Innovise discuss CRM software and the mission to achieve customer service excellence

15th December 2011

The explosion of the social network has played a huge role in the re-positioning of the customer in relation to an organisation. Once an external factor, apart from the core of the everyday motions of a business, the customer is now firmly at the centre of proceedings. Privy to the constant stream of both positive and negative marketing messages dispersed via the likes of Twitter, Facebook and blog updates, each move and development within an organisation is rapidly digested by its customers. In an age of excessive choice and transparency, taking good care of your customers has never been more important.

Attending to the needs of customers before they know themselves what it is that they want, is now the only way that a business can place itself above its competitors and at the top of the customer care tree. Fortunately as the social network has expanded, so has the innovation of the technology designed to enable businesses to be more proactive in their sales and marketing processes. Setting marketers and sales professionals free from predictions and best guesses the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology now available, enables further barriers to be broken down between the customer and the sales opportunity, through advanced and unified communication between sales and marketing teams.

Julian Rogers, from the UK’s leading FM Software solutions provider Innovise, is the organisations expert on CRM software. Heavily involved with Innovise’s own (and unique) CRM solution, crm4fm. The crm4rm solution is the only CRM software that is totally bespoke to the FM sector and is workflow focused. It is driven by Microsoft Dynamics which makes it the ultimate sales, marketing and customer enhancement tool for Facilities Management businesses’. Appreciating the huge competitive advantage that a CRM solution will give to an organisation, Julian comments on advantages that the technology gives to a business serious about offering exceptional customer care.

“Good customer relationship management is critical to delivering a high standard of customer care. Through the crm4fm solution, businesses are enabled to view and then relate to each customer as an individual. Unified communication between sales and marketing functions enables a solid picture to be built around the client’s current service and information on contract length or business growth then enables teams to action new and relevant campaigns when the time is absolutely right. Knowing what the customer will want before they themselves do is a crucial benefit of crm4fm and a powerful tool to add to the customer service arsenal. Proactively tending to the future needs of a customer, nurturing the relationship and giving the client the comfort of feeling ‘looked after’ can only spell win, win for the crm4fm using organisation.”

Although CRM software has been around since the 1980’s it is still underused by some Facilities Management businesses.  The whole notion of CRM software was originally evolved around a business approach that placed the customer at the centre of everything a business does. Recent years has seen CRM become a term to describe IT applications to manage sales, marketing and service. At a base level, CRM is a customer management tool that an organisation uses to coordinate and share information. Gathering and collating each piece of information that is generated on each customer;  a meeting, phone call, order or web visit, the solution enables the entire organisation to benefit from live and relevant data that can inform more targeted processes. From this businesses can grow their knowledge of their customers and use for relevant marketing to their specific needs and to identify new customers growing turnover and profits. The Innovise crm4fm solution is different, in the fact that this is the only solution has been developed to meet the specific needs of the FM industry. Designed to deliver real business results from day one, crm4fm requires no time to be set aside for configuration. Pre-configured with all of the elements required, crm4fm is business ready, enabling an organisations to ability to do ‘more with less’ almost immediately.

Driven by Microsoft Dynamics, the design of the crm4rm solution has benefitted immensely from the twenty years of experience that Innovise has accrued within the FM sector. Having worked with multiple FM organisations over the years, Innovise has identified the most effective and common workflows that allow FM staff to prepare responses to tenders accurately, quickly and efficiently. Translating customer needs into results that exceed expectation, whilst delivering ROI, crm4fm is the CRM system of choice for many.

Watch out for this article in the December issue of Tomorrows FM!