Saving Money with a Web Based CRM

Customer Relationship Management is not a new concept. Yet efficiently utilizing collected resources passes to the wayside more often than not. If you struggle to find the use for customer profiling, or you fall short of managing data, read on.

Jan 21, 2004

By Greg Richburg and Drew Eash
Netricks, Inc.

You can empower your employees with effective software development.

Customer Relationship Management is not a new concept. Yet efficiently utilizing collected resources passes to the wayside more often than not. If you struggle to find the use for customer profiling, or you fall short of managing data, read on. The next five minutes may prove to be a lifesaver.

Concept:

From the initial contact to after-sales and service, a Web-enabled Customer Relationship Management solution will help you build profitable customer interaction. Through your website, accumulate data and use the information to track customer activity, improve sales effectiveness and provide superior customer services by marketing directly to your clients or leads.

Scenario 1: The simple process.

Collect your customer’s information based on designated or predetermined profiles through the use of Web-enabled forms. For instance, you may want to market to women in a specific age group vs. men and children. You have captured age range and gender in your management system and you have a special on Women’s Digest Magazine. Save time and money with a straightforward query to extract the potential buyers for the product in question. Your leads are automatically developed without the hassle of picking through the masses.

What you will gain:
Save time with the ability to run automated queries from the collected data. Save money with the development of a low cost Web-based database, customized to collect the information your company requires. The resources necessary for this development exist with your hosting provider; therefore, licensing is not a factor.

Sound simple? It is.

Database integrated websites are becoming increasingly popular and easy to develop. They are not as costly as they used to be. The open source platform has opened up an entire new set of tools ready to be utilized in all business levels. You no longer have to be a Fortune 500 company in order to integrate these great technologies. And with their integration, you too can increase your companies profit with a decrease in cost of software development.

Scenario 2: The complete Web-enabled CRM

Develop an Extranet for use by your sales team. With the same Web-enabled developments, you can have your CRM customized to handle client interaction, tracking of client / lead status, automated call and response systems, and an abundance of sales force requests to help streamline your business needs.

What you will gain:
 Ability to maintain secure sales and customer service modules which enable employees to share information and improve sales success.
 Fewer employees needed due to automated processing.
 Uniform handling of customers, and shared resources for sales team operations.
 Ability to run automated responses to messages sent by visitors.
 Ability to develop and maintain a newsletter with subscription features
 Ability to establish an Inquiry Handler, or a web based e-mail integrated notification system with regards to client communication. There is no need to use multiple e-mails to track issues.

Whatever your company requires, there are new solutions out there. Don’t get caught up in the old methods. Join the 21st century.

Greg Richburg a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and the owner of Netricks, Inc. a network consulting, web design and hosting company located in Fresno, CA. At this time of this articles release, Drew Eash was the Senior Webmaster for Netricks, Inc. Visit Netricks at http://www.netricks.com. 

All past articles written by Greg Richburg are available at http://www.netricks.com/news. Please address article suggestions to: info@netricks.com.