Establishing strong personal relationships with customers should be a top priority for all businesses. And this is where a CRM (Client Relationship Manager) comes into play. CRM solutions provide owners of small enterprises with countless incredible benefits. Here we outline the top five.

1. Full Business Integration

A strong CRM solution works to integrate all facets of a business. Finance, sales, customer support and marketing and can work together on one platform. And this fully-integrated CRM can provide a complete, vital picture of how your business operates. 

2. Improves Customer Service

No matter the size of your business, the customer is king. In fact in a recent survey by Customer Management IQ, 76% of customer management executives and leaders thought that customer experience was a “high priority to their business”. A second great benefit of a CRM is that it allows its users to vastly improve their customer service potential. It’s a means to keep in touch with your customers and communicate with them more effectively. You can also listen to their needs through digital channels, such as email marketing. The CRM can empower a business to provide attentive customer support, as well as personalising communication. Overall, its operation improves the perception of your business.

3. It Saves You Money. It Makes You Money

Investing in a CRM for your small business will allow you to experience more savings. A CRM flags all outstanding invoices that need chasing, which leads to improved cash flow. And as mentioned above, a CRM has a direct impact on customer confidence, which impacts profits. CRM solutions save you time and money because they automate the tasks you would traditionally hire humans to do, at great cost.   

4. You Gain Vital Information from Your Customers

A CRM is an important data source. It can connect data from various transactional and behavioural sources, across multiple departments within a business, to present an holistic view of the customer. And this in turn can drive customer-centric experiences and customer-centric communication. Customer insights enable small businesses to unify and understand their customer data, and this means they can harness it. A CRM solution is a powerful tool because it works to integrate and advance. 

5. It Boots Productivity

Productivity is the driving force behind any successful business. And another vital benefit of a CRM is its impact in this regard. According to Harvard Business Review, 52% percent of high-performing salespeople identified themselves as power users who take full advantage of their companies’ CRM technology. The truth is, manual tasks can now be automated using CRM. Automated processes across sales, customer service and marketing frees up your employees, reduces tasks and makes your business as efficient and productive as possible. If you invest in a strong CRM solution now, you will reap tremendous rewards in the years to come.

Are you looking to adopt a CRM solution? Request a demo from Lateral today and see how impactful are products are.