ArticleBlaster How To Define Your Needs Before Buying CRM

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Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Colin Duffy

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Article Title: How To Define Your Needs Before Buying CRM
Author: Colin Duffy
Word Count: 574
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=78074&ca=Marketing
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Like many other business trends, the pressure to keep up with
the latest technology developments and hold on to your
competitive edge can often lead to rushed and poorly researched
decisions. Such is the case with Customer Relationship
Management and its enormous industry growth and migration
rates. Many CEO�s have been left scratching their head,
wondering how to keep up and which CRM product is right for
them?

The CRM market is packed with solutions that range from the
simple contact management and tracking to the feature rich
comprehensive solutions that can reach across you entire
organization. However, the question for the interested buyer
should remain, �What can our organization/company/employees do
with this CRM?� and not �What can this CRM do for my company?�
Approaching CRM vendors with this mindset will allow you to see
past the over kill features and cumbersome processes inherent in
most solutions. You need to see the value of their product as it
relates to your business specific needs. Refining your company
needs for a CRM solution based on your current business
practices will help you find a suitable CRM solution!

By really analyzing your current processes and methods,
flagging the procedures you want to enhance or areas you want
to improve in efficiency, will better prepare you to test out
CRM vendor platforms. As well as help you model your business
processes to better benefit from a suitable CRM solution.

The majority of CRM software solutions are built on best
practices in business, flowing from Marketing and Lead
Management to Sales Automation; Account, Contact and
Opportunity management to Sales tracking, reporting and
forecasting capabilities. Furthermore, CRM vendors also offer
simple customer service, support, and tracking features in the
form of Case and Solution management. This base model is
prevalent in many industry solutions and makes the first step
on to a CRM platform relatively smooth.

However, the customer is left to do the drilling or the
�kicking of the tires� if you will, to really substantiate the
value of the features embedded in the program and see if they
will improve their current business processes, as well as
enhance their employee productivity. In this case, finding the
functions you need in a CRM will be just as important as the
form it comes in. Acquiring a user friendly product will ensure
your employees adopt the product quickly and continue to use it
in the long run.

With step one accomplished, the goal should now be to review
the extent of the product offered by the vendor. Can this CRM
solution accommodate your growing company? Your need to manage
key processes such as projects, billing and invoicing,
contracts, quote management, product inventory, human resource
management, etc. should all be met by the same CRM solution.
There is nothing more disconcerting then having to procure
services from multiple vendors to get close to the CRM
functionality and organization you need.

By defining your needs in a CRM software solution, you will be
better served when it comes to researching and evaluating the
different products on the market, as well ensuring your company
benefits from your decision on the whole. By knowing what it is
you need in a CRM, as well as what it is that will work for
your particular organization, you will ensure your employees
can adopt and use the solution you choose.

About The Author: Colin Duffy enjoys writing about CRM subjects
and on demand CRM and ERP software vendors such as Salesboom (
http://www.salesboom.com )

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