What is Enterprise CRM? Why is It Important?

by James Lincoln Technology Advisor

What is Enterprise CRM software?

Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM), by definition, is a software solution that has been designed specifically for the complexity of large organizations. Most small CRM solutions are somewhat limited in scope, meeting the needs of sales reps with easy contact management and calendar/scheduling features, improving the planning and execution of programs, promotions and other lead-generation activities, and monitoring viable prospects while they move along the various phases of the sales cycle.

While this may work effectively for businesses that have smaller sales teams, it is not suitable for large and complex organizations that have other divisions frequently interacting with existing and potential clients, and they require different strategies. It also does not help businesses that have multiple sales and marketing departments across separate business divisions and distribution networks spanning multiple countries or product lines. Even those who rely on multiple platforms to market their products and services need a different solution.

Here’s why Enterprise CRM is important for your business.

It centralizes real-time customer information and makes client information available to all stakeholders

Enterprise CRM centralizes accurate, real-time customer information, allowing those in customer-facing roles to gain insight into various behaviors of clients and understand their needs and interests. The result is more informed and intelligent interactions and improved customer experience. Customer-facing procedures in large organizations are much more complicated and multi-faced. It is the duty of managers and employees throughout the organization to connect with and serve customers. Without Enterprise CRM, customer relationship management systems will struggle to provide key stakeholders with critical customer information in a timely fashion and will fail to record, organize and centralize the data associated with actions taken on behalf of consumers across the business. Ticket management systems can help to streamline business operations by segregating and labeling tickets generated and assign them to different departments.

It helps to automate and support employee tasks

The Enterprise CRM program automates and maintains all the activities performed by these workers, monitors operation history from end to end, and makes this data readily available throughout the company to other customer-facing staff. It integrates all cross-functional processes that affect consumer sales and service and promotes communication and knowledge sharing among the staff working directly with prospects and consumers, whether sales and marketing personnel, help desk groups, accounting staff, call-center representatives, or others. The communication and coordination offered extend beyond the walls of the company, allowing third-party sales channel partners to take advantage of all the advantages that the Enterprise CRM system has to offer.

Sales CRM allows companies to receive inquiries through various media that are available on a central dashboard, and Knowledge Management Systems provide teams with details of products, offerings, and services and helps them with better support. Chat systems can help in providing auto-responses to generated chats, saving the time of employees who would otherwise be required to do the same. Contact center management Software allows for the easy assigning, managing, and monitoring of agents’ performance through keeping track of key performance metrics.

Enterprise CRM tends to be more expensive than standard CRM, mostly because of the time and effort required to customize and deploy the system throughout the company, cost of purchasing servers, on-premise installation costs, annual maintenance, and upgrade fees. More robust support for implementation, training, and mobile applications is also included in the additional cost of an enterprise CRM software solution.

While an Enterprise CRM software solution is time-consuming, requires a lot of energy and money in the beginning, it is worth it. The ROI (Return On Investment) can be genuinely large for businesses that can afford to invest the money and time in it.