Hosted CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems allow departments that are a part of a remote sales team to coordinate information about their customers. This is why companies contract with a hosted CRM service provider. A CRM prevents new leads from being lost in the shuffle between those agents who generate, qualify, contact, and nurture leads.

These hosted CRMs fulfill all of the functions of other CRMs, but have several benefits.

First, no additional hardware needs to be purchased, and generally no additional software needs to be downloaded on to the company’s own computers. The hardware and software will be hosted by the CRM company’s location and on their network. This lowers the cost of acquiring, storing, and maintaining a Customer Relationship Management system. This also places the responsibility of fixing problems and “bugs” onto the shoulders of the host.

Second, company’s that use a hosted CRM gain the added business solutions that have been designed to work alongside the management system. Sales Force Automation (SFA) is one example. An SFA automates many of the simple tasks that sales agents have to do. These include automated lead management and tracking, account management and tracking, business reporting, and workflow management. All of these business solutions remove the tedious nature of record keeping from inside sales. SFA allows one agent to be able to handle all the needs of a single customer, no longer forcing them to pass their leads back and forth through different departments.

Finally, a hosted CRM with proper software support from the host company will have dozens more powerful efficiency building tools for their clients. Perhaps the most powerful of these would be a outbound auto or power dialer that will route incoming leads to an available sales reps within minutes of those leads being generated. Inbound calling should also be integrated into this same system so that agents making outbound calls may also receive inbound calls. A CRM combined with both inbound and outbound will save hundred of man hours by eliminating wasted down time between callers for all members of the sells team. Simple automated email and fax marketing with preprogrammed templates and simple prerecorded voice messaging that start with just a single button click amplifies sales agents selling power.
A hosted CRM with this support from the host company will allow any individual sales rep to take care of multiple customers, no longer multiple reps for each lead!