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When you're investigating options for CRM software, there are a lot of details to keep track of. BusinessNewsDaily.com has published Sara Angeles' excellent collection of tips and advice that can help you get the best return on your CRM investment.

While customer relationship management (CRM) software began as a simple toolset for managing contacts, a contemporary, high quality CRM system can integrate data from sales, marketing, accounting, and various types of operational data. It can help you identify quality leads, nurture prospects, personalize the sales experience, and enhance customer support. And for many of these tasks, it can support your team with robust automation.

Costs

An immediate point of interest for any small or mid-sized company is the price tag. There is a variety of pricing models and a wide range of costs. In general, you'll be able to find affordable options for the functionality matched to your business's unique needs.

Needs

The three pillars of CRM are contact management, automation to support sales, and improved customer support. Any business that understands the value of these goals will be able to benefit from a CRM system. A database of your customers can bring new understanding of how you can reach out to them most effectively. And the same database can help you organize your partners, affiliates, and vendors. From this foundation, CRM tools can highlight info that is useful for sales, such as helping follow-up with prospects, creating customized sales quotes, and both tracking and forecasting sales perfomance. Each sale is best seen as a long-term relationship with the customer, and CRM software can help your team support customer success. With a centralized location for purchase histories, order information, and past interactions, your entire team can bring their expertise to bear on customer needs.

Features and Benefits

One of the best aspects of Ms. Angeles' article is the collection of advice directly from small business people. The first group of suggestions focuses on key features to look for in a CRM package. A recurring theme is flexibility, and in the follow-up summary, a paragraph is devoted to this aspect of being customizable. The fact of the matter is that no product off-the-shelf will match your company's unique processes, so planning on adapting the product to your needs is simply a realistic approach.

The second collection of tips and tricks from actual CRM customers concentrates on the benefits their businesses have received. From light manufacturing to wholesale distributors to professional services, these professionals each describe a positive change their CRM system has made. Time and money savings are mentioned first, but sales tools like email marketing are an example of the extra functionality a quality software package can bring.

Questions

As a bridge to the next step of exploring specific CRM options, the article concludes with nine questions you should discuss with vendors. These questions were suggested by other small business owners. Leveraging their experience can help you identify the CRM tool best fitted for your company, as well as prepare the way for the best deployment and ongoing customer relationship.

 

Suggestions and questions from those who have experience with shopping for software clearly give you an advantage. In the same way, getting testimonials about a specific product from current users can give you even better insight. At aACE Software, we're pleased to share the 5-star ratings that our existing clients have used to rank our software on Capterra.com. Our goal is to earn each new customer's high regard.

"I worked with Michael and his team at AGIS over a period of half a year to customize and implement their aACE Accounting/ERP/CRM solution for my business. Michael was able to quickly hone in on my company’s complicated business processes, clearly map them out, and optimize a solution that worked great for us. [aACE Software] helped us visualize our information in a way that we did not have available to us with our prior ERP/CRM system." - Daniel Peleg, CFO & Director of Business Development, Peleg Group

While B2B companies have been hesitant to invest in ecommerce solutions, 2017 may be the year where that trend pivots. Early ecommerce tools often seemed too simplistic to handle B2B demands, but the technology has been in a process of continuing evolution. Current solutions are robust enough to support products and services of any complexity, giving companies who invest in these tools an edge.

Drawing from Forrester Research and other reports, Patrick Wolf has written for the Avalara blog, sharing five of the key trends that will affect B2B ecommerce in the near future:

Growth of B2B ecommerce to surpass B2C — By the end of this year, Forrester expects to see at least half of the B2B buyers completing at least half of their work-related purchasing with ecommerce. The sales estimate for this increase could reach more than $1 trillion. The savvy use of ecommerce tools will give some companies an advantage over those who don't cater to their customer's buying preferences.

Businesses buying like consumers — B2B purchasing reps are also private shoppers. They shop on Amazon and know what can be expected from ecommerce sites. This means, whether we like it or not, we're all competing with Amazon now. Your B2B buyers will increasingly expect you to offer a purchasing experience that is as informative and helpful as Amazon's. This might involve some rearranging, but the companies that adjust to these new conditions quickly and effectively will gain an edge.

eCommerce mobility — One of the details of the "consumer-like buying experience" mentioned above is that consumers are busy and like to get things on the go. This translates to mobile devices. Improving the customer experience, and thus retaining your customers, will likely include offering an effective mobile commerce option. The numbers on this point are clear: at least half of your potential buyers will be researching your product on their phone.

