If you already have an existing CRM system or are looking into obtaining a new CRM system, getting an expert to help make the most of it or navigate it, can make all the difference. And even if you want to take full ownership of a CRM system, learning the ropes from a consultant and taking their help for the initial implementation is a worthwhile investment.
Hiring CRM consulting companies will reap multiple benefits in the long run. To help you understand this better, in this article, we’ll cover:
- What Does a CRM Consultant Do?
- Advantages of CRM Consulting Companies for Businesses
- How Do I Choose a CRM Consultant?
What Does a CRM Consultant Do?
While on the surface, you might feel that most CRM systems aren’t that complicated or hard to discern, having a CRM consultant will help you identify and utilize features that are tailored to the needs of your business.
Further, they’ll assist you in navigating through the various issues that come with the deployment and optimization of a CRM system. Not to forget that they’ll also teach other members of the team how to use the software to improve the employee onboarding process.
Therefore, to ensure that you are utilizing a CRM to its maximum potential with minimum errors and unnecessary headaches, hiring a CRM implementation consultant is essential.
Advantages of CRM Consulting Companies for Businesses
Here are the different ways in which hiring a CRM consultant will prove to be beneficial for your business:
1. Choosing the Correct CRM
CRM systems are responsible for supporting different departments that have different
requirements. Selecting a CRM platform that can be useful in all situations can get quite tricky.
A CRM implementation consultant can help you here and make the decision-making process much simpler. These consultants will assist you in understanding what your business needs and ensuring that the selected CRM platform is capable of meeting them.
Therefore, they help you in shortlisting the ideal matches and then weigh out the pros and cons based on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
2. Saving Time And Money
If you think about it, internal resources will naturally take more time to adjust to a CRM platform and learn its ways than an external consultant. So even if you’re paying a hired consultant more pay per hour, in the long run, it’ll benefit you only.
Why? Because the returns will be more and results will reflect faster. Therefore, not only will you adapt to the new CRM platform quicker but start getting results pretty soon too.
3. Customizing to Serve Your Needs
After the installation and configuration of the chosen CRM system, CRM consultants will help you add those extra customizations and make adjustments. These will help you in making the most of the platform to improve your business’s efficiency.
So once the whole setup is done, consultants will discuss your key initiatives and then help you come up with the solutions to your problems. They develop a plan and an ROI, followed by a multi-year plan based on your budget.
Initially, customers aren’t able to figure out how CRM can be integrated with third-party applications in order to enhance the platform’s functionality. Further, they’ll also help you create custom solutions for your clients, as per their needs.
Therefore, no matter the requirement – be it the insertion of document viewing and signing or the automation of manual processes – a CRM consultation can help you out.
4. Making Use of the Best Practices
CRM consultants don’t just know the best CRM platforms, they really know them. More specifically, the best practices. When you hire CRM consulting companies, you aren’t just hiring one professional but an entire team dedicated to helping you make the most of the platform.
Along with technical expertise, the team has in-depth knowledge of an array of real-time world business situations. Not to forget that thanks to their experience in this field, they know exactly which strategies and technical approaches you can take to optimize your business.
Therefore, you get to learn the best practices from experts in real time.
5. Accessing Info Not Many are Aware Of
There are certain CRM retailers that have knowledge of unexposed and free functionalities that can be availed on request. The majority of professional consultants will most probably have the required information about some of these latent gems.
In addition to this, CRM systems these days have layered functionalities that make locating even well-known features pretty hard. Therefore, if you have a CRM consultant on your side, it’ll become much easier to figure out which features should be prioritized.
6. Providing Solutions That Have Worked in the Past
Let’s say you hire a special IT staff to execute CRM applications for your business or organization. They will then spend some time learning about the intricacies of the business profile.
But if you hire an experienced consultant, they’ll already know how to handle business issues similar to yours, based on their experience working with different companies. Therefore, working with a CRM consultant will help you get access to solutions that have worked well in the past for businesses with similar problems.
How Do I Choose a CRM Consultant?
As the points listed above have clearly advertised, the right Zoho CRM specialist can do a lot for your business. So how do you pick the right one? Shortlist potential candidates based on the following factors:
- Number of years of experience in CRM consulting
- Level of expertise working on/with different CRM platforms
- What are the consultant’s specialties and industry focus
- Knowledge of CRM product development
- Delivery capacity
- In-depth knowledge of CRM implementation approaches
- Level of expertise in the chosen niche
- User experience
- Customization and Training
On a conclusive note, there are multiple CRM consulting companies out there. But you need to understand your requirements and then work on finding the right CRM implementation consultant because it can help you revolutionize your business. And if you want more help, do check out Customerization.
