CRM in Economic Downturn for SMB’s by Sage India

July 10, 2009 - PRLog -- The Challenge for Small and Mid-Sized Companies

The global downturn has brought about a dramatic increase in business failures over the last six months, and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the case of small and mid-sized businesses. Unlike bigger companies, where more cash on the balance sheet provides some degree of insulation, SMBs have seen a rapid decline in cash flow as a result of slowing customer demand and evaporating lines of credit.

There has been a sudden rush to cut spending as companies use every means at their disposal to restrict or eliminate activities that will not improve sales or the bottom-line in the near term. While this has been understandable, cost reduction on its own will not steer a business safely through the economic downturn. Businesses also need to examine how they can safeguard revenues and profitability, and particularly within their own customer base. Otherwise, they are just delaying the inevitable: more painful cost reductions and the very real possibility of sliding into an irrevocable decline.

How Sage CRM Solutions can help organizations to:

Lowering costs and driving productivity within your sales operations
Sage CRM Solutions empower organisations to sell more effectively and efficiently during a downturn. Sales executives have a single point of access for calendars, accounts, reports, pipeline management, contacts and call lists; all of which ensure that they are producing more revenue per sales hour. Easy-to-use analytical tools help your sales team to identify latent sales opportunities which exist within your customer database, and then create cross-sell and up-sell propositions accordingly

Lowering costs and driving productivity within your marketing operations

In the downturn, buyers are demanding even greater value-for-money and are exercising further discretion in the products and services that they purchase. Sage CRM Solutions allow you to develop a deep understanding of your customers’ needs; enabling you to create a tailored proposition that can be communicated to them through their preferred marketing channels. Sage CRM Solutions provide effective controls for monitoring marketing budget and enable you to calculate direct revenue yields per campaign.

Lowering costs and driving productivity within your customer service operations

Sage CRM Solutions will enable your company to roll-out Web-based customer self-service quickly and cost effectively. From here, users can service their own information needs, track data and update the system without the requirement for customer service assistance and at the time and place of their choice. Additionally, you can maximise the synchronisation between your service agents and your customers, ensuring that cases are progressed in a timely manner and in accordance with service level agreements

Why CRM?

First and foremost, CRM helps you to protect revenues from your current customers by ensuring that you are delivering exceptional service and safeguarding their loyalty notwithstanding increasing cost pressures. Additionally, by providing deeper insight into your customers, CRM enables you to unearth latent revenue opportunities within your customer base for complementary products and services. It allows you to leverage these opportunities and proactively grow your revenue share through highly focussed business development programmes which replace sporadic interaction with true customer lifecycle management. CRM, therefore, helps you deliver exceptional and personalised service consistently to your customers during these challenging times.

Selling more to existing customers may be the first priority during a downturn, but the important task of acquiring new customers cannot be overlooked. Without growth in customer numbers, any business runs the risk of exhausting its revenue base over the medium term. Selling to new prospects, however, is generally regarded as being five to ten times more costly than selling to an existing customer, so improving sales and marketing efficiency will be vital for growing your customer numbers during the downturn. CRM, and the latest generation of CRM products from companies like Sage in particular, have an important role to play in this regard. In times of recession, CRM solutions can allow you to extend the reach and effectiveness of your new business sales and marketing programmes through on-going process improvements, productivity enhancements and significant cost savings.

In a downturn, therefore, CRM enables you to:

1.   Grow your revenue share within your existing customer base
a.   Understand the true cross-sell and up-sell opportunity of every one of your customers in order to maximise the profitability of every relationship
b.   Dramatically reduce your cost-per-lead by delivering highly targeted marketing communications to specific customers or customer segments.
c.   Cut the amount of time and cost it takes to resolve service issues without compromising an exceptional service experience that keeps your customers loyal.
d.   Provide decentralised empowerment to your customer-facing staff in a way that will drive their productivity and effectiveness while still retaining central control over headline resource, performance and budget management.

2.   Capture new businesses at a far lower cost-of-sale than was possible previously
a.   Lower your cost-of-sale by always ensuring that your sales team is focussed on the opportunities that are most likely to close.
b.   Dramatically reduce your cost-per-lead by delivering highly targeted and consistent marketing messages to specific prospects or market segments.
c.   Introduce marketing accountability, so you can ensure that you are getting the right level of return from every marketing dollar that you spend.
d.   Ensure consistent processes are followed, with clear key performance indicators (KPI) which create solid discipline and greater predictability for sales and service personnel.
e.   Strip administration out of your organisation, so there’s less paperwork, errors and task repetition, and less cost as a result.
f.   Provide decentralised empowerment to your business development staff in a way that will drive their productivity and effectiveness while still retaining central control over headline resource, performance and budget management.

Why Now?

Your customers and potential customers are facing identical cost pressures, and they have changed their purchasing patterns accordingly. In many cases, they are spending less than before. But in all cases, they are looking for even greater value for money, and being far more discerning about potential purchases and potential suppliers.  As a result, you will need to work a lot harder to earn their business during the downturn. This challenge, coupled with the fact that cost inefficiencies will become even more pronounced as the downturn progresses, means that businesses are likely to experience significant  and growing trading pressures as each month passes.

As a result, one of the biggest potential mistakes a company can make at the moment is to continue with in a ‘business as usual’ mode notwithstanding exceptional trading circumstances. The ‘cost of doing nothing’, therefore, is significant.

About Sage India
Sage has over 1000 customers in India for its CRM, ERP, Payroll and HRMS products across industries like, Trading & Distribution, Manufacturing, Services, IT/ITES, Financial Services, Media, Travel, Hospitality .

For more information please visit http://www.sagesoftware.co.in

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Sage Software India (P) Ltd is a subsidiary of The Sage Group plc, a leading international supplier of business management software solutions and related products and services for small to mid-sized businesses.