FEATURE


The SME Guide to CRM in 2019 By John Oechsle, President and CEO of Swiftpage


The to-do list for an SME owner can be daunting. No doubt you’re thinking about myriad administrative and organisational needs relating to accounting and finance, staffing, your product and service roadmap for the year and more. In the course of all this productive planning, and as you look to build stronger relationships that drive ROI in 2019, consider how you’re responding to customer information. Your patrons have shared their data all


last year through clicks, subscriptions, customer service requests, sales inquiries and more — and now expect your business to be able to turn those interactions and touch points into a more targeted, holistic experience. Small- to medium-sized businesses that cater to the right


John Oechsle. Time to Act With Analytics


customers — and to enhancing the customer experience — can expect to see big gains. With CRM revenues at 39.5 billion dollars and growing, leaders are investing in this software to improve customer interactions that lead to sales. From improved customer experiences to increased productivity,


CRMs are on the rise for a reason and have become powerful and customisable enough to adapt to the needs of SMEs across industries. With that said, let’s take a closer look at what small businesses need to know when looking for a CRM — or evaluating their existing solution — in 2019.


CRMs Are Big With Small Businesses


Popular for a reason: The CRM landscape is evolving, with SME- focused solutions increasingly providing greater value to small businesses than enterprise level competitors are able to offer; the social CRM sphere alone is estimated to reach $10 billion in 2019. With real-time insights into customer information, the


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Playing nice with predictive analytics: Businesses need to craft effective ads, select which customers to cross-sell to and address their customer churn. Since you have access to intelligent information, the question becomes — how will you aggregate and leverage all this data? Today’s best SME-focused CRMs capture metrics more effectively than ever before. You’ll receive digestible and actionable information in one space. Getting real with artificial intelligence: CRM and AI are quite a dynamic duo. When combined, they can bolster the revenue of your business with a predicted $394 US billion dollars gained by 2021, according to Statista. When paired with a good SME CRM, AI technology can act as a virtual detective that collects clues to build customer personas, improve your ability to personalise interactions and put the right information in front of your team (and your customers) to help create meaningful interactions. Machines that dance to your algorithms: Once an external function of CRM, machine learning is now integrated into advanced CRM solutions for SMEs. And as the demand for customer intelligence increases, you can take the next best step to make a sale based on your history in the sales cycle. These


ever-evolving CRM model will drive relevant content to better fulfil customer expectations. Easy does it: The right CRM can work


magic, serving as a single platform that can span across the entire breadth of an organisation — sharing information and providing value for customer service, sales, product development, management, operations and more. The sales-cycle will no longer be filled with fragmented or piecemeal information conducted offline on notepads and whiteboards


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