What Is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

The term "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM) refers to the process of storing information about your customers & prospects in a database, then using that information to support marketing, sales and other interactions with them.

CRM software provides different capabilities to your employees depending on their role, including scenarios like these:

• Front-line staff can view a customer's full purchase history and other details while speaking with them in a sales or customer service discussion.
   
• Sales staff can track their opportunities and schedule reminders for themselves to follow up with prospects at specific stages in the sales process.
   
• Marketing staff can generate sales leads from different sources, hand them over to the sales team for follow up and track the results.
   
• Enquiries received through your website can be automatically assigned to a salesperson and appear on their to-do list for followup. The sales manager can monitor activities to ensure that leads are followed up promptly, with the option to reassign a lead to another salesperson if it isn't actioned within a specified time frame.
   
• Sales management can monitor the number, size and type of opportunities in the sales funnel to forecast revenue and production demands.
   
• Marketing staff can identify a certain segment of your customer database and target a marketing campaign for a specific product to just those people most likely to buy it. The results of each campaign can be monitored and used to plan future campaigns.

The overriding reason to install CRM software is simply to increase profits, either by increasing sales, reducing costs or both.

All Very Large Companies Use CRM

Whenever you've called your bank, phone company, electricity company or similar supplier and spoken to the call centre to:

• change your postal address
• query a charge on your bill
• add, cancel or change a service

...then the person you spoke with was using CRM software to handle your request.

Whenever one of those companies has tried to sell you an additional product or service by:

• emailing you a special offer
• mailing you a brochure
• sending you a regular newsletter with articles keyed based on your past purchases 
• having a telemarketer call you

...then the marketing department has used CRM software to decide to include you in the target list, to tailor the offer to best match your past purchasing history and to execute the campaign.

Why Do You Need Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

There are many reasons for any size business to install and use CRM software, including these:

• Increase marketing effectiveness - measure results quantitatively and use the data to fine-tune future campaigns
   
• Improve sales management - track the relevant performance metrics of your sales time accurately
   
• Automate business processes and enable customer self-service - reducing labour costs and improving customer response times
   
• Increase sales revenue - through targeted up-selling and cross-selling to selected customers
  
  
• Reduced delivery costs - through more accurate forecasting of future demand prior to the sale
  
  
• Reduced time-to-revenue - through reduced sales cycles and faster handover from sales to delivery/implementation
  
  
• Increase the value of the business in a sale - a detailed and complete customer database is a key asset that any potential buyer of your business will look for
  
  
• Free the business owner from working "in" the business - effective systems are the first step to growing a business out of day-to-day dependency on the founder/owner

CRM software is the cornerstone on which many strategies for business growth and improving profitability depend - it's an essential business tool that no entrepreneur or business owner should ignore. 

Why Do Many SMEs Not Yet Use CRM?

For smaller businesses, the most common barriers to deploying CRM software are:

• Cost - software prices vary widely, but quality CRM software can cost up to $2,000 per seat, and more in some cases.
   
• Choice of software - with so many varieties of CRM software on the market, how do you choose which one to buy?
   
• Cost & complexity of implementation - you'll typically need to purchase servers and database software in addition to the CRM software itself, then you'll need expensive I.T. specialists to install and set it up for you.
   
• Ongoing costs - expect annual contract renewal costs for technical support and software updates

All that on top of the regular costs and challenges of running a business - it's not surprising that many SMEs don't "get around to" deploying CRM software.

How Can I.T. on Tap Help?

We believe that CRM software is such a critical resource that every single business should have it!

For that reason we wanted to eliminate the reasons listed above for not deploying CRM software and ensure that ALL of our clients could roll it out, and do so NOW. Here's what we came up with:

Special, Limited-Time CRM Offer

For a limited time, we are giving every one of our clients the world's leading CRM software package - absolutely FREE!

SugarCRM software has been downloaded more than 1.7 million times and has an estimated user base of several million. The core software provides a rich set of capabilities that has been recognised by the industry in numerous awards.

In addition there are dozens of SugarCRM add-on modules available to provide specialised additional functionality (if required) - in many cases for free, or for a small additional cost.

I.T. on Tap manages the infrastructure and hosts SugarCRM on our servers - we handle all the operational stuff. We'll add SugarCRM onto the list of software applications you can access when you log in. All you need to do is click the icon and run it!

Really, What Does It Cost?

Initial cost: nothing, zero, nil, $0.00. Get started today, risk free.

Ongoing cost: nothing. We absorb the cost of hosting and managing SugarCRM, including regular software updates when new versions are released. (Of course you will still pay your standard monthly subscription to I.T. on Tap, but nothing extra for CRM).

Advanced customisation services: if you decide to tailor SugarCRM to support some unique or specialised requirements for your business, then you may find that you need some assistance from experienced technical consultants. Contact us to discuss your plans in that case and we'll help you estimate the costs involved.

Additional functionality: we're providing SugarCRM Community Edition to our clients free of charge. Some of our clients may decide to upgrade to SugarCRM Professional to use the advanced features it provides, at an additional per-subscriber cost. You can upgrade at any time if you decide it will be beneficial, which is why we recommend starting out with Community Edition to get some momentum and experience with the software. (I.T. on Tap is not currently offering SugarCRM Enterprise). Some of the functional modules offered through SugarExchange also incur an additional cost.

The Next Step

Take out a paid subscription to the I.T. on Tap service by April 30, 2008 and you'll also receive hosted SugarCRM - absolutely free of charge - for as long as you remain a client of I.T. on Tap.

Contact us today to get started, or register for a free trial of the I.T. on Tap service if you haven't done so already.