inefficiencies. By giving your workforce the tools they need to work efficiently, their productivity and job satisfaction will boost as a result. BPI solutions deliver two other workforce benefits for companies: Measurability and sustainability. Measurability holds everyone in an organization accountable for their performance and sustainability allows businesses to improve processes on a daily basis. All around, BPI will help your employees achieve their best work with fewer distractions and frustrations. Make Customer Service Priority Number One Customers want efficient and quality service. While slow, unreliable processes are annoying for employees, they leave an even worse impression on your customers. No one wants to wait around or repeatedly give you the same information. Customer service should be the first priority of any company. Service-focused businesses, from hospitals to hotels, could greatly benefit from the implementation of a BPI solution. This case study with Defenshield showed how a new CRM application enhanced their business process by organizing their customer data and improving their quote delivery for customers. Turn to Trinity for Business Process Improvement Trinity is team of experts in business process improvement. Although we are best known as a respected Quickbase Gold Partner, our BPI knowledge extends beyond applications. We are able to pinpoint a company’s productivity, service and quality challenges and develop a solution that’s a perfect fit for their goals. Before you choose Trinity as your business solution provider, we take the time to get to know your company and build a comprehensive plan. Trinity’s formula for success is to: Understand the need Define the best practices Develop the solution Deliver a world class application Train for success Provide unparalleled ongoing support Flexibility and scalability are integral to the solutions we develop, since Trinity understands that growing businesses evolve over time. For over 21 years, Trinity has worked with clients to improve their efficiency, increase service levels, and upgrade their quality of output. […]

Category: Business Process Improvement

Why a CRM Software System Needs To Be A Part Of Your Business Strategy

5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Focus On Process Improvement