Guest opinion: Inese Kingsmill, SMB Director, Microsoft Australia

Building and maintaining strong, solid relationships with customers is essential to the success of any business. According to Adam Sarner, Gartner analyst who focuses on the customer relationship management (CRM) industry, obtaining a new customer is 10 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

It’s no secret that automating and integrating business processes previously confined to paper based systems, disparate applications was proven to be a cornerstone for effectively managing customer relationships. However, until recently, affordable technology designed specifically to meet the CRM needs of businesses was hard to come by. But that’s all changed – and for the better.

Sales and service are fundamental to an organisation’s success when meeting customer needs. If salespeople can’t manage leads and opportunities, sales will doubtlessly be lost. Customer service is equally important. When service is poor, contracts renewing can slip through the cracks and employees and customers become increasingly frustrated.

Identifying areas to improve processes by automating sales and customer service procedures is a key part of implementing a successful CRM strategy, which can improve employee productivity while increasing profitability for a business.

Another huge challenge businesses face is coordinating massive amounts of sales information that comes from a wide variety of sources and locations and in several different formats. The right CRM solution gives a sales force the ability to track and manage leads efficiently from any source and then draw on reporting capabilities to evaluate which methods of looking for customers.

Using integrated CRM technology, the data entered by field sales teams can be automatically assigned to the correct representative based on territory or product by the time they return to the office. It doesn’t stop there: the marketing manager can access the data to run reports that demonstrate, for example, the effectiveness of various sales activities.

The right CRM solution also helps businesses drive profits with better service to Internet based customers. When they visit the site, a CRM solution can automatically assign the right sales lead to them, cutting back on lag time. The technology can also manage e-mail or direct mail campaigns, including special promotions, based on data already gathered. Further, leads that turn into customers and sales opportunities can be tracked through the system.

The benefits of a solid CRM strategy and the accompanying technology don’t end with customer-facing features. The data gathered during customer interactions will prove invaluable when it comes to planning, budgeting and forecasting, which transfers into more opportunities to plan and manage growth more strategically.

With this in mind, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is designed to work the way you do, work the way your business does and work the way technology should. Microsoft CRM provides the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. With modules for sales, marketing, and customer service, Microsoft CRM delivers a fast, flexible, and affordable solution that drives consistent, measurable improvements in every business process, enabling closer relationships with customers and helping to achieve new levels of profitability.

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