What Integrated CRM Software Brings to Your Organization
From class and event creation, scheduling, marketing, registration, accounts receivables management, memberships, donor solicitation, customer communications, and many other daily tasks, every aspect of your operations contributes to your overall results and success.
While this means there are many opportunities to improve and grow, it also means that there is a lot to manage and keep track of, which is why you need good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Ideally your CRM should be one that was designed and created for your type of organization, and which is integrated to your class management, fundraising, accounts receivables, class registration and membership processes. In this article we will explore the benefits of scalable and customizable CRM software and the benefits that can be gained as well as some of the questions you should consider when evaluating different tools for you organization or business.
No organization works in isolation so staying in tune with the market and industry you operate in is just as important as knowing what’s going on internally. You might have a talent for spotting new opportunities but, if you want to grow your business or non-profit you need visibility across your entire organization and have your entire organization’s needs aligned with access to a full picture of each customer and their activity.
There’s an entire industry of software tools designed for customer relationship management (CRM) however many of these are geared heavily toward enterprise sales cycles or require heavy customization and expense to utilize in an organization such as a school, member organization, camp or workshop centric organization. Do not worry though, there are tools specifically designed for your type of organization.
How can CRM Software help your business?
Below are just a few areas where CRM can help your business:
- Improved efficiency for your staff
- Improved customer / member retention and cross participation
- Greater customer satisfaction
- Increased registrations
- Increased donor support
- Increased memberships
- Better forecasting and reporting
But how do you take advantage of customer relationship management to do this?
Former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch insisted that the secret to making it to the top of your industry (and staying there) starts on the inside:
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
Welch left GE in 2001, but his words about the importance of transforming learning into actions still ring true today.
In a time when all the information you need is supposedly at your fingertips, managers are continually overwhelmed by the amount of data compiled on customers and how to best make sense of it all. Membership subscriptions, class registrations, waitlists, donations, promotional campaign data, solicitation campaigns, website conversion rates, sales forecasts, traffic stats, budget info, demographic profiles: the list of numbers and the quantity of spreadsheets and data goes on and on and on and grows every day.
Tracking participation metrics and understanding your constituents and students better allows you to make better decisions—your future success hinges on how well it’s done—so successful organizations invest in the best possible data management tools available.
Many organizations neglect data management, including customer data.
Microsoft Excel was used as a primary finance tool by 69% of American companies with annual revenues under $25 million as recently as 2018—a prime example of how many organizations aren’t making use of newer and more effective tools to keep track of how they’re doing.
Spreadsheets are not the most user-friendly way to share data within a small team. For a business looking to grow, spreadsheets can become a significant productivity-killer. They also require a lot of manual data entry and increase the risk of human error.
If you are still utilizing spreadsheets for finance, sales, and all manner of organizational data management it is important to make sure that the reason stems from a well-planned strategy, and not a fear of change.
Here’s why:
Dimension Data’s 2017 Digital Workplace Report surveyed over 850 companies and found that 62% perceived I.T. barriers as the biggest obstacle to adopting new technologies, however helpful, to the workplace.
The same study also found that 61% haven’t defined a strategy for how technology is used within their organization.
If you believe I.T. is an obstacle to implementing a data management strategy that you know will take your business to the next level, then it’s time for you to consider a truly integrated, hosted system for registration, donor management, class management, and CRM.
Without CRM Software you give away an advantage
One of the key benefits of an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system is that it is designed to break down the communication gaps in your organization. In other words, it gets you, and everyone around you, organized around the same information to make better more informed decisions.
Integrated CRM systems give you and your team easy access to the insights needed to steer the organization towards shared goals by integrating the activity of your members and customers with demographic data, historical class and event participation, communication histories, capital campaign and donor histories, and the shared relationships that exist amongst your customers and the organizations and families they are a part of.
As technologically advanced as they may sound, the best integrated CRM should also be user-friendly and totally manageable without any expert IT knowledge or in house I.T. support—quality solutions will also have onboarding / implementation services for new customers and ongoing training and support resources. Away goes the “IT barrier” problem and in comes a new era of higher productivity and focus.
Here are just 3 of the many ways a CRM tool can really help give you a competitive edge:
1. Spend fewer hours handling admin work
Manual data entry is not only less reliable, but also a waste of your most important resource: time. You should be focusing your efforts on more strategic activities. An integrated CRM will automate the collection of important information about customers, members, donors and more through a wide range of features designed to make you more productive.
2. Easily manage and automate processes
Many processes can be automated through the use of an integrated CRM. Activities such as registration can be moved online so that customers can register themselves and their families online or through their mobile devices. Automated confirmations and class details can be sent upon registration and payments and donation pledges can be automatically collected through bank drafts or credit cards and this is just the start of what is possible especially if your CRM includes API tools allowing you to further integrate the system to other aspects of your operations.
