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What is CRM Software?

CRM Software is an application with unique capabilities that help businesses store customer data, manage communications, and track interactions across several channels to build stronger relationships and create better experiences. A CRM system aims to provide valuable information about your potential or existing customers so you can create data-driven strategies and run targeted marketing campaigns.

Customer relationship management platforms also support advanced functionalities for gathering customer data from multiple sources and consolidating it into a unified dashboard where different teams can access and modify it. This way, departments can work with up-to-date and accurate data to give customers seamless and personalized experiences, regardless of their actions.

The Evolution of CRM Systems

Before customer relationship management platforms emerged, businesses used contact management systems to record basic details like names, addresses, and phone numbers. Before this, the traditional Rolodex, patented in 1956, was used to store an organization’s contact list.

As modern CRMs surfaced in the 90s, Siebel Systems, founded by Tom Siebel, became the most popular Sales Force Automation (SFA) provider. SFA allowed companies to automate repetitive tasks, data entry, contact management, customer data analysis, etc. Afterward, Siebel Systems released its first mobile CRM, followed by SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft.

In 1999, Salesforce emerged as the first cloud-based SaaS CRM system. And from 2000 till date, the CRM industry has increased its focus from sales to marketing, service, and other business operations for enhancing customer experience and promoting healthy relationships.

Other updates, so far, include social media automation, advanced integrations with communication systems, analytics and reporting, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI).

Overall, the CRM industry has experienced a magnificent shift over the past few years. With the rise in technological advancement, the future holds more powerful capabilities for optimizing, improving, and managing customer relationships across all areas of business operations.

Types of CRM Software Automation

Although all CRM platforms aim to improve customer relationships, they are categorized into four major types that focus on specific actions depending on your business goals and models. The four types of CRM systems include:

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM focuses on gathering customer data, storing it, and performing periodic analysis to provide real-time reports and insights into specific patterns and trends in customer behavior.

Companies use this subset of CRM to collect valuable information about customer interactions and sales data. This helps them predict trends, understand customer life cycles, and provide data-driven strategies for optimizing sales and marketing processes.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM involves special features for streamlining the company’s processes and functions across sales, marketing, and service departments.

The CRM system also supports tailored functionalities for simplifying workflows and is designed to secure customer data collection while streamlining other business operations. A good example is EngageBay, an all-in-one CRM that connects marketing, sales, and service processes all in one platform.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM focuses more on delivering seamless communications between team members across several departments, from support to marketing, sales, technical, finance, etc.

Like operational CRM, it can improve operational efficiency by enabling teams to collaborate effectively, consolidating customer data in a central access point, and making it available to authorized managers. It also helps businesses provide targeted and personalized customer experiences since different teams have access to updated and complete data regardless of the source or time of collection.

Strategic CRM

Strategic CRM uses a customer-centric approach to create seamless customer experiences and optimized interactions. Like analytical CRM, it gathers customer data from multiple sources, analyzes it, and provides useful insights to help businesses improve their processes and tailor their strategies to meet customers’ needs.

The information it provides helps you understand your customers better, thus allowing you to promote customized offers that appeal to your audience. Also, the data lets you segment your audience to focus on your most profitable buyers.

Benefits of CRM Systems

CRM systems support useful features that help businesses understand their customers better and build healthier relationships. Here are 4 common benefits of using a CRM:

Improved sales management

CRM tools support lead nurturing and contact tracking, among others, to improve customer data organization, simplify interactions, and streamline the sales cycle. They also provide sales teams with real-time, accurate data to enable them to identify patterns and forecast sales growth.

With CRM software, you can automate order processing and quote preparation to enhance deal closing and achieve business goals faster. Moreover, businesses can use platforms like EngageBay to track key call metrics and evaluate the performance of sales reps in real-time.

Data-driven decision-making

CRM systems track sales, marketing, and service activities to provide real-time insights into customer behavior and campaign performance. Businesses use this data to create segments, enhance personalization, and run targeted campaigns. EngageBay’s CRM analytics supports accurate predictive modeling and event monitoring.

