Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the process of tracking and analyzing all of the interactions you have with your customers and prospects. CRM software is a tool that centralizes, simplifies, secures, and scales our customer engagement.
ERP and CRM will provide “past view” as well as future view of your moving business. CRM is also a future view into trends and events that will be leading indicators of your revenue and profit metrics.
Companies C Level executives can use CRM dashboards to monitor these leading indicators. They may look for changes to lead generation, opportunity creation, or pipeline value to spot early indicators of future problems to the top-line. This will enable a pro-active approach to managing the business.
A Sales leader will have access to a sales reporting tool. They will need to see the activities of individual salespeople or teams and trace problems that may be affecting revenue such as territory coverage, customer calling activity, lead conversion rates, and opportunity close rates.
A Marketing leader will need to trace marketing activities and campaigns and adjust the marketing plan according to the success or failure of those activities.
A Customer Service leader will need to see which of their people is most efficient at closing cases, be alerted to cases that exceed the expected time to close, and monitor escalations.
A Product Manager needs to monitor Cases to understand any product defect, support trends, or feature requests that may lead to improved products and services.