Using process automation, integrated CRM tools help you and your team automate even the most complex processes. This not only make it easier to handle day to day operations but also to keep track of performance based upon real time data and activity.
3. Get visual data insights when you need them
Instead of sifting through spreadsheets for hours, an integrated CRM will give you a snapshot of your most vital information through visual and easy-to-read dashboards, reports and custom data query capabilities.
Make your digital workplace agile, mobile, and low-cost
“Digital transformation is no longer an initiative used by progressive companies to increase efficiency or gain a competitive edge over their peers—it is a requirement for all businesses to thrive in the future.” – Gartner
An integrated CRM should be cloud-based, meaning that the data is secure and accessible no matter where you are. The future of the workplace is not just digital, it’s mobile.
In one study, Gartner predicts that over 50% of the world’s international enterprises would have fully transitioned to an all-in cloud strategy by 2021.
Lightweight and scalable, CRM software is designed to grow alongside your business, making it the ultimate tool of choice if you’re looking to grow your customer participation and your revenue.
The growth and efficiency power of CRM software
Scaling your annual revenue, increasing net income, and building customer and constituent activity boils down to one of two main approaches:
- Cutting down on costs
- Increasing customer and donor participation and support
While financial cost reduction tends to get all the attention from organizations aiming for higher net income, one of the highest and most easily overlooked costs to every organization comes in the currency of time.
According to a US study of over 500 managers in 2018, around 23% of subjects spent five or more hours a day tracking hours, sending emails, or managing data, and 36% spent three to four hours. This means that the majority of surveyed managers spent almost a third or more of their day tackling administrative work.
While this study is not representative, if you take a look at your own schedule you will most likely agree that the amount of time spent on admin is higher than you’d like it to be. The average class registration can take 20 to 30 minutes to manually process when taking into account customer questions, phone time, cancellations, transfers, waitlisting and other aspects inherent in providing class and workshop-based activities. A registration received online and done by the customer takes only a small fraction of your staff’s time when even if a customer question does arise.
Now multiply that time by the number registrations processed annually the people in your team handling them and do the math.
That’s a lot of admin time.
Considering how all these hours could otherwise be spent on other activities, a simple shift in how your organization operates can help you and your team access a wave of untapped growth potential.
Inefficient information gathering and tracking systems don’t just eat into your workday, they also hinder your ability to react to organizational opportunities and threats.
Below are a few admin-reducing features that help empower your customers and allow your staff to spend more time on growth and strategic related activities.
- Online registration
- Online donations
- Online customer portal
- Automated confirmation letters
- Automated payment collection
- E-mail campaigns
- Instructor portals for attendance, rosters and communication with registrants
- Complete customer and account histories
- Comprehensive tracking a inter-customer relationships as well as customer to organization relationships
- Scheduled and assignable task management and follow up notifications
and the list goes on…
Tips for choosing and implementing the integration CRM system that is right for your organization.
- Sometimes less is more so and using a single platform for your digital tools can save you a fortune in time costs.
- Examine your current processes with the end goal in mind and be open to change
- Choose a CRM tool that can grow with you and has features not just that you need today but that may be helpful or allow you to expand later.
- Make certain the CRM you choose is PCI DSS compliant, supports the EU GDPR data privacy laws, ADA standards, and HIPAA if sensitive data is to be stored.
- For cloud based and subscription services, inquire about data ownership and sharing of data with third parties or affiliates. Is your data going to be used to sell products or services or solicit for another organization?
- Can you export your data and create custom queries / reports easily and in real-time on demand?
- Most importantly, get your staff onboard and display executive support for the process and the selection made. Some projects fail simply for the reason that existing staff is resistant to change. Make sure everyone knows the importance and the benefits of the project ahead of implementation.
As we’ve seen, cost and IT barriers tend to stop companies from investing in workplace technology. For small businesses in particular, the idea of implementing automation tools and CRMs seems like a luxury expense for a later stage.
To be fair, some CRM tools are notoriously clunky, demand extensive staff training and have hefty costs. But not all CRMs are heavy on your wallet or schedule. ProClass is designed to be lean, adaptable and scalable, all while giving you the many benefits of fully integrated CRM software that supports your class and event registration, membership, donor management needs and more. You can learn more about the many features of ProClass here https://proclasssoftware.com/features/ .
If you think we might be able to help to your organization go from basic registration software to a fully integrated CRM solution, contact us today at 866-337-1267 or online at https://proclasssoftware.com/support/ .
We look forward to talking.
