Sales and marketing personnel are best employed in sales and marketing rather than carrying out repetitive administrative tasks. This is particularly true of small and medium sized businesses with limited personnel resources and the need to focus on customer contact in order to maintain and expand the customer base.
Automation with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be invaluable in such cases and provide very rapid return on investment. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 in particular is eminently suited to a high degree of automation and allows employees to more easily and more effectively use existing customer and account data to integrate marketing and sales efforts.
The automation tools provided by Microsoft CRM automate routine tasks such as direct e-mails, communication management and the management of a variety of sales processes. Such processes include account and contact management, qualification of leads and opportunity management and the maintenance of a database of customer and account information. This is available to sales personnel online or offline either in the office, at the customer premises or in transit through portable communications devices such as PDAs, palms, computers, mobile phones and laptops.
Automation with CRM achieves this and brings the benefits of instant communication and information retrieval, which promote customer satisfaction and loyalty. Automation with CRM can analyze factors such as the proportion of time spent by a sales force between administrative task and direct sales-related work and hence the effectiveness of the sales force and any remedial actions required to improve this. The performance of individual employees against targets is also analyzed and reports prepared.
In this way not only is efficiency measured, but resources can be deployed to their greatest effectiveness with an overall reduction in costs and improvement in customer service. The marketing automation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 enables analysis of the efficiency of the marketing department and provides integration of all aspects of marketing, sales and service so that a single company image is presented to the customer. This allows a more professional image to be projected, increasing customer confidence and loyalty.
Automation with CRM allows the generation of lists of contacts, accounts and leads which can be used by sales personnel for the generation of campaigns for execution at a later date, with automatic analysis of responses and outstanding actions required. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 uses the sales and customer data you already have and makes it easier for employees to use that information to improve service to customers, integrate more effectively between departments, and improve efficiency with resultant overall cost reductions.
Automation with CRM promotes productivity improvements and better use of personnel resources, the overall result being a more profitable company with more satisfied and loyal customers and a marketing and sales force that is being used at maximum effectiveness. Automation with CRM is the way forward for any progressive company that is seeking maximum employee involvement in directly promoting sales and marketing with automation of the daily repetitive tasks that can be so labor intensive.
The adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows sales and marketing personnel to be fully effective in the main objective of the company, which is to make money.
Syed Ali, is the lead CRM Analyst for a Toronto based company. His company, offers Microsoft CRM software Solutions
Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email:asyed@cqsolutions.com
