Automation

Every sales person has a number of regular tasks that don't necessarily require a high degree of skill to perform yet consume a great deal of time. CRM software can make many routine tasks, such as processing an order, far simpler than they may otherwise have been. If, for example, a sales person has a key customer placing another order, a CRM system will ensure that the sales person easily call up the customer's data records, add the items on order and send the order to the fulfilment team within a matter of minutes. This saves the need to look up contact data in files, call fulfilment, fax product specifications and so forth.

Centralised customer data

Seen by many as the most important feature of CRM software, the ability for every sales person, the support team and even the finance department to call up all the information your company has on a customer can lead to significant productivity enhancement. Not only do sales people tend to file customer data in various discreet places, they also tend to 'lose' this data as time goes by. With a CRM system, customer data is always associated with the customer's profile and every action taken by your company with respect to that customer will become part of that customer's record.

Marketing

Centralised customer data makes it far easier to market to existing as well as prospective customers. If a sales team keeps their customer contact data in discreet places it becomes a difficult task to design and launch a marketing campaign that targets the complete customer database or segments across the complete customer database. Once customer data is centralised, marketing efforts can target the right customers with the right information at the right time which can prepare a group of customers for your sales people to leverage and thus drive revenues.

Reporting

Another important feature of a decent CRM system is the capacity to generate informative management reports. Not only will sales managers have readily accessible statistics on their sales force but they will also have detailed information as to which products and which services sell better than others so that they can optimise the product offering to the needs of specific customers and market segments. Managers also know that sales revenue projections can be of enormous help in forward planning and some of the more advanced CRM systems have the ability to do produce intelligent projections based upon historical data, seasonal and other factors.

Remote working

It has become increasingly important – and possible – for sales people to work away from the office. Time spent in a hotel in a far off city or in a different country no longer needs to be downtime. CRM software can give sales people the ability to access data from outside the office as if they were at their desk, whether it is pulling up contact information, processing orders or updating a customer's profile – thanks to CRM all of these activities can now be performed remotely. This ensures that sales people can prepare for their next sales meeting without the need to return to base.