CRM system: a tool for business 80 lvl

    We on Habré 2 years with a tail. During this time, we wrote more than 50 articles in which we shared our experience: working with technical specifications, development management, using CRM in serious companies, touched on employment and education, answered the simplest and most complex questions (already beyond the scope of Habr) . And still, our managers and implementers hear the same question: why CRM business, what will it change specifically in my company? Of course, answering this question is not easy: a lot depends on the industry and the size of each business. But we will try - sincerely, without calculations, diagrams and other difficulties.



    What is business?


    It is always a complex system consisting of people, means of production, production facility, money and information. The interactions between these elements are called business processes. The goal of a business in 99% of cases is to make a profit. Profit is most often brought by consumers of a product, product or service - customers, partners, etc., another element of the business system. Well, for completeness, there are competitors that need to be circumvented - quality, functionality, speed, service, retention methods.

    Any business had a moment when the first client appeared - this is a real holiday, the first awareness of the right path, the first payment. Everyone remembers and often loves this client. But over time, more and more customers appear, relations with them become worse - not because employees are lazy, but because probability theory works: the larger the sample, the higher the probability of an adverse event. There will always be someone dissatisfied, angry, someone will not like the voice of the support or the tone of the seller, someone will not cope with the product and will be angry with himself, pouring discontent on the head of the company.

    Time goes further - simple and intelligible business processes are overgrown with parameters, stages, responsible (sometimes very irresponsible), and then chaos sets in. Business understands that it is impossible to return to the original order, there must come a new "cosmos" of development, there must be some kind of leap. And here, as in a joke, they either start moving beds or changing girls. While in the XXI century there is a fairly simple tool for putting things in order in their own chaos - automation. Moreover, automation of everything: development and testing, work with texts and documentation, technical support, warehouse, logistics, advertising, sales.

    Indeed, companies automate production because you produce more, automate development, because there is so much order, automate advertising, because conversion rates are lower and higher ... But as it comes to automating all management and working with clients, notepads open, excels and google calendars. Are you seriously? The CRM system has long been not a luxury, but a means of end-to-end automation.

    What is losing a business by abandoning a CRM system?


    More precisely, we will tell you what the CRM system gives and, if you do not have it, you lose it.

    CRM is a look into the future of a business. The fact is that the system accumulates and stores data on operational activities and, using built-in and custom reports, allows you to see trends, predict events, and classify the client “on the way”.

    CRM is not a contact by , in the truest sense of the word. A good CRM system can collect data from the site (for example, applications), record calls, work with online chats and e-mail. By the way, we went further - some of these functions were implemented using regular RegionSoft CRM tools , and some were implemented using RegionSoft Application Server, a classy and convenient script server. In addition, the CRM-system should be an assistant in creating mailings - segmented, well-thought-out, well-made for each situation (you must agree, happy new year and notification of the release of a new version of your product should look different). Thus, you collect a maximum of people who are interested in your company (and sometimes those who walked by) and again have more chances to convert contacts into money, into loyal customers, into partners, etc. (depends on the goals).


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    And yes, customer management is far from just marketing in the sense in which we are all used to seeing it. This, if you want, is the transformation of a group of people into friends of a business - that is, those who not only buy, but also value the purchase outside the material aspect. This is the future of the entire sphere of promotion. Today, this arrangement is available not only to Apple or Chanel, but also to everyone who is willing to work on data loyalty, and not just pairing.

    CRM-system accumulates best practices and helps to access them really in one click.And again - I emphasize - we are not talking about dry and boring scripts of sales people, but about templates of documents, designed business processes, accumulated information about incidents (yes, don’t be surprised, we also manage technical support in our RegionSoft CRM, and backlog, and the tasks of the developers). Why is it good:

    • all information is aggregated in a single center and can be given access to any employee
    • the new ones adapt as quickly as possible - in addition to training and mentoring, he can study the experience of his colleagues, and at the same time get used to the new working interface
    • persisted, truly the best, is what enhances the skills of employees
    • information history is kept, data is not lost.

    CRM is an easy way to manage an ever-growing stream of tasks. Implementation varies from one CRM system to another, but in general, every more or less well-known solution has developed good planning functionality. We are a little perfectionists and we hate past ... deadlines, so we were especially confused with planning and task management in RegionSoft CRM : we developed several types of tools, including an end-to-end three-week scheduler, in which the entire employment horizon for each specialist is perfectly visible.

    Task management, notifications, tasks built into business processes are a very important automation mechanism. Thus, the team works smoothly and on time, the number of customer complaints in this direction is sharply reduced. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine and it’s better not to remember what it is like - the automated management of the affairs of each and the team as a whole. And here CRM bypasses all sorts of calendars and project management systems in that all cases are tied to clients, projects, resources, and the entire array of information is available in a single environment (thanks to this relational model for organizing data storage - all objects inside the software are interconnected).


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    CRM is risk management. Extremely important functionality, which is undocumented in the manuals, but has served a good service in more than one hundred companies. It's all point by point.

