Ensure Your CRM Project Delivers Real Results

Business benefits and ROI on CRM projects are no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a prerequisite so discover how to prove them.

Even though businesses are more focused than ever before on the bottom-line numbers that everything they invest in delivers, CRM ROI can still be broken down into tangible and intangible benefits.

Tangible Benefits (and how to prove them)

Tangible Benefit #1 – More and bigger deals at less cost

This study from Success with CRM shows that CRM solutions can deliver:

• 10% sales revenue growth per sales representative each year.
• 5% cut to the cost of sales.
• 5% increase in win rates for forecasted sales.

How to prove it: Map data from the CRM reports against historical data for these KPIs.

Tangible Benefit #2 – Happier customers staying with you

Businesses using CRM effectively deliver better customer experiences, which results in better customer retention rates:

• according to Apptegic, a 5% cut in customer churn rate delivers 25-125% more profit!
• Gartner says 80% of your future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers!

How to prove it: Compare customer churn rates for the 2 years prior to the CRM implementation to the first two years of its use; and also track improvements in your customer satisfaction surveys.

Get more tips on proving ROI in this article from CRM Infoline.

Intangible Benefits (and how to measure them)

Intangible Benefit #1 – More efficient processes

All departments can easily access customer information, saving time and improving processes across the business through automation:

• Marketing benefit from automatic lead capture and assignment, tools to automate lead scoring, and the ability to easily track who’s been sent what, when and whether they responded.
• Sales benefit from Marketing’s automated lead assignment and spend less time doing admin and more time selling.
• Finance benefit from automated invoicing and better visibility of who’s paid and, if they haven’t, whether they have a customer service issue.
• Customer support benefit from automatic case creation via email or website and tools to automate assignment and prioritisation.

How to measure it: Advice from Success with CRM says ROI can be measured by time spent on value-adding tasks after implementation.

Intangible Benefit #2 – Happier and more motivated staff

Giving people easy access to the info they need to do their job better improves motivation and shows how they impact the wider business:

• Happier staff are 12% more productive.
• Tight deadlines cause employee stress so Intangible Benefit #1 frees up their time to focus on them.

How to measure it: Employee satisfaction surveys with CRM users to show how it’s made them happier.

Download your free eGuide now: Calculating the ROI of CRM  – a business leader’s guide.