Spreadsheets are a popular data management tool for small businesses and startups, often available for free. However, when dealing with thousands or hundreds of clients, you should not use them for customer relationship management (CRM).
While spreadsheets offer basic analytics, they have several limitations, such as manual data entry, inconsistency issues, lack of advanced automation, analytics, and reporting, performance monitoring capabilities, lack of real-time collaboration tools, and compatibility with third-party marketing, customer support, and analytics tools.
Fat-Fingered Follies: Data Entry Issues
Spreadsheets require a lot of manual data entry, which can be error-prone and time-consuming. This can hinder the focus of customer support agents and sales reps on building and strengthening client relationships. Additionally, finding the right information is challenging, as you might have to scroll through thousands of rows to locate a client's service history.
Flat data with Flat features
Spreadsheets also lack built-in project management capabilities, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. Additionally, spreadsheets do not allow you to score leads based on their level of interest in purchasing from you, nor do they allow you to store files that are useful during client meetings. As your business expands, ineffective nurturing will eventually cause you to lose opportunities.
Headroom headaches: Scalability
CRM software offers a scalable and secure solution to store, manage, and analyze customer data. It stores more information than basic client details, such as names, phone numbers, and addresses, and allows for a single source of truth for all customer interactions via emails, phone calls, chatbots, and more. This improves employee productivity and facilitates a frictionless customer experience.
Working Workflow: Automation
CRM platforms also offer automation features, allowing you to capture new leads from commonly used lead generation tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Facebook ads, and website sign-up forms. They can automatically capture new leads and update the data as more interactions occur. CRM software's automation capabilities extend beyond data capture. For instance, Act! CRM lets you set up automated workflows for lead nurturing, ensuring timely follow-ups and more conversions. It also gives you the ability to track the performance of sales reps and identify non-performers.
Data-Driven Dilemmas: Analytics
CRM systems also offer rich analytics and insights, allowing you to compare sales data from different years to identify seasonal trends in buying behavior. These insights are useful for planning new marketing campaigns and performing complex analyses to understand why some customers stick around and others don't. Turning these insights into charts and graphs and sharing reports and dashboards with stakeholders is just as straightforward.
Playing well with others: Integrations
Many CRM platforms support integration with specialized analytics tools, allowing you to generate even more valuable insights from customer data. They're compatible with marketing automation tools as well, so you can easily implement campaigns and monitor their performance. Some platforms even come with built-in marketing automation features, enabling you to create and execute drip email campaigns from within a single tool.
Spreadsheet Insecurity: An open data-door policy
Better security is another advantage of CRM platforms. They use encryption and multi-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive client information. On-premise CRM systems can be even more expensive due to their hardware and maintenance requirements, and employees may not be familiar with a CRM platform's UI, so there's a learning curve.
SUMMARY
In conclusion, while spreadsheets may be a cost-effective solution for small businesses with a few customers, CRM platforms offer several benefits, such as automated workflows, advanced analytics, and robust integrations. Cloud-based CRM solutions like Act! are designed to aid collaboration and improve employee productivity.
