Today’s feature on CRM Helpdesk Software .com is a continuation of part II of Ashley Moss’ article ‘The 7 Fatal Flaws of CRM (Customer Relationship Managment)’:

3. Technologically straightforward deployment

Online sales management keeps it simple. Deployed as a standalone solution, the system can begin to deliver ROI almost immediately, while allowing for an evolutionary, phased-in integration process that minimises risk and complexity.

Increasingly rich interoperability standards such as XML, UDDI, and SOAP, already adopted by EAI vendors, and Microsoft’s .NET strategy for the creation of Web services, enable an online sales management solution to leverage the latest Internet trends and technologies for simple yet powerful integration with existing corporate systems-both best-of-breed and custom-built.

4. Organisational simplicity

As a self-contained sales department initiative, online sales management keeps the number of cooks in the kitchen to a minimum. The service can be designed to support existing sales resources and processes for a much smoother transition; coordination with other groups is streamlined by simple best practices guidelines.

5. Enthusiastic user adoption

Salespeople can be the toughest software customers around, reluctant to change the practices that have brought them success in the past unless they can see immediate benefits in a new way of doing business.

Online sales management is designed with salespeople in mind, giving them simple, intuitive functionality for automatic lead delivery and management, calendaring, channel communication, partner coordination, and other sales-oriented functions that will improve their sales productivity from day one. By inviting rapid and enthusiastic adoption, online sales management ensures that companies get the results they’re looking for.

6. A targeted, best-of-breed solution

Online sales management does one thing, and it does it well: improve sales productivity. Unlike CRM suite vendors who must try to please every department in their customers’ companies by being all things to all people, an online sales management provider can make the sales department the first priority. At the same time, simple integration based on open standards, as described above, enables companies to link the solution with other applications to form a truly best-of-breed solution set.

7. Proven ROI

Calculating the return on an online sales management solution is refreshingly straightforward. With organizational costs minimized, the size of the investment is little more than the initial setup fee and monthly price-typically £46,000 to £96,000 for a 50-seat subscription.

The payoff is similarly easy to see. As mentioned above, Giga Information Group reports than companies deploying SFA can expect, on average, a 15% increase in sales. For a £100,000,000 company that deploys an online sales management solution in fifteen days, this amounts to approximately £14,000,000 in additional revenue the first year alone, for a return on investment ranging from 14500% to more than 30000%. Given the small costs and high returns involved, the only difficulty may be in believing that the decimal is in the right place.

Don’t let the promises of high-end enterprise suite vendors land you in CRM purgatory. Online sales management provides a fast, low-risk alternative that will have you counting your blessings, your ROI-and a lot more customers.

About the Author

3SLive – Empowering Your Business today and tomorrow…

Asley Moss at 3Sixty Systems ( http://www.3sixtysystems.com/) the author behind the article has a wealth of experience in providing CRM to a wide variety of UK businesses. Their CRM ‘3slive’ has been specially developed to reduce the impact of traditional pitfalls and allow businesses to have a CRM that works for them, and not the other way round.
3slive CRM is suitable for any number of users who want an internet accessible system to manage all aspects of business managment, including as standard: 1. sales and account managment, 2. Powerful email marketing, 3. Project managment, 4. Resource scheduling, 5. Document mangement, 6. Support suite, 7. HR/ Collaborative calendaring, 8. Customisable at the user-end.
Visit http://www.3slive.com/ for further details on business benefits and to arange a LIVE viewing of the system over the internet. You can also sign up for our newsletter to receive details on special offers and recieve more useful CRM related information.