CRM Solutions (part 1)
A few days ago outlined my goals to kick-start my geo project.
Goal Number 13:
“Find a suitable CRM solution to track potential customers – ideally one that I can integrate into the sales process, or use as part of the sales process.”
What do I mean by integrating the CRM into the sales process?
Consider advertiser sign-up, for example. Lets just say I want to maintain a list of potential customers for mail-outs, marketing to, etc.
Let’s just suppose I initially research that list myself (from the phone book or yellow pages), but I’d also like to collect leads through the website.
Rather than retyping the details of these leads from the website into the CRM, it would be great if a new customer lead was injected directly into the CRM solution from the website. To take that a step further, what if the sign-up form on the website actually was part of the CRM?
It would also be great if the CRM solution could also, collect subscription money, manage annual re-billing, mailing lists, user logins, accounts and invoicing… surely other people do all of this?
I guess, ultimately – I want a web-based CRM solution that also does self-service customer / user management – thereby saving me from having to create a whole load of web pages and integration code.
Is this available today? … surely someone has taken a modular approach to providing website back-ends that provide all of this customer management stuff in a polished and professional way?
Well, this is something that I will be exploring further. Part 2 will discuss the requirements in a little more detail.