CRM-system - the cure for all ills. Yes or no?

Many executives today, especially in small businesses, internally feel the need for change. Rapidly changing customer behavior and economic assumptions are forcing them to look for ways and tools to modernize the company and improve the sales situation. This creates a market myth that if you need to improve sales, customer relationship management is an essential attribute. Whether this is in fact the case, we tried to examine in this material. It the company wants to develop its business, then you should think about reliable erp development services.

The Russian CRM market is not an easy thing. First of all, because in this segment of the software, at least in Russia and the CIS, there is no clear idea of the boundaries of CRM-systems in many developers, and the presence in their products alien functionality, such as "staff schedule" (yes, and such encountered) presented the market as "the realization of the characteristics of the domestic market. The second reason - about this also much has been said - is the lack of a clear understanding among business leaders (and not just small, by the way) of the problems that hinder the development of their business.

The Russian CRM market is not an easy thing. First of all, because in this segment of the software, at least in Russia and the CIS, there is no clear idea of the boundaries of CRM-systems in many developers, and the presence in their products alien functionality, such as "staff schedule" (yes, and such encountered) presented the market as "the realization of the characteristics of the domestic market. The second reason - about this also much has been said - is the lack of a clear understanding among business leaders (and not just small, by the way) of the problems that hinder the development of their business.

As A.Smith said, demand breeds supply, so we have what we have, including CRM-systems with staffing.

In my opinion, the roots of this problem are as follows: if the system "does" the balance sheet (Form #1 and #2), and also allows you to print a payment order - it is most likely a system for accounting (and the vast majority of directors I know do not want anything to do with accounting), and on this basis it is not suitable for sales management. If the system has something for personnel accounting, it's probably for human resources, and not suitable for sales management either. In some cases a system for financial management accounting is used for sales management, but also only by amount and only by fact.

The result is a paradoxical situation - the accountant works in his 1C, the personnel manager also works in 1C, but another one, the storekeeper works in something else, the sales department works in MS Excel, and the manager has nothing at all! Well, maybe something for financial accounting, which is rare. And even in this case, the manager receives data retroactively, because any financial systems (except stock exchange and banking systems) are not designed to work in real time.

That is, there is no system that allows you to understand the operational situation and make decisions. And in reports, which the manager receives data from various sources, and even manually put together, there may be unreliable information: turnovers and sales may fall, turnover may increase ... Well, then everything happens very simply: the search engine enters the phrase "How to improve the firm" or "How to improve sales", and the answer is the proposals of numerous suppliers of systems to improve sales or increase the efficiency of the enterprise. As the product descriptions suggest, the vast majority of them are CRM systems. They don't.

This article will not look at types of CRM-systems or similar solutions, on the contrary, we will try to understand whether you need exactly CRM-system today or not. More precisely, whether or not a CRM-system is able to solve your problems and / or problems. And by CRM-system here means exactly what is understood by the majority of her potential customers - sales management and, at best, also marketing.

If you look at the management of an enterprise and its basic processes in terms of Okun's "leaky bucket" model, you get the following picture:

Interpretation of the above figure would be as follows: marketing and sales department act as a source of sales, bucket - resources for sales implementation - production of products, shipment of goods or provision of services, preparation of primary and other documents, service, etc. If we look at this figure in terms of classes of information systems, we get the following picture:

That is, in fact SFA-systems (and this class of systems has in mind the vast majority of customers, mistakenly looking for a CRM-system to manage internal sales processes) can somewhat enhance the "pressure water" (the number of primary sales at the entrance, and temporarily, because in any market the number of customers is certain, and rumors spread very quickly), but in no way affect neither the quality of the rest of the company, nor on customer satisfaction.

In the domestic market today, the systems referred to the blue field is not so much - the leadership of the products of the company "1C", in second place on the prevalence of products Microsoft Dynamics, etc. These products, as a rule, are complex, more precisely, not even complex, but requiring a certain order and discipline.

And it is because of this need for order and discipline that very many companies do not work, because there is no understanding of the work process as such (How to recruit people? How to sell? How to communicate information? Where do you keep your product data?) The paradox occurs when it seems necessary to solve a problem and you don't want to put much effort into it, and it is that the company begins to look for a simple solution for small money, with little functionality, but understandable to employees and management.

But can this solution be really useful? I'm not sure. But exactly sure that without putting in order the internal processes in the company to engage in a CRM project makes no sense - the money is spent, the effect does not get.

In order for you to understand exactly where your problem is - too little "pressure" of new customers or too much leakage - I suggest you answer a few questions, and you will see for yourself:

• What percentage of new sales (first-time customers) to the total number of sales for the period, for example, December 2013?
• How many customers came to you for the second time on their own?
• In which departments do you have the greatest turnover?
• How often do you have conflicts with clients due to incorrect or untimely paperwork?
• What companies do your employees go to after working for you?
• How many more clients (in units) did you get in the last year?
• What problems do you as a manager solve most often?

If most of your sales are new, customers do not buy a second time, and you as a manager deal mostly with the interaction of employees or departments, believe me, you need not a CRM-system, and enterprise management system, perhaps not very complicated, but with a completely different functionality than the CRM, and solving the problems that need: streamlining and improving transparency of business processes within the company.