May 19, 2014
Don't think of -- or use -- CRM as a standalone sales automation system.
"Too often, companies assume that CRM starts and stops with sales," says Glenn Burnside, executive vice president of Engineering at Headspring, a provider of tailored software solutions, including CRM.
"As a result, they leave other departments out of the loop, limiting or completely denying them access to the system, and failing to properly integrate their CRM with other client-facing or client-informing systems," Burnside says. "For example, if you leave your Service Desk and CRM system unintegrated, your front-line support team may not be aware of recent changes to a customer's status or interactions that the sales team has had with them, so they miss out on a lot of opportunities to engage and build relationships."
"Companies should never think of CRM as a standalone system," says Eric Berridge, CEO of Bluewolf, a cloud consultancy. "Strategic integration of customer data from across different business systems can produce a highly personalized and even predictive marketing and sales approach," he says.
