Unless you benefit from a photographic memory, remembering all your contacts and how you’re progressing with them requires something -or way- to store them. Over the years, there have been many ways to store this information. A generation ago, a Rolodex was the preferred choice and by the eighties, some had even progressed to Filofax. Believe it or not, I know people that still use one, even though there are many alternatives now. Let’s face it, people in the majority don’t like change.
We now find ourselves with so many digital choices to store all of our contacts and information. But in this technological world we are in, there is so much information. And with so many places it’s stored in, it’s hard to know how to keep it all together. We even need to consider the contacts and conversations from the Social Mediums such as Facebook and LinkedIn. So how do we pull this altogether into one place, where we can quickly and efficiently get up to speed with our business conversations?
A solid and reliable Customer Relationship Management system appears to be the answer. Again, there are so many CRMs available that it can be hard to decide. I’ve personally tried five or six over the last ten years and have seen them evolve. It’s typically the bigger corporations that are able to continually invest in getting the product closer to the practical easy solution that all we need as businesses. Microsoft seem to have achieved this now with their 2016 version of Dynamics CRM. It really has come a long way since its origins and now provides a really good and usable solution.
To succeed, a business needs to allow its team access to client and prospect contact information, and latest “state of play”, all in one place. It needs to collate all the information regarding social media, integrate with email marketing and be accessible on all devices. Dynamics CRM does all of this. As with any CRM, there is a little pain at first in order to learn the processes but with many online training videos, or companies like SpiderGroup that offer training, it doesn’t take long before you can be in a position of good functionality with it. You can also import most, or all, of your previous data if your old CRM has a reasonable export facility.
Dynamics CRM really is an essential tool for businesses as they grow. The provision from Microsoft ensures that all of your data is safely stored in the cloud so you never have to worry about losing your data. It’s always accessible. So with ease, you can view the latest calls, emails and communication from your contacts so that any member of the business team knows exactly what they need to know, when speaking to a client or prospect. There are so many things that you can do with this CRM that may surprise you. It can even be the source of your quotations and connect to your accounting software.
To see how your business could benefit from Dynamics CRM, please get in touch with the team. We are happy to explain how this can help your business so fill in our contact form or give us a ring on 0117 933 0570.