Which companies need a CRM? Small serious research

You found information about software called CRM. You read about how it can boost sales and make workflows more efficient. But still, you’re not sure whether your company needs one. If this rings true, you’ve come to the right place.

Keep reading to find out what industries use a CRM, how it benefits different departments, and why you need to get your hands on one as soon as possible.

Why would I need a CRM?

For a start, you’re reading this article.

The thought of implementing a CRM system is not new to you. Maybe hearing about the benefits a CRM can bring to your business and the employees can help you make that decision.

A CRM system brings a bunch of benefits to your business — small, medium, or large…

Easily stores and organises contacts, deals, and other business data
Saves time and energy by automating manual processes
Improves your email marketing and communication
Simplifies lead generation and prospecting
Enhances communication with customers and collaboration with colleagues
Analyses data and generates reports for evaluating performance
Works together with the other tools you use for your business processes (such as dialers or support chat systems)
Helps build the sales pipeline and see blocked deals
Makes you feel more confident about sales forecasts
Shows you what every team member is working on and how they contribute to the pipeline
Shows you the channels that bring the most new registrations and sales
Automatically sets tasks and reminders for important events

And we could keep going on and on…

But let us tell you a bit about the returns your business could reap from implementing a CRM system. With a CRM system, not only will you save time and yield a higher ROI per lead, but you’ll start noticing an increase in conversion rates.

So, to answer your question on whether you need a CRM system or not…

Yes you do!

Which industries need a CRM?

Implementing a CRM system is guaranteed to benefit your company, no matter what industry it’s in. Industries that rely on CRM systems for their day-to-day operations include, but aren’t limited to…

Healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, where CRM is used for keeping track of patient medical histories and previous visits and keeping track of the sale of drugs
eCommerce, where CRM is necessary for eCommerce sales processes, reaching out to new customers, send email campaigns, and keep in touch with existing customers
Finance and consultation services, where CRM is used to store and organise data and generate and prospect new leads
Hospitality, travel and tourism industries, where CRM is used to keep track of room reservations and previous bookings and send out promotional emails
Agriculture, where CRM is mainly used for sales processes and lead generation
HR, where a CRM system could be used to keep an organised database of employees, track their activity and schedule one-on-one calls
Call centres, where a CRM system is an essential part of the call centre arsenal; support customers, place cold sales calls, or generate new leads to call
IT, where most sales departments use a CRM system to generate and prospect new leads, provide the IT company with new deals and send out marketing emails

Generally, any industry that needs to keep track of its current and previous customers constantly generates new leads and provides constant support to clients.

A CRM system can fit almost any workflow in any industry.

Who needs a CRM: departments breakdown

It’s a common misconception that CRM systems are only used by sales and customer support teams. The reality is quite different.

Many departments in a business can find a degree of usefulness in a CRM, starting from marketing to finance and all the way up to the C-suite. Naturally, it’s much more beneficial for all departments to use the same CRM system.

After all, they share a common space, access the same information, and their processes are closely linked.

Here’s how different departments use CRM systems…

Sales team

To sales teams, CRM systems are as critical to them as water is critical to a fish.

Not only does implementing a Customer Relationship Management system provide sales representatives with the functionality they need to do their jobs, but it gives them a wide variety of other functions that could improve their results, such as…

A comfortable to view and organised client database. Due to custom and required fields, duplicates and messy customer data have become a thing of the past. Data is structured in an organised manner, and sales representatives can cross-reference records
Dedicated timeline section, where the entire history of communication is stored. All emails, files, call logs, and notes are stored
Integrations with the other tools from your tech stack, such as dialer tools, chats, and social media. For example, LinkedIn crm integration generates leads at the click of a button
Precise analytics for tracking performance with various metrics, such as sales by lead source, sales by owner, and time spent in every stage of the pipeline
Email marketing functionality, such as automated drip campaigns, personalised bulk emails, and email performance tracking
Customisable automations for different parts of the sales process, such as outreach, pipeline stage changes, deal distribution among managers, and task assignment

Here the list of best sales CRM systems and the list of Gmail CRMs.

Marketing team

One of the reasons that a start-up might want to implement a CRM is to improve its marketing activities, visualising the impact of those activities on the pipeline.

With tools for email marketing, automations, and detailed records of interactions with customers, the marketing department can significantly shorten the journey of a lead from an MQL to an SQL.

Sales team notes can help the marketing department better understand their customers’ concerns and develop new marketing strategies to work with those objections.

With the use of a CRM system, the marketing team can also…

Create a more refined version of the Ideal Customer Profile by reading through the logs of existing customers
Better personalise the customer experience by providing customers with specific information that they are interested in
Assess the efficiency of marketing team members by utilising the report generation functionality of your CRM.
Improve their email marketing by having information about the challenges and workflows of existing customers.
Automate their email marketing campaigns
Manage their PR processes by creating PR pipelines and automating PR outreach processes
Engage new leads with automated outreach processes
Assess marketing activities through a data-driven approach using built-in reporting functionality.

In terms of reporting, some CRM systems like NetHunt CRM can further improve processes via the use of the Google Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) integration to visualise the data into graphs that update in real-time.

Finance department

The finance department is tasked with developing and maintaining financial plans.

Without access to reliable data about the company’s cash flows, this department can’t accurately forecast the company’s growth and develop strategies to aid it.

A CRM system helps significantly by providing the finance department with automatically generated and updated reports based on the sales team’s activity.

By using sales goals, sales forecasts, and total sales reports, the finance department can see whether the company’s economic growth is moving forward according to plan, or whether an adjustment is needed to the medium or long-term goals.

CRM generates a wide range of reports, including but not limited to…

Sales pipeline report
Time in stage report
Sales by owner report
Sales by source report
Lead source report

The finance department can also evaluate the sales department’s performance, adjust figures for future forecasts, and authorise necessary changes to the budget allocated to the sales department.

The finance department also perceives how many deals each sales representative won and for what amount, allowing them to accurately calculate the bonus according to their compensation plans and pay it out promptly.

Human resources

The HR department is responsible for overseeing the performance of the company's employees. To do this, they need to be able to track employee performance and company activity through any given period.

Of course, implementing a CRM system makes it possible to track employee performance and company activity through any given period.

Human resources managers will be able to do the following…

Create a candidate database
Create their employment funnel
Check inner processes
Create tasks for calls and one-on-one meetings with the team

The HR department can also utilise the CRM system to enhance its payroll management.

What are you waiting for?

A CRM system will positively impact your company's operations across many departments and industries.

Now that your question of whether your company needs a CRM has been answered with a definite yes, you should start researching how to pick the right CRM for you.

Get to work.