Do I Need a Consultant for CRM Marketing?
In this article, I will introduce the contents and benefits of CRM consulting services.
With the spread of the Internet, consumers are more informed, and customer needs are becoming more diverse.
As a result, more and more companies have adopted CRM as a marketing method to explore their customers' potential needs.
However, since it is not easy to implement CRM, many companies may be thinking of hiring CRM consulting services.
Table of contents:
- What is CRM anyway?
- What Does CRM consulting do?
- Benefits of using CRM consulting services
- How to do CRM marketing on your own
- Advantages of implementing cloud-based CRM
- How to choose a CRM system
What is CRM anyway?
Before implementing a CRM system, you need to know what exactly you can do with CRM.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to customer relationship management or its systems for customer management.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a marketing method that aims to maximize profits by analyzing customer information and providing services tailored to the customer.
In recent years, CRM has become essential for organizing and analyzing information such as customer information and contact points, identifying potential customer needs, and expecting to improve customer satisfaction.
Also, as a result of meeting simple needs, retaining existing customers has become a more important challenge for companies than acquiring new ones.
By adopting CRM, you can follow up and up-sell to existing customers at the most appropriate time and encourage customers to continue using the service.
CRM consulting job description
CRM methods vary in scale, from filling out customer information in a notebook to using IT systems.
CRM consulting can help you in the following two areas:
- Implementing a CRM (IT system)
- Maximizing the effectiveness of CRM
Currently, many vendors are providing CRM (IT system), so it is essential to adopt a CRM system that suits your company.
It is also necessary to set up a system to operate the system, not just implement it.
With CRM consulting, you can receive support from defining requirements for system implementation, supporting implementation, and developing an operating system.
Also, CRM systems manage and organize customer information as data, so it is useless if not use the data.
With CRM consulting, you can receive support from defining requirements for system implementation, supporting implementation, and developing an operational system.
CRM consultants can also help you set up issues based on the data and develop and implement strategies.
Specific examples include supporting the development of medium- to long-term management strategies, channel strategies, and customer experience strategies.
Benefits of using CRM consulting services
One of the best advantages of using CRM consulting is that it provides you with outside knowledge you don't have in-house. CRM consultants are experts in their field, so they can give you a great way to make decisions when developing your strategy.
They can also give you an objective view of your company's strengths, weaknesses, and position in the industry, allowing you to suggest a management and marketing strategy that has never existed before.
However, there are some disadvantages to hiring a CRM consultant as follows:
- Your company's needs and the consultant's proposal may not match
- You may not be able to accumulate know-how in your company
- Costly
When using consulting, I recommend that you do not rely too much on the consultant and accumulate the acquired knowledge as your know-how.
How to do CRM marketing on your own
It is possible to use CRM to improve profits without hiring CRM consulting services.
In the old days, CRM (IT system) was the mainstream on-premises type installed on the company servers.
However, CRM (IT systems) are evolving every day, and cloud-based CRM systems have emerged and are now becoming mainstream.
Cloud-based CRM is a system that runs on servers on the Internet, and it has become cost-effective, easy to use, and effective even for companies without the know-how.
If you want to implement CRM (customer relationship management) without using a consulting company, I recommend that you choose a cloud-based CRM.
Advantages of implementing cloud-based CRM
The advantages of implementing a cloud-based CRM are as follows:
- No capital investment required, minimizing implementation costs
- You can implement it in a short time, allowing you to start operations immediately
- No hassle as most of the monthly services include maintenance and operation costs
- Easy to relocate or change the number of locations
- Flexible system size
When introducing on-premises CRM, it is necessary to invest a lot of money. But if it is a cloud type, you can implement it at an initial cost of one thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars and can be used for several thousand yen per month per ID.
No need for a server administrator as it is used through an external server on the Internet.
And another great advantage of implementing a cloud-based CRM is that you can add or remove the number of IDs using the system. So you can adjust the cost according to the volume and scale of business.
How to choose a CRM system
If you want to implement a CRM (IT system) without using a consultant, I recommend the cloud-based system.
Also, there are many types of cloud-based CRM, but the most important point is to choose the one that fits your company's products, services, and business type.
CRM systems come with a variety of features, but feature-rich and high-performance ones are more expensive.
If it is a CRM for a call center, it is necessary to choose a business-specific one such as inbound type or outbound type.