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Why you should never postpone your CRM project
30 Mar, 2023
In times of economic uncertainty, many companies review and re-prioritise major investments, especially in IT. Although this is understandable, it also comes with risks, yet, quite often, not delivering on your major projects can create even more risk. When times get tough, it’s even more important to have insight and to carefully manage pipeline, opportunities, customer data and relations. Therefore CRM is a critical business system and every month delayed is a delay to improved sales performance and revenue growth.
Postponing your CRM project is a very bad strategic decision… In this blog I will explain why.
1. Insight is key
In times of uncertainty or disruption, insight is critical. You need to know which buttons you can press, where you can steer in order to optimize opportunity and sales management, customer journeys, and performance of campaigns. Modern CRM systems offer one version of the truth, enabling real time insights, reporting and fast decision making on business critical KPI’s.
2. Don’t delay building pipeline
Every month of delaying a CRM-project, you will delay the build of your pipeline, which will impact business in the long run, for sure. You won’t notice it straight away, but insufficient pipeline management will impact your business at a moment where probably you will need it more than ever.
3. Don’t lose leads, opps and customers
Building a relationship and trust is even more relevant in times of economic uncertainty. Modern CRM systems help you to manage leads and opportunities and carefully curate the customer journey. It provides insight in customer behavior and interactions, helping teams to understand and serve the customer base, improving the overall customer experience. Letting customer focus slide is something any business simply cannot afford.
4. Higher costs and lower efficiency
Postponing a CRM project may save costs on a short term, but it can actually increase costs on the long term. Modern customer engagement applications are able to automate a lot of manual and administrative tasks, including data management. Your teams can actually use their time much more effectively, creating more value – not having to worry about for example data entry or data quality.
5. Lack of data management
A CRM system demands a certain level of discipline. Implementing it comes with standardizing, streamlining and smoothing of operations and processes. The outcome is a huge improvement in data quality and management, which is essential for effective collaboration, reporting and decision-making. All of which are essential in times of economic disruption.
Manage risks now – and prepare for future disruptions
Sure, implementing a CRM system also comes with risks and challenges. We know that change management is critical for successful user adoption and thus for a positive ROI. Technical challenges around integration with existing systems can be complex. And we often see data quality issues arising, for example around data migration, that demand for a careful audit process.
Yet, the outcome of improved sales performance must outweigh the cost and disruption of upgrading your CRM compatibility – and it is during the toughest of times where CRM becomes the greatest need.
Want to bring your CRM project forward?
At HSO we have a wide experience implementing CRM and Customer Engagement platforms. We have done it before, so we know how to mitigate risks and challenges and get your organization up to speed fast. If you are considering a CRM implementation or optimization, our teams are here to help and get you well prepared for any disruption.
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