Sure, you can always implement off-the-shelf CRM software. That is good enough to help you out through generic purposes. But does it exactly fit your business requirements? No, it doesn’t, because it cannot. But when you opt for CRM customization, you shift the entire internal business management paradigm. You can tweak, modify, and add features designed solely for your unique enterprise.
Think about it. In a world where companies prioritize personalized customer experiences over everything, wouldn’t you rather settle for a software solution that is customized as per your business needs? By the way, did you know according to Finances Online, CRM can boost conversion rates by 300%?
Tailored CRM solutions that are built on Zoho help you extensively in managing enormous lead inflow, strengthening sales strategies, and improving customer experiences. Most importantly, they allow you to capitalize on your CRM-collected customer data to drive long-term customer relationships. A quality CRM is customized as per your industry nomenclature, including various features and a pipeline that covers the sales stages that your business particularly needs.
This blog sheds light on the key aspects of the importance of CRM customization for your business.
It is unusual for businesses to match their requirements with off-the-shelf generic CRM software. You are certainly not trying to make yourself fit in the limitations of such applications. You would want you expand your provisions. And you cannot execute your out-of-the-box business ideas when you don’t possess a perfect configuration. It can include basic features like setting up user profiles, importing data, or creating widgets for dashboards that are useful to your business. You might also need extensive customized changes. All these depend on the size of your company and your business-specific needs.
Generally, when we think of customization, we think about its steep price. But in reality, it is much more cost-effective. Most readymade or on-demand CRM systems have subscription-based pricing models that depend on the number of users. However, there are limitations. You might often find features that are not useful for your business, yet you end up being charged for them. But when you try to tweak your solution with advanced features that your business currently needs, you might have to pay too much or even replace the whole software. It consumes your valuable time and money. IBM reports that the ROI of a CRM software system when properly implemented, can exceed 245%.
Your priority is your customers and delivering delightful experiences to them. A CRM software is a tool that enhances your business in every possible way. It is a tool to help you out and not something that needs your constant vigil. With CRM customization, you can enable automation features that eliminate redundant tasks and obtain data that marks remarkable changes in regards to marketing and sales performance. You can easily execute strategic planning focused on customers, develop a solid sales process, and enhance their experiences.
There is nothing more valuable than the active customer base for a business as they are the sole reason that drives the consistent financial health of your business. CRM solutions are adept at building and maintaining solid relationships with your clientele. Since your application is customized to your particular requirements, it helps you enhance your business operations to deliver seamless customer experiences.
A company becomes successful only when the different operational departments collaborate as teams – as a whole. Your company is just not about the top marketers or the best salespeople. They are the various parts of your organization that drive your business and determine its success. So they need a platform that encompasses all data in a single place. With customized CRM software, you can empower them with user access rights based on job hierarchy so that they make do with all the information they require to win more opportunities.
For example, you can create provisions for your marketing and sales team to create communications segmented according to interests, increasing the performance of lead nutrition, etc.
With customization, you can extensively optimize your business process – make use of every piece of data to your advantage. A quality CRM software that is tailored to your unique business can offer you a series of reports and dashboards where you can segment and group information according to their type. You can customize and add up to 10 different dashboards to your home page for the most crucial data metrics.
Now, why is segmenting data so important? Simple. To keep your business on track. You can monitor the performance of your strategies through these objective metrics. CRM customization empowers you to identify bottlenecks, implement strategies, and make data-driven decisions to become more dynamic. Resco.net says 74% of companies say CRM technology gives better access to customer data.
There are abundant features that a CRM system holds. Above all, it comes with real-time data and analytics that enormously help you in decision-making to meet your financial goals. However, it can only offer you ample analytics when it gathers enough relevant data.
Here are some key aspects to focus on:
You are the best person who knows what exactly your business is, how the operations are, and what more it needs. Whether it is about keeping up with the momentum or improving to the fullest, you need to collect relevant data and locate them in a centralized place. With CRM customization, you can tailor business-specific data fields that can display streamlined information. You can spruce it up with additional fields, rearrange their positions, and define your homepage with the most crucial metrics that need your discreet attention regularly.
Speaking of data, you cannot but make do with reports and dashboards that display important information. While reports are more granular in structure, dashboards offer you visuals. You can customize them adequately so that they can provide you with key performance indicators (KPIs) and relevant insights. These particular modules enable you to track your business performance from every nook and corner. You can analyze the ROI of your marketing efforts, sales performance and activities, customer behavior, and other metrics.
Every business operates in its unique way. Certainly, your workflow is different from others. With a customized CRM in place, you can execute your workflow with advanced automation. Automation makes everything better, including your workflow rules. You can tailor your CRM with defined sales stages, set up automated notifications, and create and assign tasks to your teammates with a single click. Being super intuitive, a quality CRM captures real-time data and auto-updates itself to keep you informed about your business.
You are indeed going to/use a customized CRM solution to maintain relationships with your customers. Except it is more than just that. At some point, you might want to upgrade your system with other applications or data sources to make a power-packed solution. This integration allows seamless data exchange, brings all pieces of information under a unified space, and enhances your CRM capabilities.
To perform better, you might require customized functionalities added to your CRM features. This involves creating custom apps (with low-code development platforms) and extending the CRM’s capabilities through application programming interfaces or APIs.
Any kind of change is uncomfortable yet necessary. So when you do implement a customized CRM application, you must essentially foster increased CRM usage amongst your employees. Since the system gathers all real-time data, your sales, marketing, or support executives can rely more on making their decisions.
You make your business work with different departments. Certainly, you would want your teams to use the system regularly, resulting in a database that has more reliability and integrity. You need to educate them on the CRM benefits and how these support your business growth. So that your team members become CRM advocates and believe that the software will help them to get more productive.
Here are some statistics to consider. Finances Online reports that 22% of sales professionals are still unsure about what CRM is. 32% of sales representatives spend more than an hour each day on manual data entry due to the lack of CRM adoption and 43% of CRM users only use less than half the features of their CRM system.
All your team members may be involved with the CRM. A user-friendly customized solution empowers your teams to be more cohesive and collaborative. You need to educate them on the CRM benefits and how these support your business growth so that your teams become CRM advocates too.
CRM is much more than a tool that helps you manage relationships with clients. If implemented properly, it is practically the base of your business. On top of that, when you do customize your CRM software, there is no way other than success. CRM customization helps you match your unique workflows, optimize data layouts and business processes.
You are just a click away from improving business efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, and gaining actionable data insights. Schedule a free 90-minute no-obligation with our expert team.