Many B2B companies use Excel—especially in the early stages—to manage customer data and track sales and marketing campaigns. Excel is a well-known tool for many people and is available on most computers. However, to truly benefit from customer data and manage customer relationships efficiently—especially when dealing with a database of thousands of contacts—you need more than just Excel. In this blog post, we’ll 6 Reasons Why You Should Replace Excel With CRM.
1. Customer information is collected in one place
When using Excel, it’s common to have a single master Excel spreadsheet that various employees save and edit locally. There’s a good chance that the changes made to these local spreadsheets aren’t synced back to the master Excel spreadsheet. As a result, all the information is scattered, and you don’t have a single file with completely accurate customer data. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Excel hell.’.
When you implement a CRM application, all employees will work on the same database. This ensures that all information is centrally available to all departments and all employees. Centrally available customer data leads to better service. After all, customers expect that everyone within your company who comes into contact with them knows exactly who they are, what products they’ve already purchased, and what agreements—if any—have already been made. The best way to meet those expectations is to collect all customer information in one place.
2. 360° customer view
Within an Excel spreadsheet, it is not possible to save attachments—such as invoices, emails, quotes, etc.—with contacts. In a CRM application, on the other hand, documents can be automatically linked to a ‘’lead", ‘’contact' or ‘’account" record. Appointments, follow-up tasks, complaints, and more can also be added. By keeping track of all these interactions, you build a 360° view of the customer This allows you to respond more quickly to customer inquiries and provide your customers with the best possible service.
3. More efficient collaboration between different departments
As we described above, a CRM system collects all customer information in one place. This allows your different departments will collaborate much more effectively and customers can be served better. Marketing and sales have a better understanding of what each other is doing—for example, which marketing campaigns have been launched and how many and what kind of leads (potential customers) these have generated. Or, the sales team knows when there’s a problem with a customer if the service department reports a ‘’case" has recorded (a question, report, or complaint) in CRM.
Recommended reading: 5 Tips for Better Collaboration Between Marketing and Sales
4. Integration with email
One of the most commonly used methods of communicating with customers remains email. If you don’t use a CRM system, all these emails usually end up stuck in your employees’ individual mailboxes. The downside of this is that important customer information or appointments aren’t shared with colleagues. If, for example, a colleague leaves the company, all this valuable information is lost, and following up with customers becomes very difficult. Within Microsoft Dynamics 365 You can track emails and link them to a ‘’contact', ‘’lead", ‘’account" or ‘’opportunity," … .
Recommended reading: What is the Microsoft Dynamics 365 App for Outlook?
5. Greater security
If you work with Excel, the master database usually contains all the data. However, you may not want employees to see all of that data. Managing this is already difficult with Excel. You can create multiple copies of your master Excel list containing only the information your employees are allowed to see, but that quickly becomes a mess. In CRM, on the other hand, you can set up security roles and assign different access levels to your employees. Each security role offers a set of permissions that define whether users can read, write, create, or share records. Among other things, you can specify whether these permissions apply to a user, a ‘’Business Unit" (a specific department), a ‘’Business Unit"-hierarchy or the entire organization.
6. Business Process Automation
Within Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can Automate business processes based on workflows. For example, you can create a workflow that automatically notifies your marketing department via email when someone downloads an e-book. Or you can create a workflow that automatically sends an email to the customer as soon as a support request (‘’case") is open or closed. This saves a lot of time and improves efficiency.
