Multiple platforms that do one job well? Or one platform that does everything well?
What is a CRM System?
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System is a platform of which a company can store and evaluate their customer and prospect data to generate actionable insights for their company, informing sales and marketing, as well as the wider business. The system itself has evolved from its humble origins of database marketing and automated contact tracking, to more recent developments in big data machine learning and AI powered predictive analytics. Nowadays an all-in-one CRM system will typically include contact and lead pipeline management, sales and marketing automation, e-commerce and accounting, customer support, and design studios. With the industry leaders Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot to name a few, all vying for a slice of your budget, you need to really consider the following potential benefits and drawbacks an all-in-one CRM system can have on your marketing team.
The Benefits of an All-In-One CRM
Centralised Database
The data centralisation that comes with all-in-one CRMs means you have ‘a single source of truth’ when it comes to your client data across multiple touchpoints and departments. Companies where the data is siloed across sales, marketing, customer service, operations will no doubt have inconsistencies in how they see core client information. This leaves the door open for major business negligence such as but not limited to a misalignment in strategy, inaccurate auditing and forecasting, compliance risk, duplicated data, and even incorrect financial reporting! Without a strong foundation of trustworthy data, your marketing team will be making misinformed decisions on incorrect client profiles using inaccurate forecasting and budget auditing. Therefore, all-in-one CRMs’ centralisation of data will:
- Reduce the risk of data redundancy
- Streamline workflows
- Improve data quality
- Enhance decision making
- Improve forecasting
Streamlined Workflows
Automation tools remove the need to carry out repetitive tasks across your marketing team, as well as other business units, naturally increasing efficiency and freeing time to produce higher quality work that requires more attention. Market leaders, such as Salesforce and Zendesk, enable workflows built on specific criteria set by your company, executing various prospecting and existing client follow ups once the requirements are met, enabling marketing teams to scale their output. However, take special care when configuring criteria and automations, one small unaccounted for variable or change in business process can lead to unexpected disruptions or errors, which in turn will result in an unprofessional look for your company. Make sure to test, re-test and test again.
Sophisticated Reporting & Analytics
Many, if not all of you reading this will no doubt already have dashboards and automated reports set up across multiple platforms. You may wonder what the benefit of an all-in-one CRMs reporting versus your current setup is? A CRM’s reporting provides instant, automated insight without the need for manual data entry or its associated errors. Its AI-driven analytics help forecast trends, track performance, and refine strategy. By integrating business functions, it enhances collaboration and decision-making with personalised dashboards and clear ROI visibility.
Improved collaboration & communication
With centralised data in one homogenous platform different teams are enabled to collaborate with each other, increasing the likelihood of improved morale and business performance. With data flowing to and from teams, with tools designed to nurture prospects and forecast client action or demand, teams are able to design and implement strategies to enhance customer experience.
All-in-one CRMs also enhance external communication, with tools for email marketing, website design and tracking, social listening, and chatbots, subsequently increasing customer engagement.
Personalisation
All-in-one CRMs enhance the level of personalisation a business can engage their customers with. With in-depth and well informed client profiles incorporating real-time behaviours, you can tailor your messaging and produce highly relevant marketing strategies, product offerings, and customer support. Thus your touchpoints will align with your customer base at the right time, with the right messaging, resonating more effectively with your prospects and existing customers.
Customisation & Scalability
As businesses shrink and grow, so too can CRM systems. I believe CRM systems to be like Lego, you can customise them and build complex structures to suit your company’s specific requirements. Others refer to this as ‘straightforward customisation’ which also works.
Long-Term Costs
Reducing the number of software tools your company utilises into one platform will save you money in the long run, however this does incur a hefty initial fee, along with subscriptions and in some cases custom APIs. The move to one platform like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics will reduce IT overheads, and improve efficiency of your business as a whole via lead conversion and customer management enhancements.
Things to Consider
Cost-Effective?
CRMs are priced differently for a multitude of reasons, often offering free/ low-cost versions of their platform with limited features, all the way up to enterprise plans with all the bells and whistles. The example below is from Zendesk, outlining the different variations of packages and pricing their offer:
Not only this, but the software cost is accompanied by business implementation costs. This includes the setup and customisation of your CRM, your existing data migration from your existing platforms, as well as the training of users. Thus, it’s safe to say that without a considerable budget, you most likely will not reap the full benefits of modern CRM platforms.
Training Curve
You should consider the time it will take in order for yourself and your team to learn the platform, and how best to use it in relation to your products, clientbase, and business operations. This will vary from person to person based on prior platform experience, time allocation, business demand, and resources available. Ultimately, it is deciding whether the short-term negative impact of training is worth the long-term benefits of the CRM, in most cases it is.
More Features than Users?
The assumption of companies is that they will invest heavily into an all-in-one CRM and the business will then use it to its full capacity, and even though in most cases this may be true, will this be the case for your business? Many companies are sold on all the bells and whistles of the product, but when you boil it down, they may only leverage a fraction of the platform’s tools. This again will depend on various factors such as team size and roles, training, and time allocation among others. Thus if you’re a smaller team or a small company, you will need to be realistic with your time and budget to devise the CRM best solution that caters to your needs. Thankfully, as covered previously, CRMs are lego, and can be tailored to work for the size of your business. However, if you fail to acknowledge the demand of effectively using an all-on-one CRM on your team, this will lead to wasted resources, and ineffective use of the platform.
Integration Challenges
Depending on which CRM system you decide to opt for, there may be several integration issues with your current setup and future additional products. This again will incur costs as you devise a data migration solution with custom APIs.
Poor Ownership
Having an all-in-one CRM is great… if used and managed properly. You need a clear hierarchy of who owns what product with ironclad data management processes in place. With any digital platform, not just CRMs, if you get out what you put in, thus poor data hygiene will render your CRMs best features ineffective and inaccurate.
Conclusion
While the initial monetary and time costs of an all-in-one CRM are substantial, the introduction of centralisation, automation, and standardisation to your company will ultimately result in long term time and cost efficiency. Modern CRM systems are flexible with the ability to match the size and specific requirements of your business, enabling you to eliminate the chance of fragmented data, offering more accurate client profiles, reporting, forecasting, and personalisation as a foundation to build greater operational efficiency and customer experience.
Thus overall the benefits of an all-in-one CRM greatly outweigh the costs.
Other resources to help inform your decision: