5 benefits of CRM software for companies

CRM tools offer many business advantages, and if you've decided not to use CRM in your organization due to lack of familiarity, you may be missing out on the best solutions available to some of your biggest challenges.

But if you don't know and you have no one to ask, what else are you supposed to do?

We got you. In this article, we'll cover the basics, key benefits of CRM software, drawbacks, and whether or not you should take advantage of CRM for your organization. Then you'll be better prepared to make important decisions about how and when to use CRM solutions.

What are the benefits of CRM?

In simpler terms, CRMs serve as a command center that allows teams to better serve prospects and customers throughout the entire lifecycle. The right solution can keep all relevant sales, marketing, and customer service information in a single source of truth, so everyone is working with the same critical data and insights.

Of course, CRM solutions provide the same core benefits that most business software is designed to provide. What makes CRMs stand out are their customer experience features that allow sales, marketing, and customer success to refine their approach to external relationships.

Let's dive into some of the main benefits of CRM software.

1. Workflow Optimization

Like any good digital business tool, a CRM is designed to take laborious manual processes and streamline them to reduce friction and mental inertia. Many “best practices” seem like more work than “the way we've always done things,” and that makes any process overhaul a tough sell. But if the computer does most of the heavy lifting, clicking a button doesn't sound so bad, even if you have to do it a few times before you're done.

2. Data integrity

Similarly, digital systems help reduce and/or eliminate the less useful aspects of human participation: data entry errors, missing information, cluttered databases, delays, etc. Human brains are pretty impressive, but there are things that computers handle better than we do: recording, transferring, and sharing information being chief among them.

3. Analytical information

It's hard to argue with the value that large data sets can offer, as long as they are accurate. Scientific fields have known this for decades, and most of our modern wonders are based on principles of peer review, rigorous testing, and constant experimentation.

With the advent of “big data” and business analytics, the corporate world is finally starting to take notice, as data can often tell you why your product works and why it doesn't, or who buys and who doesn't. Sure, you can shoot from the hip when you're making important business decisions. But when you could base your strategy on verified, data-backed research, why would you?

4. Audience and segmentation of potential customers

This is where CRMs start to stand out from other digital tools. Many B2B technology solutions can make your job easier, help you with data, and enable you to make more effective decisions. CRMs do this specifically for teams that bring in customers and teams that serve customers once they are onboarded.

With the right systems generating the right data, you'll know if your prices are too high (or too low). You'll also know if your marketing is working, almost working, or needs a total overhaul. And you can tell if you're over-promising during the sales cycle and under-delivering after you sign up. All that is just the beginning.

5. Supercharged Support

Finally, CRMs help track both the progress and bottom line of customer service and, in some cases, compliance. An increase in sales is good, but not if it's accompanied by a significant drop in retention, and the only way to know is to track the numbers.

CRMs can help collect data from every interaction and touchpoint and identify areas of concern or opportunities, and you can present evidence that the CS team is doing the best they can with what they have. Then you can start making adjustments, whether to the sales funnel or the product, to better align your offerings with your customers' needs.

Are there any disadvantages to using CRM?

Like any business software, CRM solutions are not perfect. CRM has its shortcomings and there are some problems that you can't do anything about.

First, let's point out some of the things that a CRM platform won't solve. No optimization software or tool, CRM or otherwise, can fix problems caused by things like:

• Low quality product or service.
• Deceptive, predatory or false marketing.
• Public relations disasters caused by illegal, unethical or problematic business practices.

Without a doubt, a CRM can help you identify the causes and develop responses to those causes. But they won't solve the problems on their own.

As for the drawbacks, some are worth highlighting:

• Implementation costs: Setting up a new software platform requires time, money, and other resources that may be in short supply.
• Resistance to adoption: Not everyone is interested in starting to learn a new platform, and not everyone rushes to learn it once they do.
• System Compatibility: Depending on your current infrastructure and technology stack, getting new software up and running can be challenging (or downright impossible).
• Safety concerns: Some providers are better than others at data privacy, and that can have an impact on any GRC considerations you may have.
• Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO): The quality of a system's output depends largely on the quality of the input. If the way your team uses CRM is by adding junk, then all you're going to get is junk.

How CRM works

You're probably already familiar with what a CRM is, even if you're not sure if implementing one is right for your current team. But if you haven't seen one in action, you might be curious about how exactly it works within a company.

So, to give you an idea, let's compare it to project management software and what you could lose without CRM software.

Similarities to project management software

You've probably used or seen a project management tool before. These software platforms help teams coordinate their efforts as they work to complete tasks and goals. A PM tool allows you to assign, track, monitor and record a project and all its subordinate requirements.

A project management tool allows teams to ask questions and share information, flag issues or notify teammates about completed tasks, centralize storage of relevant documents and files, and much more. It makes it easier to stay organized, improve team collaboration and efficiency, and maintain transparency and visibility throughout your workflow.

This is, in many ways, exactly how a CRM works. The key difference is that with a CRM, what you are tracking are not products or projects. You're tracking sales opportunities, marketing campaigns, and customer accounts.

What a team looks like without CRM

A less streamlined system could isolate information, with separate records maintained by marketing teams, sales teams, and customer service teams. If a lead is qualified or a sale is closed, that handover from one team to another could happen manually, slowing things down and introducing potential data entry errors.

Worst of all, without a unified system, these teams lack an easy way to collectively identify trends on multiple fronts, such as the effectiveness of customer acquisition efforts, potential upsell and cross-sell opportunities, common customer complaints. , etc.

This could present a major obstacle to success and growth. Or perhaps it is less of a priority than other, more pressing concerns. But it all depends on the business in question.

Are CRM systems worth it?

If you are looking for help with a cost-benefit analysis on this topic, we can only help you part of the way. We've listed some of the benefits above (optimization and efficiency, analytical insights, transparency, scalability, and better overall performance for sales, marketing, and CS) as well as some of the main obstacles.

What we did not and cannot do is lay out the specific details related to your team, your business, your industry, or your use case.

Even if using a CRM isn't the right decision for your team currently, there's no way to know unless you take a close look at what they can offer. So take a look at some of the top CRM providers and see if the return on investment is worth the investment and hassle.

Top CRM tools

While obviously not a complete list, we do have a few CRM platforms we can recommend for further examination. The following solutions are some of the best in the industry: