CRM – what it is and how it will help your business today

Posted on by Peter Panov

You are selling well. The number of your customers grows and your sales increase. Yes, you deserve to be congratulated for the results you have achieved, but you should not stop there.

Maybe you've reached the point where you're wondering how to keep that edge over your competitors? How to organize your salespeople so that they continue to attract customers? How to offer your current customers a sufficiently high-quality service, but also win new ones at the same time?

Even if you have a huge customer data base with thousands of contacts, good salespeople and a perfect product, none of them will guarantee you a consistent success. The key to it lies in the union of these three factors and the ability to control them. The CRM software is the tool that will make them work together.

An intuitive CRM software implemented with the right ERP system can be like a battery for your business. Just like in a car, you can have everything else - a powerful engine, a luxurious body, etc. However, without a battery, none of them will be able to serve you as intended.

Accumulating the data about your customers, tracking your relationship with them, noting every event, storing addresses, contacts, history of previous sales, invoices, offers... All this, collected together and managed properly, will give your business energy. Energy that will "ignite" the remaining components of it and you will be able to confidently move forward. 

CRM: Definition

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a software for building good and long-term relationships with potential and current clients. At Prim.io, however, we use the word "Partners" in addition to the word "Clients". Why are we making this differentiation? 

During our years of working with various companies, we have noticed that every "live" business does not work only with Clients - although they are the main fuel. Businesses also use suppliers of goods and/or services, have contacts with state organizations, with banks, with other of their own companies. Thus, to fully satisfy your needs, the CRM module of the ERP system Prim.io, aggregates and manages data about all people, businesses and/or organizations with which you have relationships.

Regarding customers, the CRM system manages personal data, contacts, addresses, events (phone calls, meetings, emails), the entire sales process, financial documents, payments, warehouse operations. In other words, all the processes that are related to the customer, starting long before the sale and continuing after it.

When it comes to other types of Partners, the CRM software does the same, but tailored to your relationship. For example - with Suppliers, it again includes all contact data, events, etc., but also adds information about requests, orders, expense financial documents, your payments to suppliers and warehouse operations. For government organizations and banks, the CRM also keeps things under control. This even includes the entry of specific documents such as customs declarations as well as the import of bank statements. All this to fully reflect the real life of your organization.

The CRM can do a lot, but the focus of this software, regardless of whether it is part of ERP (as is the case withPrim.io) or a stand-alone system, is customer management. Yes, the extra features are handy and help manage other processes as well, but its purpose is to make your Sales team unstoppable.

CRM: Main characteristics

#1: Customer data management

The CRM software allows you to organize information about each customer in a convenient and easy-to-use way. At the same time, this way must satisfy the needs of everyone from the marketer to the sales director, hence the need to have control over the displayed data.

The Client's folder in the CRM module of Prim.io is one of the main pillars on which the whole system is "supported". The information is rich because it is "drawn" from all other modules in real time. The folder is very well organized so that any actions can be performed directly from it without having to go out and search through the menus. This saves a lot of unnecessary clicking and searching of the right interface.

Combining all contact, sales and financial information into one integrated Client folder is a prerequisite for achieving better results in the sales department. When your employees have everything just a few clicks away, they do not waste time and can offer quality service, no matter how many Clients there may be.

During a conversation with a Client for example, your merchant can track the Client's previous purchases, predict his wishes. He can make faster and correct decisions according to the type of client, the services used, the history of all correspondence, meetings, complaints, even outstanding debts. The merchant can easily find out what special conditions he can offer (discounts, promotions) and thus effectively close deals. And bring more revenue to the company.

Here are the details on what the integrated Client folder contains:

  • Summary by different periods (until now, by year, month, day, freely chosen period)
    • Sold
    • Invoiced
    • Paid
    • Balance
    • Offers
    • Sales
    • Invoices
    • Payments
    • Receivables
    • Expenses
    • Profit
    • Profit, %
  • List of offers and their files
  • List of sales and their files
  • Financial documents and their files
  • Payments and their files
  • Rentals
  • Contracts
  • Customer cards
  • Finances
  • External files and documents
  • Contacts
  • Person of contact
  • Addresses
  • Bank accounts
  • Events

It is important to clarify the permissions to the CRM when it has so much data. Prim.io gives the possibility during the initial setup of the system, but also after that in the process of work, users can be placed in roles. Each role can have different access to customer information - sales people can see only sales and contacts, the finance team can also see financial documents, and the director has the entire customer file.

#2: Sales Management

Once you have a rich customer dossier with plenty of information and easy access to processes, the crucial moment comes to effectively manage all of this. Customer management often means sales management, and Prim.io offers several excellent sales solutions, including for your online sales.

A unified interface for all types of sales is also among the key features of Prim.io's CRM software. Its efficiency greatly benefits from the automated integration with ERP systems, incorporating numerous Bulgarian and international sales channels, payment systems, and carriers.