    • Preventive measures to retain customers - for example, in the low season, you can make resales, announce promotions and all kinds of bonuses to shake doubters. CRM also allows customers to make personalized (and quasi-personalized) offers that create a one-on-one conversation experience (and often they are). Why is it important? Attracting every lead and every client has a price, sometimes quite tangible. You communicate with the client, explain the features of the product or service, carry out all pre-sales events, and then because of the annoying trifle, he breaks down and leaves the competitors at your own expense. And this customer is immediately ready to purchase. CRM helps to calculate such situations in advance and save a client who has invested so much effort, money and time. This minimization of outflow is one of the most significant economic risks.
    • Base rotation - CRM-system helps to quickly find those customers and leads that you last contacted for a long time or never and initiate communication. Such clients are good in that they don’t need to spend money on attracting and informing them - they are already at least somewhat familiar with you.For example, we like how rotation is arranged in the Russian branch of WWF Wildlife Fund - if you transferred money or transferred one-time, you are not particularly bothered, letters from time to time come about animals. And then at the right time (and as close as possible to the number of the previous installment), an ordinary person calls and just talks, as with a friend, simultaneously recalling help. It’s cool because 1) not a scripted girl from the call center says, but a living person; 2) time passes before rotation and you already feel that you have not watched for a long time how the leopards and tigers are there; 3) the date, as a rule, is close to the salary :-) So, we suspect the guys comprehended CRM Zen, well done.
    • The safety of the base from the human factor. The information that is contained in the CRM system is the most important asset of the business: customer base + significant events + negotiations, transactions, prices, nomenclature. In general, the entire commercial life of the company. And, regardless of whether you are a tire dealer or a retailer, this is a tidbit for your competitors, and at the same time a pretty serious increase in the cost of a sales manager in the market (if you look at job sites, you will see that they are looking for a manager with a base or “worked out contacts ”). The departure of a manager with a base can be equated with a loss of market share. Of course, if you want to hack and steal everything, you can, but the CRM-system is able to log actions and grab an unscrupulous employee literally by the hand.

    CRM system is data security. Today it is an extremely important factor determining the choice of software. That is why more and more large companies are avoiding the cloud and are coming to us and to our people behind the desktop. If desired, the CRM system will provide a fairly high level of information and economic security: internal security regulations in the company, and logging of actions, and differentiation of access rights, and even a mechanism for coordinating and conducting documents (in any case, in our CRM this is exactly the case).

    CRM-system is a personnel management. Not those rabid fashionable mechanisms for controlling working time and tracking trips to the kitchen and toilet, but adequate mechanisms for monitoring, planning and self-monitoring. For example, we in our RegionSoft CRMthey washed down the KPI monitor and the progress bar for completing tasks - the employee sees where he has sagged, and manages to correct himself within the reporting period, saving the bonus. The manager who can reorient the employee, change tasks or motivate to work more efficiently sees these monitors.

    Well, the bonus is employee cards, not forgotten birthdays, adaptation of newcomers, private clients, well-established business processes with personal responsibility at the stages. All this works exclusively for the loyalty of employees, giving them freedom in exchange for responsibility.


    A CRM system is an automatic business process. The severity of routine work is shared with CRM, in which business processes are designed and debugged, and employees have more time to work head-on, which cannot but affect the revenue.

    A CRM system is organized data. It accumulates a single information available to all team members (depending on access rights), as a result, the business is not bloodless due to lack of information and its disgusting circulation within the company.

    And CRM is a connection, integration with third-party services and 1C, a warehouse, cash desk, and sometimes even production, logistics and complex project management.It all depends on the configuration you have chosen for a particular vendor. Someone seeks to make CRM a contact manager, someone goes into versatility and power. We tried to do CRM for everyone, only everyone has their own edition , depending on the requirements of the business.

    Summing up the list of documented and not very CRM features, we can safely say that the CRM system is a guarantee of continuous improvement in all the business processes it touches and there are many good team habits, such as entering correct and complete information, completing tasks on time, reasoned shifts in time and personal responsibility for their work, and not their beloved "the logisticians did not arrive on time, the driver was late, the secretary did not pour coffee and generally the weather was crushing."  

    Briefly - why is CRM important for any company?


    Small and smallest - to develop automatically, not to lose a single commercial opportunity and build business processes until they become a mess.

    The middle one is to turn chaos into space, manage the company on the data, form a pool of loyal customers who are the key to a stable cash flow. Keep data and control the work of staff as part of their duties.

    Big - if you still have a question about CRM, then we have bad news: you are already behind your competitors. A large company should devote almost more time to automation than to finance.


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    So, CRM is essentially a point of company growth, especially if it is a serious CRM that can cover the needs and tasks of several departments at once. It is time to look at the CRM-system as a tool, overcome myths in your head and just work with high efficiency. In general, to correspond to the century and the general digital transformation, as is customary to say at high-flying conferences.

    And to put it more simply, it’s enough to use a chisel, grab rather a punch!

    PS: until June 30, we have discounts of -15% and cool rental and installment terms for all RegionSoft Developer Studio's own software , of course, including the flagship RegionSoft CRM.

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