THREE STRATEGIC IMPERATIVES TO CONSIDER A MOBILE CRM
1. Execution
In this hyper-competitive environment, ability-to-execute will define an organization's success. Execution is all about getting things done in an effective and efficient manner.
This becomes more relevant when your business relies on customer-facing teams. They are usually juggling and balancing many activities.
Companies' priority should be to make their team’s time best utilized for revenue-generating activities. Their teams should not spend time on mundane non-revenue tasks. That way, high productivity levels will help in meeting company objectives.
2. Customer Intelligence
Customer intelligence is another aspect that feeds into business performance. Superior intelligence about customers will help you gain competitive advantage to outperform competition.
We all know that reps who engage with customers often will have the most intelligence. It is thus imperative for organizations to make sure this intelligence gets captured. And also have a process to keep this intelligence for future use.
3. User Adoption
User adoption is a critical factor for successful CRM (Customer Relationship Management) initiative. As per an analyst report, more than 46% of CRM projects fail due to poor user-adoption. Organizations will have to consider all aspects to drive adoption for a successful project.
KEY FACTORS FOR SELECTING THE RIGHT MOBILE CRM
While making a mobile CRM investment, one needs to consider requirements of end users as well as organizations.
1. End-User Perception
End-users perceive CRM as a tool meant for managers to track team's activities. Reps believe CRMs only benefit managers to micro-manage, and it is not meant for their needs. As a result, users are usually not very motivated to use CRM systems.
Business leaders and managers will need to fix this perception. They should position the CRM initiative as one focused towards the rep's requirements. End users need to buy-in to the CRM plan without any hesitation.
2. Alignment of Priorities
Sales reps prefer to be left alone to focus on what they know best - sell. They like to be independent and creative when it comes to managing all their activities. They love to spend time with their customers and opportunities. And they hate to spend time on mundane activities that make them less productive.
Most reps believe that CRM tools do not add much value to their personal work. Rather, they think it is counter-productive.
They will use a mobile CRM app only when they see their productivity levels going up. They will engage with these tools once they see its impact on their personal performance.
3. Easy-to-Use
The biggest impediment for poor user-adoption is the factor of ease-of-use. It is very important for users to find the mobile CRM very easy to use and intuitive. They should find it as easy as any other app like whatsapp or Facebook app that they engage with.
The user interface (UI) , user experience (UX) and design aspects play a key role in motivating users to engage more often with the mobile CRM.
4. Lack of Customer Intelligence and Data Quality
It is reported that less than 30% of valuable customer information makes it into CRM systems. This is due to the many factors we discussed till now. Without adequate customer intelligence, organizations cannot leverage data for strategic decisions.
Companies need to motivate and make it easy for users to engage more with their mobile CRM solution. Only then will they have them capture intelligence about their customers and stakeholders.
5. High Attrition
High attrition among reps often leads to organizations losing out on valuable customer intelligence. This information could have been well leveraged to gain competitive advantage. Also, without access to this intelligence, new reps will take a lot of time to get productive.
Companies need to have a strategy to get their reps to capture all the intelligence. They will also have to make sure that the data is always available in the future and not lost due to attrition.
6. Industry Best-practices
A new CRM initiative should help companies adopt some industry best practices. It will then propel a learning culture in an organization to drive exemplary performance.
Over a period of time, organizations will start seeing amazing results. They will be able to justify the return on investment (ROI) of CRM.
7. Disconnected Processes
Disconnected processes always lead to inefficiencies across the value chain in any company. Digital intervention and automation go a long way in fixing many of these process gaps.
If executed well, tremendous efficiency gain is possible to boost business performance.
8. Excel Hell
Spreadsheets and excels are great tools for calculations and managing standalone data. But it gets complicated when you start running your business on these spreadsheets. It is not easy to control, manage and share these across the enterprise. Business dependency on these sheets leads to inefficiencies, data loss, inaccuracies and leakages.
Organizations will have to strive towards structured data with a single-version-of-truth. This is possible only through a proper CRM strategy.
9. Change Management
While introducing a new CRM solution, leaders should make change management very easy. Continuous communication with their teams would help everyone appreciate its strategic need. Teams should be onboard and support the new initiative.
