The Fake CRM and Why a CRM can’t be replaced

The logic explanation is that when you start a business, excel is like a friend who never leaves your side and on whom you can always rely on.

How can I make a fast estimate? I use excel. What’s the address of Aaron’s office? Open excel. Where’s the mailing list? Excel, obviously.

Excel is probably the most widely used tools in the business world because it’s easy to configure, simple to use and can accomplish many tasks.

But what happens when the workforce needs to communicate, add information, or establish the criteria to learn about sales prospects, follow-ups, etc? In this case Excel is not enough.

The benefits of implementing a CRM in your company

Collaborative CRM

It’s geared towards facilitating communication with your team, as well as suppliers and distributors. Collaboration is more efficient even among remote workforces letting sales associates take charge of the critical conversations when their peers are absent. They can track a share data letting everyone be on the same page. This is the major advantage of CRM tool over Excel.

CRM automation

Speaking of automation, this does not apply in Excel, although you can set up specific functions or operations, it doesn’t do it like CRM.  Automation helps us organize and make complex tasks easier to accomplish and improve productivity. Let’s think for instance, a client contacts you through the web, usually this client will fill out the forms and then you subsequently receive an e-mail alert with the potential client’s data, and it is directed to your excel file. After that, you will have to introduce your client’s data manually, and so with each costumer that arrives. However, with CRM you can automate this activity, making it easier to manage every external interaction that is crucial for a business to succeed.

Configuring CRM is easy

When you use excel you need a client with an e-mail, calendar, call tracking and many other tools to manage your sales, Now imagines a single tool with all this functions. That’s where CRM has the advantage:

               ⁃             Save valuable time

               ⁃             Become more productive

               ⁃             Sales and data are better organized

Event follow-ups

A CRM for sales helps collect all the data that flows through your business, you can log their personal information and enables you to record this information so you can use it to communicate with participants in a more personal and efficient level.

Think for instance, that you offer a financial aid to your clients and one of them downloads an e-book on “applying for a loan for my business”. There’s where you can contact him because he is already interested in what you are offering. All this information in real time will provide you with important context of what you need to start an interaction

There is no way you can get this from excel. Nevertheless, CRM does have this chance to learn what your clients are doing.

Integration

It’s impossible to integrate Excel with another business software, in contrast, CRM integrates many tools in the business world. If you use an E-mail marketing tool you can integrate CRM immediately to manage your sales and marketing campaigns from the same spot.

Having a CRM will not only help to maintain a fertile relationship with your costumers so you can offer excellent service, but it will also help you keep up with the latest technological trends to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Maximum security

An Excel document is always at risk of being shared without your consent, however with CRM in the cloud your information is secure even if you’re out of the office.

Risks of data is now a threat to any company, but CRM system guarantees to store the appropriate data with high confidentiality.

Advanced Reporting

Every company needs to quantify its efforts. Excel offers dynamic charts, graphics, pie charts; but it is limited in the amount of information it can handle.

For complex reports that span timelines and involve a massive number of records, Excel falls short.

CRM allow you to create a wide variety of reports on demand; they even have templates for common use cases.

When it comes to generating data the way you imagine it, sales CRM’s are better than excel.

To sum up, CRM is any practice, technology or strategy designed to help businesses improve their customer relationships.