Staying in touch with your customers is critical to the sales process but most companies are full of people that have their own stand alone, excel or rolodex systems. When it comes to true CRM or customer relationship management the systems needs to be thought out. Our IT guru Sean Jennings has 5 considerations with selecting a CRM system for your company.

#1 – Do you really need a CRM system? Over 50% of the people that ask us for CRM solution really needed nothing more than a centralized contact manager.

#2 – Does the CRM system you are looking at have a mobile app? If your mobile salespeople cannot complete their sales report within minutes of leaving the customer they will not complete it or they will forget important information if they wait until that evening.

#3 – How quick can your sales people enter a sales report. If it takes 30 minutes to enter a report on a customer your salespeople will come up with every excuse not to do it. There are some systems that use short codes so a call report can be completed in 2 minutes or less.

#4 – Is it hosted or in-house? Three are pros and cons to each system. In-house systems appear cheaper in the long run but everyone always forgets about hardware and software maintenance and upgrades when they budget over 3-5 years. At the end of 3-5 years most companies have a major expenditure for an upgrade.

#5 – Will you require remote or mobile access? Some in-house systems are not very good at supporting users that are not inside the office. Make sure you know how many inside and outside users you will need before you start looking at CRM systems. I have seen costs double when companies forgot about mobile and home access until the end a project.