CRM project roll-out needs to be well planned and thought-out with minimal disruption.
10. User Training
If not planned well, organizations end up spending a lot of effort and money to get users trained. It is important to select a mobile CRM that is very easy and intuitive; and does not require extensive training.
It will make it easy for users to embrace the CRM solution and use it well in a short time.
11. Ease of Deployment
Deployment of any new technology requires one to consider many factors. These include time, resources, governance, change management, training needs, best-practices, etc.
Easy deployment of a new CRM solution will improve the chances of a successful project. It will also reduce associated costs and risks.
12. Customization Needs
One needs to assess the amount of customization during the initial stage. It is important to make sure that there are no surprises later.
The mobile CRM solution needs to meet the team's expectations when they start using it. This will also have a direct bearing on the effort, time and cost of implementation.
13. Total-Cost-of-Ownership (TCO)
Generally for any CRM initiative, organizations interact with two entities. One is the software vendor and other is the consulting or implementation partner. The latter provides consulting services towards configuration, customization, implementation and training.
Organizations thus end up budgeting for two vendors. This often leads to very high costs. One should also factor in expenses towards infrastructure and ongoing support.
14. Data Security
In this era of connected systems, data security and associated risks become very important. Data is the new fuel nowadays. One cannot afford to make any compromises when it comes to aspects on data security.
The CRM solution project should adhere to the best of the data security standards.
TOP 10 BENEFITS OF A MOBILE CRM
1. High User Adoption
With the right mobile CRM, one can expect very high user adoption and engagement. It should be like what we see in the case of popular apps viz. whatsapp, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.
2. More Customer Intelligence
High user adoption and engagement increases the amount of customer intelligence in the CRM. It also helps you improve and maintain the quality of data.
Mobile CRM app helps users to capture and update customer data with ease. This data could range from contact details, opportunity status updates, next steps, minutes of the meeting, competition activities etc.
3. Improved Sales Performance & Velocity
Your field-warriors should have easy access to customer information. That will empower them to better engage and interact with their customers. As a result, you will witness significant improvement in their performance and sales velocity.
Right mobile CRM will help them retrieve required data with ease. This could include customer data, past interactions, opportunity stages, next steps, pricing etc.
A recent research revealed that 65% of sales professionals working at companies with mobile CRM achieved their sales targets, as against 22% from companies without mobile CRM strategy.
4. Higher Productivity
There are unique features that mobile CRM solutions deliver for high user productivity.
These include voice-enabled notes, business card scanning, GPS to capture customer address, mobile personal assistant, calendar integration etc. With these, users can save a lot of time and can focus on their core business activities.
A recent study reported that the productivity levels of teams using mobile CRM increased by over 15%.
5. Competitive Advantage
Data is the new fuel. Due to above reasons, all the intelligence and insights will now get captured with a mobile CRM app. This information will always be available to feed in to better decision making. This can deliver unparalleled competitive advantage to any company.
6. Convenience
Users find it convenient to use a mobile CRM app as compared to any conventional desktop application. It provides customer-facing professionals the flexibility to use it anytime anywhere. They don’t have to now worry about carrying their heavy laptops everywhere. Also, it gets much faster to log in to mobile apps and easier to navigate through very few screens to get their job done.
7. Affordability
In the last few years, smartphones and tablets have become very affordable. Also, with BYOD policies, organizations need not make huge investments in devices.
Most mobile CRM solutions, like HappSales, are now available as software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription. As a result, organizations need not worry about huge upfront capex investments. This also allows them to reduce their risks.
8. Less Training Needs
Mobile CRM solutions are designed to be easy-to-use and intuitive. This eliminates the need for any extensive training.
9. Improved Success Rate of CRM projects
All the above factors make sure that the success rate of CRM solutions are now much higher with a mobile-first strategy
10. Leverage Gig Economy
New trends around the gig economy allow organizations to create a large talent pool. Companies can provide the associates with a simple mobile CRM app to get started. Reps can be empowered with required information to engage with clients. Features like attendance, punch-in punch-out, etc. helps companies to track team's activities.