This includes integrations with external merchants (Amazon, eBay, eMAG), your own website or multiple sites (based on Cloudcart, Magento, Opencart, WooCommerce, Seliton), as well as integrations with the main carriers in the country – Speedy, Rapido, Econt.

In other words, regardless of where the sale comes from - a physical store, over the phone, from a website, or an external merchant - it will be reflected in the software and processed by your employees. The possibilities of errors and missed sales are minimized, while the possibilities for analysis and control are maximized.

Equal environment for all customers, regardless of the sales channel

The connectivity of channels and their integration into a single interface for all sales enables the creation of an equal environment for serving each customer, regardless of where they shop. This helps your team successfully track and process sales everywhere and at any time. Even work that happens outside the office will not need to be caught up on once the mobile merchant returns to the office. By giving access to your employees' mobile devices to a cloud service, important information doesn't arrive late but is reflected in real-time.

The sales interface also eliminates the difficulties in organizing pricing policies. When you have many sales channels, managing pricing policies can be quite a challenging task, but with Prim.io, you can standardize your pricing policies, lists, and promotions. And if you still decide they should differ, for example, selling cheaper only through your website, you can also organize and track it through the CRM software.

The sales interface and its settings allow for immense freedom in possible scenarios, so no matter how many different cases you have, they can be covered and managed in the system. More about Prim.io and how it can help you start, develop, or increase your multi-channel sales, you can read here.

#3: Pre-sales Process Management

Another key feature of CRM software is comprehensive management of sales opportunities. This includes organizing recommendations and offers, as well as the entire process of turning them into real deals. In other words, this is the Sales Pipeline interface, which makes the above complex words work much simpler than they sound.

The Sales Pipeline is an important tool for all sales management operations, and its proper use can lead to a substantial change in profit. It visualizes processes and shows where all your deals are in the "funnel," which are stagnant, and which commercial activities bring the highest revenue. Additionally, it adds a layer of reporting, making goals easier to achieve by breaking down the entire complex sales process into small, trackable tasks.

The Sales Pipeline in Prim.io divides the occurrence of a deal into several stages:

  • Start
  • Offer
  • Preparation
  • Processing
  • Inquiry
  • Order
  • Delivery

In the pre-sales process, potential buyers move from one stage to the next until finalizing the sale: for example, when contact is made, the record goes to "start," when an offer is sent, it goes to "offer," and so on. You can monitor the multitude of potential clients as they pass through the various stages. This will help you better plan your resources, optimize your activities, assess your conversion rate, as well as identify areas for improvement.

This way of illustrating the stages in the pre-sales process is important for merchants who often juggle many deal prospects and cannot afford to let any prospect slip away. For sales managers, this tool provides visibility into how each merchant operates, how quickly and what they sell, as well as which deals bring the highest return on investment for the company.

#4: Task Management

Another important feature of CRM software is managing all customer communications, combined with a ticket system and organizing employees' daily activities. In Prim.io, these functionalities are incorporated into the "Tasks" module.

The module allows for assigning various tasks to all users in the system. The greatest advantage here is freedom - tasks can serve you according to your needs, for example:

  • As a way to manage daily activities in the company. Each employee can assign tasks to themselves (as well as send tasks to another user) and use the module as a "to-do list" and calendar with all phone calls, meetings, emails, document issuance, etc. This way, no important work will be missed, each task will have an executor, increasing traceability, employee efficiency, and management control.
  • As a means of internal communication within the company. Instead of sending emails, writing via Skype/Viber/Slack, or other communication channels, you can use the module to assign tasks to your employees with different priorities, deadlines, etc.
  • As an internal ticket system for receiving complaints and complaints by phone/email/verbally. By registering the ticket-task, you immediately trigger a complaint/complaint processing process and automatically direct it to the correct department/employee. This will give you an even greater competitive advantage because customer inquiries can be addressed without interrupting the conversation with the customer.

#5: BI Analyses

Using a BI module as part of the CRM system turns business analyses into part of the operational work. This facilitates access to information and increases traceability and control over business processes.

With Prim.io, you can make queries on productivity, sales opportunities, and promotional activities even from your phone and tablet, during important meetings or in your free time. This saves valuable time for managers because BI analysis can be done anytime, anywhere, without correspondence with other departments, waiting, or additional processing.

With the built-in tools in the ERP system for BI analyses in Qlik Sense, you measure real results and have a full view of the company's activities. Thanks to in-depth queries and analyses, you see their effectiveness based on various key performance indicators (KPIs). More information about the Business Intelligence technology used by Prim.io can be found here.

CRM functionality for queries and analyses is offered completely free of charge when using our ERP system. It updates automatically, without any effort on your part and without data loss. Working with BI does not require additional implementation, training, or additional expenses.

#6: Categorization and Customer Lists

Creating customer lists, categorizing them, and grouping them according to your company's needs are also important features of any good CRM software. In Prim.io, you can organize the companies you work with according to the type of relationships with them, sort them by loyalty, size, or other criteria chosen by you.

