A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is one of the key tools in any organization. It helps ensure that everyone is aligned, offering insights into the relationships and interactions among different departments, as well as reporting on past performance and future opportunities.
It’s not surprising that CRM systems have evolved over time. They are no longer just sales tools for gathering customer and prospect information; they now include other departments like Marketing and Support, creating a unified record system. The development of CRMs goes beyond their business applications to encompass the partners that have broadened their ecosystem. Many companies, including Introhive, work to improve your CRM data and provide fresh insights and value.
While CRMs are endlessly helpful, they’re only as useful as their data. Unless you’re taking a proactive approach and constantly staying on top of your records management, your CRM system might not be living up to its potential.
Let’s take a look at 5 areas of CRM that you can optimize to take it to the next level:
- Data Automation
It’s critical that all data housed within your CRM is as accurate and up-to-date as possible. In order to keep all information neat and tidy, some housekeeping is required. Here are two places to start:
Marketing – Marketing forms often sync their content into your CRM database. To minimize clutter always check to ensure that you have the correct fields mapped and that your duplication rules are still in place as not to pollute your CRM with unnecessary data.
Sales – A recent Introhive study showed salespeople are spending 5+ hours each week logging data surrounding their business interactions. Sales automation tools not only free up time by logging this information, they also ensure that the information is attached to the proper records in a timely fashion, keeping the rest of the organization up-to-date.
- Stale Fields
The needs of your organization are constantly changing, and one of the great things about a CRM tool is that you can easily customize it to match these changes. The simplest way to do this is by creating new fields on your records, but they can easily pollute your data over time. Take time to audit your custom fields every 6 months – it’s a great way to confirm you’re capturing all required information, while helping to identify which historic fields can be deleted.
- Stale Records
Running stale record reports is a great way to drum up business that’s right under your nose. These records are usually ones that someone has reached out to in the past but the timing simply wasn’t right, so they were promptly forgotten. By running reports to show you which accounts haven’t been communicated with in say, a year, you can layer in relationship data (e.g. our relationship mapping) to identify if anyone of your co-workers know the person to help jumpstart a new conversation. On the other hand, some stale records simply aren’t moving – label them as Dead/Inactive to make sure you’re only focusing on accounts with possibility.
- Outdated 3rd Party Providers
As your company continues to evolve, you likely deal with a number of 3rd party providers to help your sales, marketing, and support efforts. As vital as these tools can be for achieving greater results from your CRM, ensure you’re revisiting these 3rd party CRM tools every year and delete the ones no longer in use.
5. Reports & Dashboards
CRM reporting is often viewed as one of the most powerful features inside a CRM system, as it’s beneficial to almost everyone within your organization. But having all these one-off reports and dashboards housed inside your CRM can make locating the information you require a chore. It’s important to occasionally revisit all the reports and dashboards inside your CRM to make sure they serve a purpose and are being put to use, instead of simply taking up space.
Is there an area of your CRM that is important to optimize that we’ve missed? We’d love to hear it!