For most German managers, the first encounter with a CRM tool is a world-shattering event. Share customer data internally? Make sales negotiations processes accessible to others? Pardon me… accessible to your own colleagues in the same company? There is still a tendency towards sovereign knowledge in affiliated groups and even middle-sized companies. “Collaboration” is not just an historically charged word.
CRM systems such as Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, vTiger, Update and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (to name a few) are doing just that. More than customer databases, they are “collaboration tools”. Owing to the fact that they will be used throughout the company – if the systems are to be used to their full potential – they have expanded their functionality. The purpose of a CRM System is no longer just the name-giving function of maintaining customer contacts and portraying these contacts digitally. A CRM system creates new and sometimes previously unimaginable relationships between individual colleagues and the collaborator – the employee in the literal sense, not just in a hierarchical sense.
We note such ‘light-bulb moments’ with satisfaction when in CRM project workshops we casually inform the managers of two different business units that they both called Mr. Müller from Meier AG last week and tried to sell him the same product under different conditions. Then even the worst business-card collectors understand the deeper sense of a CRM system.
The next step has already been initiated. We have to get used to the fact that we can depict our entire business life in a CRM system. For example, a few months ago market leader Salesforce.com launched the application Salesforce Chatter. Sugar CRM offers the corresponding Add-ins and the other systems are likely to come up with similar offers soon. The objective is to bring the technologies of the so-called Web 2.0, in particular the social media websites Facebook and Twitter, into the CRM and therefore into the company.
One company video worth watching (despite the annoying American presenter) can be viewed on YouTube. The “Private Corporate Directory” is a particularly good idea – basically a company telephone book. It looks like a Xing – via the “Follow” function it enables you to establish an internal fan base and showcase your skills or knowledge (or lack of it!). This transparency will profoundly change the interpersonal relations within a company. And we don’t mean “Why does Susi from accounting have so many followers since the company Christmas party?” We mean the cooperation and knowledge-sharing that will enable companies who count on such systems to grow quicker than those who hide away knowledge and employees’ contacts on hard disks and servers, or even file folders.
aquarius sales improves the potential of digital sales processes for their customers. This includes the use of CRM systems. Ask Marc Ritter.