The functionality is useful in practice for the following cases:

  • You can use customer lists with their contact information for your marketing purposes (e.g., mailing lists).
  • You can mark incorrect customers and thus save yourself future losses.
  • You can mark already non-existent customers to redirect your salespeople's energy elsewhere.
  • You can mark only active customers to focus on them
  • You can track their statuses based on the default criteria:
    • Untreated
    • Initial contact
    • Agreed meeting
    • Awaiting response
    • Contract conclusion
    • Active
    • Inactive
    • Lost
    • Incorrect

CRM: How Will It Help Your Business Today?

CRM Will Give You Control

All contact information (incoming or outgoing), potential, current, and archived clients is in one repository, accessible anytime and from any internet-enabled device. This will finally allow you to standardize your customer interactions, gain control, and your employees won't "stray" from the protocol because they will have everything they need to follow it.

CRM Will Help You Avoid Losing Money

Companies invest a lot of effort to attract customers, and some of them spend significant amounts on advertising. Properly storing, organizing, and utilizing customer data through CRM software will justify these expenses or help you realize where they need to be redirected.

CRM Will Analyze Your Next Business Strategy With You

Thanks to the CRM system, all work-related information is gathered in one standardized database. As a result, the manager can analyze work statistics and generate various reports. And with the built-in Business Intelligence module, important analyses and information will be systematized, timely, and in the desired format (tabular, graphical representation). You will now have everything you need to build your next business plan.

CRM Will Put an End to Missed Opportunities

Stop losing potential clients due to delays or poor service. CRM streamlines processes and increases the efficiency of your salespeople, marketing, and all departments. When you have a platform to rely on, where the history of processes, your customers' requirements, and meetings with them are documented, you won't miss out on deal opportunities. You'll stop losing money because you'll adhere adequately to your partners' requirements.

CRM Will Increase Your Competitiveness

Imagine leaving client information in an unknown Excel spreadsheet or in a folder in the archive. Your client calls, but you're not oriented, you don't quickly and easily find the information, and you waste their time. This inadequate and slow response could "push" your client into the hands of the competitor.
Imagine another situation - your two best salespeople are aggressively pursuing the same opportunity or a new client. This serious pressure could annoy the client, and they might end up with a competitor.
With centralized CRM software in a good ERP system, your employees will eliminate possible errors. They won't lag behind in their schedules or reactions and will be more competitive.

CRM: Advantages of the CRM Module on Prim.io

Detailed Real-Time Customer Information

Prim.io provides a universal interface for both querying and performing various operations. This concentrated information will not only help streamline your own activities but also your entire sales team. They'll be more adequate and quick in their daily communication and in setting their priorities.

Integrated Files with Events and Notifications

The rich files contain not only financial and sales information, documents, contacts, and addresses but also every communication with the counterparts. Record every event - phone call, meeting, email communication, but also don't miss important events through the system's notifications for upcoming ones.

Support for Various Types of Counterparties

Don't limit yourself to just one type of client and/or supplier - separate them and make their pricing easier, and your reports and analyses even more detailed. Prim.io allows you to categorize your counterparties according to the type of relationship with them, as well as to group them according to criteria chosen by you.

Access from Different Devices

By using CRM as a cloud service like Prim.io, you have access to your data and documents from anywhere, as long as you have internet access. You can work across different devices - computers, phones, tablets, and more. You have access to the data from a web browser on a computer, from a phone, or from a desktop application.

No Need for Technical Personnel and Additional Expenses

When you purchase Prim.io, there is no need to hire technical personnel to take care of your servers and infrastructure. We take care of them at no additional cost. This reduces the expenses for maintaining the system, and there is no need to invest in computer servers.

Minimal Implementation Costs

Forget about the high upfront and ongoing costs of purchasing and managing CRM/ERP. To start working with Prim.io right away, you don't need to pay for a license or invest your money in another initial investment. The only expense for our service is the fixed monthly fee. This allows you to better plan your monthly finances and saves you money.
The monthly payment depends on the selected pricing plan - Prim.Start, Prim.Plus, or Prim.Pro and includes the necessary basic and additional functionalities for your business. Additionally, this price includes support, updates, and hosting of the service. Things for which other ERP software requires additional payment.

Start in a Minimal Timeframe

Save time, avoid complexities, and costs with cloud implementation. Start today by registering for a free demo system. If you like it, we can make it real directly, without wasting your time. Improve the efficiency of your entire work with a solution that you can implement literally within a few days.

Scale Together with Your Business

You determine the details, and we immediately provide you with an innovative software platform tailored to your needs and budget. Don't worry that as your company grows, the CRM will stop working well. In case our client expands significantly in the future and needs more additional disk space for their data, we will provide it. And if you need additional functionalities, you can also rely on us.

Always Up-to-Date Software

Our CRM solution offers your business more for less. But that doesn't mean you'll only have access to the version you purchased. With Prim.io, you'll automatically receive updates to old features and access to new features as we develop them. So you can always be sure that you're using the most up-to-date and improved version of your software.