What is CRM Software Designed to Do?
From accurate, real-time sales forecasting to customer information management, CRM software is invaluable to your sales team. From a marketing perspective, a CRM software review should help you discover which solution will help determine which marketing efforts were most effective, how you’re doing on email or with search engines, and should be able to send leads to your key sales staff in a real-time environment.
What Can the Cloud Do for CRM?
Looking for cloud-based CRM software in your CRM review means you also want to be able to capture, connect and analyze customer contacts that take place from social media and when your sales team is out in the field making those connections. All of these functions should be customizable to match your unique business needs. For CRM in the cloud, look for reliability, speed, excellent security and the ability for several customers to use the newest, most upgraded technology without the hassle of upgrades – called an environment of multitenancy.
CRM Review Shows Integrations Between Vendors
The cloud seems to be delivering on its promise to help you cut costs, reduce the costs of overhead and streamline your work processes. When it comes to CRM in the cloud, Salesforce continues to shine and to grow among cloud-based options. In some ways, Salesforce could be considered the foundation of CRM tools in the cloud. Salesforce is also setting itself apart with enhanced benefits for your organization from integrations with vendors who specialize in specific tools, such as time management and tracking, the invoicing process and applications to help you derive top benefits from your project management initiatives.
You may have applications for workflow or project management, for example, that you want to get along well with Salesforce. Many organizations are asking for software that integrates smoothly with Salesforce. No CRM review would be complete without considering which tools and offerings mesh well with existing Salesforce, especially because Salesforce demands such a strong portion of SaaS attention.
Quality Leads in Real-Time
Accurate, quality data is another key element of a CRM review, and Salesforce CRM continues to deliver the right customer data and information at the right time to its customers. One of Salesforce’s CRM tools, Jigsaw, provides quality leads inside your CRM and boasts giving you more closed deals. Jigsaw uses the cloud to continuously update contacts from over 26 million B2B professionals, with more than 1.6 million sales experts keeping those leads current. The leads are targeted and offered in real-time, arranged by industry, size of the organization, title and other factors you can set.
Make Mine Automated
Automation – Salesforce CRM comes to the top when you consider the ways your processes can be automated in your CRM review. You can set-up almost any process for automation, such as quotes, configuration, sales scripts and methods. Design and automate any process including quotes, product configuration, telesales scripting, and sales methodologies, right in Salesforce CRM.
Cloud Makes New Customizations Easy
Using Force.com, Salesforce CRM product, you get the total picture of your customers from the cloud. Track multiple forms of data, such as references, applicable discounts, order status and what your competitors are up to, for example. The ability to track several types of data through your CRM app from the cloud is one element that keeps organizations using Salesforce. Plus, you can manage every CRM process that goes into making that sale, such as order routing, customer entitlements and multiple other business rules.
All these processes and rules are managed by the cloud, without a server, giving you almost endless options. The customization factor that Salesforce provides continues to set the vendor apart and keep IT teams from becoming frustrated and avoiding the true maximization of your CRM solution.
No Hardware, No Software, No Problem
In a CRM review, Salesforce emerges as a leader not only for its customization features, but because it connects so smoothly with activity happening from your Web site. Leads, customer service and product data are all moving back and forth between your online presence and your CRM data from the cloud, without hardware and software.
Salesforce certainly isn’t the only CRM option out there, but the core benefits it offers can be a good starting point for your CRM review.