Cloud CRM – user's Blog!

The manufacturing industry generates more data than any other sector in the economy, but they’re lagging behind when it comes to making the transition to digital. Going to an all-digital management system can be a major undertaking, but it comes with a number of benefits. With the data manufacturers already have at hand, costs can be decreased, production time can speed up, and profits, along with customer satisfaction can increase.

German auto manufacturers are at the forefront of an industrial revolution. They have worked to digitize processes that helped bring ideas to production, as well as sales and delivery, and factory maintenance. By 2030, there is an estimated $1.4 trillion dollar gain by following their lead. The majority of the gains come as a result of better managing processes before and after production while the rest will come from the actual manufacturing process.

Digitizing Pre-Production Stages

Before a product can ever start running on the production line, a lot of work must be completed including research and development, testing, and product launch. Going digital allows the R&D team make better-informed decisions faster. Data integration and analysis makes it easier for everyone involved to work together with partners and stakeholders.

Digitizing the Supply Chain

With supply chain management software, you can get a clearer overview of the raw materials and any manufactured parts that come through the plant, allowing you to better spot potential quality control issues, saving time and money.

A CRM can help in your supply chain management. Keep track of relationships you’ve built with suppliers, distributors, and customers. If and when communication between your staff and any members of the supply chain is strained or challenged, then the supply chain is going to suffer. Use your CRM to keep track of all your contacts, and keep everyone on your team up to date with the status of each contact, allowing you to stay on top of any issues that may arise.

For instance, if a distributor calls upset that their order didn’t make it there on time, your customer service team can make a note of it in the account, so you can discount a future order. Then, you can make a note in the contact with the shipper that details how the situation was handled with them to make it right.

The integrations with other programs you’re already using, such as your accounting software, can help you with sales forecasting.

Using Smart Equipment

Connected equipment can help you keep an eye on maintenance issues, keeping the equipment running smoothly all the time, to make production go faster and produce more. Data analytics can also help you optimize factory operations to make sure you’re using equipment and staff in the best ways possible in terms of scheduling and product delivery. You’ll be able to send customer experience data directly to your product management team to forecast demand, and assist in the design and development of better products.

Though there’s a long way to go before we see industry-wide digital technology adoption, we’re now in the middle of Industry 4.0, or what many are calling the 4th industrial revolution.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

Choosing the optimal CRM system is challenging for any business, but for those with multiple offices or telecommuting employees, the challenge can be even greater.

Telecommuting presents businesses with many advantages; happier employees, lower overheads and the ability to hire the best workers possible, regardless of where they call home.

On the downside, having a lot of employees outside the office or a number of offices in different locations can make it can tough to keep everyone connected and in the loop.

This is particularly troublesome without an online CRM – you can’t afford for anyone working with out-of-date information when dealing with your most treasured assets.

Fortunately, the cloud can solve this problem for you.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is precisely what it sounds like – a catch-all term for the numerous tools available to help a company to manage, keep track of and develop its relationships with existing and prospective customers.

If you only have two or three customers you can do CRM in your head, but larger businesses – or those hoping to become large – will need to turn to computerized solutions.

The capabilities of each system are diverse, but most basic CRM software will let you store customer contact details, information about purchases and other interactions (such as emails), and allow users to make notes that their colleagues can read.

More sophisticated systems could offer social media connectivity and trawling, track purchase habits, recognize patterns, create network maps, generate invoices, automate certain actions and make suggestions for future strategies – the list of features is endless, and growing every year.

It sounds complicated – and likely terrifying to a beginner – but it’s easy to learn and actively master.

Why does it matter?

Put simply, CRM provides you with powerful insights and knowledge about your customers’ behaviors, preferences, concerns, desires – even their personality, their friends and their business networks.

It can tell you at a glance what they might be most interested in hearing about, when they’ll be the market for it, and the right way to get in contact.

Think about how well a skilled bartender knows his regulars – CRM software essentially acts like his brain, helping you get to know your customers as individual people with individual personalities, rather than as simply a list of names on a computer screen.

For example, Mr. Smith may strongly prefer to be addressed as such, rather than by his first name. Some customers don’t appreciate over-familiarity (and some salespeople don’t realize that), so knowing this could be the difference between a sale and a goodbye. If it’s in your CRM system for everyone to see, no one getting in touch with Mr. Smith will make that potentially expensive mistake.

Likewise, you’ll know Ms. Jones typically prefers email contact, that Mr. White will be in the market for a red-hot deal in September, and that Dr. Pigeon is far more likely to respond favorably to a good deal on bird seed, not cat food.

CRM can save you time and substantially improve every customer relationship you have. Just getting in touch with the right customer at the right time is worth a million words of marketing spiel; no growing business in the 21st century can afford to do without it.

Keeping it in the Cloud

CRM systems come in many forms, each with their pros and cons, but for businesses with employees spread out around the country or world, a cloud-based system offers many advantages over their on-premise rivals. Here are six of them:

Access Everywhere

If you’re big on telecommuting, a CRM system which is easily accessed from anywhere is an absolute must, and in a fast-moving world, information that is even one hour out of date can prove costly.

Cloud-based solutions are accessible wherever in the world your employees are, on almost any device they may choose to use. And they automatically update and sync in real time – keeping everyone, no matter where they are, fully up to date.

Quick and Easy Startup

With cloud-based CRM, there is no need to go through the time-consuming and potentially difficult chore of distributing and installing software on dozens, hundreds or even thousands of different machines.

Telecommuting workers can use their own devices, and getting a single piece of software to seamlessly operate on all of them is unlikely to be easy.

Once you’re signed up to a cloud system, your workers can simply log in through a browser and they’re good to go.

Predictable Billing with no Large Initial Outlay

When you sign up to a cloud-based CRM system, you won’t have to make the substantial upfront payment that you would when buying in software to install on your machines.

Cloud solutions typically operate on a subscription basis; there may be a small upfront cost when you first sign up to a service, but the bulk of your outlay will be in the form of a fixed, easily manageable and very predictable monthly fee that covers everything – access, storage, maintenance, support, and features.

Reduced IT Overheads in the Long Term

Cloud-based CRM systems do not require the attention and maintenance from your IT people that an on-premise solution would; nor do they require you to deal with backing up and storing your data.

No Unexpected Upgrade Surprises

Making periodic upgrades to on-premise software can result in unexpected compatibility issues with other systems – make one update and you could end up needing to make three or four.

A cloud solution lives away from your machines, removing this possibility from the equation.

First-Rate Reliability

Whether you’re a business or an individual, system crashes and hardware failures are an inevitable part of life. We can’t stop them happening, but the impact can be lessened (or eliminated entirely) by backing up data and building in redundancies.

Cloud CRM systems keep your data safe because everything in the cloud is backed up; if one server goes down, another will instantly take its place.

Sure, you could build such a system yourself, but it’ll be expensive to put together and maintain – and it’s unlikely you can do it as well as a dedicated cloud host can.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.