Open On Demand

Isn’t CRM just a shared address book?

No.  A CRM may be used as a shared address book initially, but a good CRM is much more than that.

The power comes in the analytics and reporting. Once you’ve developed practices that include a CRM like you can begin to measure (and improve) performance by such as:

• was a marketing campaign worth the cost? (how many leads did it generate? cost per lead? how means leads are now accounts?)
• how many leads did an event generate?
• which customers require the most support?
• how many customers have been recycled? or not contacted recently?

As your business grows, a CRM can also report on the performance of employees in your sales force and customer support reps.

There’s a genuine competitive advantage in using a CRM.

Why use a CRM?

I spoke to many small businesses this week about how they manage their customer and contact data.

Our research showed most business owners have heard of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) but aren’t sure what it actually means. When examining how their customer data is split between mail, notes, spreadsheets and accounting software however, they recognised there’s a problem that may eventually get out of control.  They understand they should be managing things better.

To me, CRM is about aligning your business processes to the customer. For example, ensuring the customer’s information is consistent whether writing an email to them, handling a support issue, organising an event or speaking on the phone. A CRM system, like vTiger, is a tool that helps achieve this.

That is, if you use it.

About Open On Demand

Open On Demand is a fresh, innovative idea that takes the complication out of finding a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solution. Being launched out of Sydney’s first bootup camp (the 14 day incubator for startups) Open On Demand has made it its mission to make CRM the intuitive, pain-free, jargon-free process that it should be. In only one click we will have you signed up and using your very own vtiger CRM – the web’s most trusted and reliable open source CRM solution. Stay tuned as we keep you updated with our progress over the remaining 11 days of bootup camp and watch our progress at http://www.openondemand.com!