Clare Dorrian offers some fantastic insight over at Inside CRM this week. As I wrote a little while back, economic pressure forces many CIOs to make sure that CRM software projects are not just totally justified, but are implemented flawlessly. Otherwise, they're likely to be among the first projects chopped by a CFO.
Dorrian offers a few key tips for CIOs to help justify CRM software purchases to CFOs. Among them:
- Build the case by focusing on clear business needs. Companies subject to SOX have little excuse not to document customer interactions.
- Emphasize a customer-centric approach. CRM software shouldn't just be about making life easier for managers or for marketers. There should be a tangible, measurable improvement in service delivery that makes your company more attractive to repeat customers.
- Use CRM software to respond to customer needs and requests. If you use your inbound communications tools to understand which customers have requested which products and features, you can more easily connect with them after you hustle their dream offerings to market.
The best news is that you don't have to be a big business to but Dorrian's ideas to work. Since many small business CRM systems offer pay-as-you-go pricing, you can easily implement these ideas in your mom-and-pop shop. This is especially important if mom is the CFO and pop is the CIO.
No comments:
Post a Comment