Moreover, you can track your campaign performance and analyze the results. This will help you find loopholes in your strategy and areas for improvement. Overall, CRM platforms provide you with accurate, up-to-date customer data to enhance your decision-making processes.

Enhanced customer relationships

The major goal of a CRM is to improve customer relationships. It does this by tracking interactions and studying user behavior across multiple touchpoints. With this, businesses can create targeted and personalized experiences, regardless of the channel or data source.

Real-time insights and reports reveal customers’ needs and interests. This way, businesses can provide tailored solutions whenever a user encounters an issue. These optimized experiences can turn new visitors into repeat buyers, thus building lasting relationships.

Improved team collaboration

For example, the service team can use purchase data from the sales team and have a complete 360-degree customer view to deliver customized support. CRM systems also enhance internal communications and ensure customer data is complete and accurate, regardless of the data collection process by different teams.

What to look out for when choosing your CRM

When choosing your CRM, there are specific criteria you should consider to ensure business growth. CRM platforms, though similar, have unique differences that make them suitable for businesses of varying types and operations.

So, it’s essential to understand your business model alongside these specifications before choosing your CRM solution.

Business model

Your business model comprises everything that describes your operations and processes. It includes the plans and strategies you’ve set to achieve maximum growth. So, whether you’re a small, mid-sized, or large company, you will choose a CRM that fits your model and aligns to meet your goals.

Your company size also plays a role here, as some CRMs limit the number of contacts you can store. Considering your business needs and objectives, using a tool tailored to enhance your processes is essential.

CRM features

All CRM systems are designed to meet specific needs and have unique features well-suited for different businesses. From contact management to sales forecasting, lead nurturing, reporting and analytics, sales automation, pipeline management, etc.

Most CRMs offer robust functionalities for optimizing customer experiences and building better relationships. Check out some of EngageBay’s unique features.

Price

CRM platforms occupy a broad pricing spectrum, from affordable basic plans to pricey premium plans. Usually, these prices reflect the quality of their services, so your choice largely depends on your business requirements and budget.

If you’re a small business on a low budget, you may start with platforms that offer free plans, and as you scale, you can sign up for the paid plans as long as they offer the features you need and are within your budget.

Most advanced features may attract higher fees, so they’re more tailored to enterprise organizations needing premium plans for sophisticated workflows. Starting at $13/month, EngageBay offers well-suited functionalities tailored to small and mid-sized businesses.

Scalability

Ideally, your tools grow with your business. And your choice of CRM depends on how fast your company grows. Some CRMs are scalable, while others have certain limitations, so it’s important to identify the most compatible tool that evolves with your business. This way, you don’t have to endure the stress of migrating from one platform to another.

Security

Data security is an essential aspect of every business, as companies take strict measures to ensure they collect and store data legally while preventing the actions of cybercriminals and bad actors.

Most CRMs have special security features that ensure the safety of your customer information. If you’re looking for a suitable customer relationship management system, you need a tool that protects your user data and lets you grant access only to authorized personnel.

Ease of use

All CRM platforms have different learning curves and are suitable for teams with varying technical skills. While some platforms may require hand-coded processes, others can be operated without touching a single line of code.

The ease of use also encompasses speed, stability, user-friendliness, and simplicity. Using a tool your team can operate is key to maximizing its features for business growth.

Support

Most CRM platforms have complicated onboarding processes; hence, they need timely assistance from the support team. Migrating to or starting with a new CRM tool is usually overwhelming, but with proper guidance, it is easier for your team to create streamlined processes.

Moreover, you may encounter a few issues that may require technical assistance. Support may be through helpful articles, phone or email support, live chat, forums, etc. Whichever way, choosing a CRM platform with a proactive support team is essential.

Integrations

Generally, CRM platforms don’t have sufficient capabilities to run all your business operations. However, most of them support seamless integrations with third-party applications.

These external programs can be linked with your CRM tool to expand its functionalities. So, before signing up for a plan, ensure the CRM supports integrations with your business applications.

