Have A Thorough Understanding of Your Business Processes and How Theyâll Work Within Your New CRM
Many businesses purchase a new CRM thinking an off-the-shelf solution will address all their internal issues and solve them. While a new bit of software will always have new features which will help your business work smarter and faster, donât expect it to be scalable to every idiosyncrasy of your business.
Make sure you understand all the ins and outs of your business and its processes. Can you visualise them completely end-to-end? Where exactly are the pain points? Which processes are most important to your bottom line and which are insignificant when placed within the bigger picture?
Once youâve got a complete understanding of your processes, think about which ones can be migrated into your CRM. Which features does the CRM have which can optimize these processes? Or, are there limitations to it which mean your current processes have to stay put?
Once youâve front footed these questions and understood exactly how to scale the inner workings of your business to what the CRM can deliver, your onboarding process will be much more seamless.
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Upload Your Customer Data - But First, Give It a Tidy Up!
A key point in the CRM onboarding process will be when you begin migrating your existing customer data into the new system. Before you go through all the effort of doing so, make sure to review the current state your data is in first.
Get your new CRM off to the right start. If thereâs any issues with your present dataset, donât just import them into a new system youâve spent precious time and money investing in, only to pipe substandard data into it.
Look into the data youâll be migrating over and check for the following: old, out-of-date or irrelevant customer data, incomplete data sets, inconsistent data entry across the same properties/fields, incompatible character types.
Putting the work in to tidy up the data now means that you can hit the ground running with your new CRM, leveraging it to drive business results and not just creating a new environment for yesterdayâs business problems.
Which leads us on to our next step...
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Segment Your Contacts
Once your customer data is all correctly migrated into the new CRM environment, make sure youâve got it organised to easily recognise key customer blocks.
Chances are your customers can be grouped under different lifecycle stages within your pipeline, or shared behavioural characteristics. No doubt youâll want to communicate with these larger customer segments through marketing, sales or service related communications.
Categorising customers into relevant lists from the beginning means you can start extracting value from your new CRM right away. Customer segments and how you interact with them ultimately informs your own business processes.
You donât want to upend processes just as your team is becoming familiar with the new CRM. Set them on the right track straight away and create data segments which allow you to surface information about broader customer groups.
Ready to onboard a new CRM for your business but need some support? Talk to Inbound about how we can guide you along the CRM journey, as weâve done for countless other businesses.
