How Sage CRM Can Help Your Business Save Money

Navigatingthrough turbulent times is never easy, but today’s economic conditions are morechallenging than most companies have ever faced. The instinctive reaction isswitch to defensive mode; cut all strategic projects and then wait until thingsimprove. But sitting back doing nothing could actually prove to be moredetrimental in the long term. These turbulent times present new opportunitiesfor companies that invest wisely in information technologies. No business likes to feel as though they are wasting money, butthat is exactly what many are doing day-in day-out through ineffective andinefficient business practices. Implementing a CRM solution enables companiesto achieve significant cost savings and on-going productivity improvements.

What Can YouDo?

Cutting costs while maintaining growth is a formidable challengeat the best of times, but during a downturn, it can seem almost impossible. Tomeet these goals, SMBs will need to look for practical solutions that will helpthem to drive productivity and increase effectiveness across their operationsultimately helping businesses to save money. Increasingly, companies areturning to business software and CRM applications in particular, to drivethrough the kind of operational improvements needed to survive and accelerateout of the downturn and which will in turn save the business money. 

Why Now?

Your customers and potential customers are facing identical costpressures, and they have changed their purchasing patterns accordingly. In manycases, they are spending less than before. But in all cases, they are lookingfor even greater value for money, and being far more discerning about potentialpurchases and potential suppliers.  As a result,you will need to work a lot harder to earn their business during the downturn.This challenge, coupled with the fact that cost inefficiencies will become evenmore pronounced as the downturn progresses, means that businesses are likely toexperience significant  and growingtrading pressures as each month passes.

As a result, one of the biggest potential mistakes a company canmake at the moment is to continue with in a ‘business as usual’ modenotwithstanding exceptional trading circumstances. The ‘cost of doing nothing’,therefore, is significant. Without a powerful CRM system, your companydoes not have a central place to record information. 

How Sage CRM Can Save Money across yourBusiness

Although a CRMimplementation is a sizeable investment for an SMB, the payback and return-on-investmentcan be justified over the medium-term and in many cases is demonstrable withinone year. Sage CRM empowers organisations to sell more effectively andefficiently. Customised workflows enhance your company’s ability to close moresales in a shorter period of time leading to an increase in sales revenue. Automating the company’s workflow helps to reduce the number oftasks the sales team would otherwise do manually, allowing them to concentrateon selling. This essentially allows more things to get done in the same amountof time. In addition, this reduction of repetitious work in an employee's daycan help to increase employee motivation and productivity by making their jobmore interesting and allowing them to concentrate on closing more deals. Alarmsand triggers can be set-up to ensure leads or customer queries are followed upcorrectly. This facility empowers the sales team with all the necessary toolsto manage customers effectively and efficiently. This also ensures thatopportunities that once may have slipped through the cracks are now addressedin a timely manner. 

Dashboardsand reports provide sales executives and management with information onperformance at any point in time. This enables management to take correctiveaction before it is too late. These effective controls put an end to poorworking practices that waste time and ensure that inconsistencies in the salesprocess are removed. CRM allows management to track history of lostopportunities providing insight and feedback for the sales team developingactionable intelligence on why sales are being lost.

Managingand implementing marketing programmes using Sage CRM yields more effectiveresults. Businesses can save money by creating targeted marketing campaignleveraging customer insights in the database to develop retention programmes aswell as identifying cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Marketing analyticsand reporting ensure absolute accountability at all stages in the cycle whichmeans that the return-on-programme investment can be calculated with ease. Themarketing budget is optimized at all times ensuring every cent is being spentwisely and can be tracked accurately.

During these challengingeconomic times, customer loyalty iscrucial and CRM can help a business to secure customers and keep them -long-term. Marketers state that it costs 5 to 10 times as much to acquire aprofitable customer than it does to retain an existing customer. ImplementingSage CRM not only increases the productivity of your agents but also saves youmoney over the long-term. Sage CRM hasthe functionality to roll-out web-based customer self-service quickly and costeffectively. From here, users can service their own information needs, trackdata and update the system without the requirement for customer serviceassistance and at the time and place of their choice. CRM can also capture andrecord remedies related to specific customer queries and issues which may recurover time. This function ensures that agents are not duplicating effort and stafftraining costs are at a minimum.

Conclusion andRecommendations

Saving money is a key priority for businesses especially duringa downturn. With Sage CRM, your business will achieve cost savings as a directresult of improved business processes, increased productivity and targetedsales and marketing programmes. This ensures that salespeople can be freed upto focus their efforts on addressing clients’ needs and selling. Not only willyour business grow revenue within your existing customer base but you will alsobe able to capture new business at a far lower cost-of sale than was possiblepreviously.