How to Implement CRM for Your Business Growth

Proper CRM implementation distinguishes between a failed and successful marketing or sales strategy. Regardless of your business size and models, there are general principles that can help you get the most out of your CRM software.

These strategies include:

Identify your business goals

The success of your CRM implementation process depends on well-crafted business goals. From generating traffic to increasing sales, having the right business goals and objectives will help you develop data-driven strategies.

These goals help you understand your current business state and what you need to ensure maximum growth. The requirements and steps you create to meet these needs constitute part of your goals.

Define your target audience

Understanding your buyers is key to a successful CRM implementation. This helps you tailor your processes and plans to meet your customers’ needs.

Your target audience encompasses all existing and potential users likely to buy from you. You may develop random products and strategies for the wrong users without identifying them.

Map out your customer journey

Your customer journey reveals customer interactions and experiences across multiple touchpoints over a defined timeline. Mapping out this journey gives you a visual representation of how users interact with your brand.

This data helps you create refined segments based on preferences, behavior, demographics, etc. This way, you can identify your loyal customers and create targeted offers that appeal to them.

Choose a CRM platform

Once you’ve defined your goals and identified your ideal buyers, you can choose a well-suited CRM system that aligns with your strategy. This depends on your business size, model, values, needs, operations, etc.

When choosing a CRM, ensure it has the necessary features to draw insights from customer data. This will help you understand how to use specific patterns from your reports to fuel business growth.

Onboard team members and provide a training plan

Since different teams in your organization will require customer data, it’s important to provide adequate training on how they can collect the data from multiple sources, consolidate it into the system, and make it accessible whenever it’s needed.

As team members share customer information within themselves, strict guidelines should ensure they collect accurate, complete, consistent, and up-to-date data. As they gather the data from multiple sources, they can consolidate it into a central access point with clear measures to avoid duplication.

Track and measure customer data

Your customer data comprehensively reports how users interact with your brand. Tracking this data in your CRM over time reveals trends or patterns that enable you to predict customer behavior.

You can also monitor the reports with your CRM to identify their likes and dislikes and create timely offers to deliver personalized and tailored experiences.

Refine your strategy with valuable insights

While having real-time, accurate data is necessary, it’s also important to understand it and provide useful insights to help you make data-driven business decisions.

These reports and analytics can measure your performance with time and provide the results of your overall strategy. If there’s a fault, it allows you to improve and optimize your processes to yield better results.

Top CRM Tools for Different Business Sizes

All CRM tools are designed for businesses of varying sizes. While some may offer simple features for startups, others support more sophisticated functionalities only compatible with enterprise organizations.

Here is an inexhaustible list of CRM platforms categorized based on business size:

CRM Description Small business Mid-sized business Large enterprises
Zoho CRM
Cloud-based CRM platform for sales, marketing, and customer support.
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HubSpot CRM
Inbound marketing and sales CRM software
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EngageBay CRM
All-in-one CRM solution for sales, marketing, and support.
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Salesforce CRM
Advanced cloud-based CRM sales software
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Freshworks CRM
Customer engagement and support software
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Less Annoying CRM
Affordable CRM system for small businesses and startups
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NetSuite CRM
Cloud-based business management software
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Vtiger
Premier cloud-based sales CRM solution
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Capsule
Contact management and Sales CRM software
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SAP Sales Cloud
Sales automation software for enterprises and SMEs
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Flowlu
All-in-one collaborative CRM software for project and business management
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Keap
E-mail marketing and sales platform for small businesses
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Microsoft Dynamics 365
Cloud-based enterprise software platform, combining ERP, CRM, and HCM functionalities.
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Drip
Marketing automation and sales CRM software for eCommerce brands
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ActiveCampaign
Cloud-based marketing and sales automation software
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Oracle CX Sales
Sales enablement, sales intelligence, and sales performance management hybrid platform
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Pipedrive
Cloud-based sales CRM and pipeline management software
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Affordable meets powerful:EngageBay CRM

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