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During these current times with facing a worldwide pandemic, the daily lives we live have completely changed. From social distancing to zoom meetings and working from home, we all have had to adapt to new changes. With many businesses who are working to slowly reopen after being closed for several months, both companies and employees are struggling to maintain the same level of sales and work that they experienced prior to this worldwide change.
In a recent blog post of ours, we talked about the thing your business can do with its ERP software when business is slow. We are back with a second part covering how you can best utilize your CRM during these times as well. Let’s look at these five items.
1. Run Updates
With more downtime on the hands of businesses and its employees, now is the perfect time to run software updates. Updated software will significantly improve both the quality and speed of your CRM software and with an improved system, you will be able to provide quality work to your customers. System updates are also important because it allows you to get the most out of your CRM system, which is meant to improve business, sales and communications between you and your customer base. Running windows updates and making sure you are on the latest version of other software’s that all of your technology uses (including email systems) will pay dividends with your CRM
2. Install Upgrades
If you are not on the latest version of your current system, now is the time to do it. Take advantage of the excess time by maximizing the potential of your CRM. You will likely need to work with your provider on this, but given they are a business as well, they are likely to be happy to be working with you. Installing upgrades is similar to running the latest updates in that it will provide you with a quality experience and allows businesses to best help their customers.
3. Cleanse Your Data
Cleansing your data will help to provide more space within your CRM software for quality information. It is important when cleansing your data to do the following:
- Delete Unneeded Data: Removing outdated data will help to make a cleaner CRM system as well as eliminate higher chances of making mistakes and sending out information to the wrong customers. It is important to remove any information that your business no longer uses.
- Combine Duplicate Information: Most CRM systems eliminate the potential for adding in duplicate data. In the event that your system still has duplicate data, it is important to remove it. While this may be time consuming and boring, the cleaner you can make your data, the more efficient you will be when using it.
- Correct/Complete Data: Fixing any incorrect information, as well as completing incomplete data is also important. Doing this will make work more efficient and accurate. The more information you have, the better informed you will be to use it to make decisions.
4. Train/Cross-train Users
Outside of the CRM system itself, it can be a good idea to further learn it. Training yourself and others on features that you have but may not be the most familiar with can help push the company to new heights when things pick up again. Also, cross training users to help keep things running smoothly should someone be out sick or leave the company is always a good idea.
5. Buy New Modules/Functions
Perhaps the most changing, buying new modules can be a great purchase in these times. Adding functionality to help the business seems like a no brainer. But the time it takes to implement, configure, and learn a new function is certainly significant, which makes now as good a time as any.
