What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) apps are the solutions to effectively develop, cultivate, and manage client relationships. CRM systems allow you to consolidate all customer information which enables context to all your team members and provide personalization into every customer exchange.

What does CRM applications do?

CRM solutions streamline your fundamental processes that are related to your customers. CRM systems help you manage every element of your customer-facing processes from lead generation to nurturing, conversion to retention from a central portal and eliminating data silos and obstacles for your teams.

Why companies choose a CRM system?

Do you know what is the largest software market in the world? Do you know what is the best technology asset that companies have? It is the CRM! With the help of the expansion of cloud computing, CRM applications can now be accessed easily from anywhere and integrated with other systems easily. CRM applications provide the best tools to keep your customers happy in the most cost efficient way.

Why are small companies such as martial arts schools hesitate adopting CRM applications?

While it makes the most sense for enterprise companies to adopt CRM solutions, it is cost-prohibitive for small companies to do the same. There are two big factors when it comes to choosing the right CRM solution for small companies:

• Cost: Commercial CRM solutions are expensive. Way too expensive for small companies. Most CRM companies charge their clients based on functions and per-user basis. For example, Salesforce charges $25/month per user for the most limited version while most businesses need the $75/month version. For a small company that has 5 part-time users, the total cost of CRM will be $375/month. We are not even considering the user training costs!
• Configurations: Most out-of-the-box commercial solutions need extensive configuration in order to be used for businesses. For example, a simple configuration of Salesforce to be used for martial arts school will cost $20,000. But, it is not the cost that makes the configuration prohibitive. It is the technology that makes it difficult to adopt. How many martial arts instructors have the technical skills and knowledge to hire a software contractor to configure their needs?