Personalization à la AI — Taking a slight tangent from Wolf's write-up, let's talk next about how artificial intelligence might affect your company. Automation can create noteworthy long-term savings, while machine learning is gradually becoming capable of processing complex situations. Companies that can leverage this digital speed and computerized reliability can pull ahead of the competition.

Cart-to-cash integration — Saving the best for last, this fifth ecommerce trend is on the leading edge of competitive advantage. Robust and reliable tools are available to integrate your sales process. Businesses that can unify their quoting and pricing, contracting and revenue management activities are better positioned to support customer success. Following this concept through to the logical conclusion, we can see that integrating ecommerce functionality with inventory, accounting, CRM, and ERP amplifies the benefit. Your can expand your company's vision beyond the end-to-end view of a single line of sales data. You can view the intersection of your warehouse line, customer support line, and resource planning line too: three-dimensional data of your business.

As Mr. Wolf has explained and Forrester Research has supported, this is the future of business advantage.

 

A variety of tools are available for these goals. This brings up the next question of how to select the best option and provider for your small or mid-sized business. Flexibility is a key trait to investigate. No matter how thorough a software suite might be, there will almost always be a need for customization — unless the vendor's stance is that you should rearrange your business to fit their modules. A second vital component of your software decision is to research what current clients have to say about the product. Often an SMB can't test a software suite with live data and actual customer transactions; however, the real-world experience of existing users can provide case studies on the software's performance.

For 3D data, flexible customizations, and a proven track record of success, explore what aACE 5 can do for you.

“[I would recommend aACE to] any business owner facing the challenging task of integrating their Amazon orders into one solution that handles all of their needs. There isn’t much limitation to what the software can do, and it flows beautifully.” — Cory Elliot, Founder and CEO, Troy Filters Ltd.

Let's start with a little bit of bad logic: Big companies are using more SaaS ERP software. And big companies have lots of money. So if you want lots of money, you have to use SaaS software too.

You see the trouble. There's nothing wrong with software-as-a-service, of course, and even less wrong with making lots of money. But reaching your goal for profitability can only happen by making smart decisions based on your company's unique offering and niche in the market.

With that said, we can still gain some valuable insights from observing what major corporations are doing. So props to Juan Martinez at Business2Community.com for sharing some insights about SaaS ERP trends.

The source material is from Forrester, one of the most successful market research companies. At the start of the year, they surveyed major companies about their current ERP situations and upcoming plans. The full results are available in a report titled, Vendor Landscape: SaaS ERP Applications, 2017:

"Software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) is accelerating as a mainstream delivery model to help companies gain flexibility and leverage modern cloud technologies. The market landscape is evolving as pure-play SaaS ERP providers battle traditional ERP vendors that are repositioning their offerings for the cloud. Application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders and their business partners should assess the viability of their current ERP deployments and consider the rapidly changing ERP landscape as you plan a transition path to the cloud."

Martinez highlights five trends visible from how these major companies are working with SaaS ERP tools:

SaaS Rising — Predictions state that the speed of companies shifting to SaaS will accelerate as we approach the next decade. SaaS is already a typical approach for other business management software, such as CRM and procurement. This approach is expected to become more dominant for ERP too. The upfront savings of SaaS are attractive, but as always, the decision must be based on thorough view of your business situation rather than any single hardware cost or current trend.

Hybrid Options — For your company, a balanced model of on-premises resources augmented by cloud-based support (or vice-versa) might be the ideal. With a high quality vendor, you might even be able to select specific modules to integrate with your current system. During these discussions with the vendor, be sure to ask pointed questions about support for integration and customization — the sticker-price for the package may be affordable, but getting the software out of the box and playing nice with your legacy system could include significant expense.

Subsidiary ERP — The large companies in the Forrester survey showed a trend for deploying the SaaS ERP on a trial basis for one slice of the business. However running real-world tests using one part of your company might not be a method you can replicate or a luxury you can afford. Instead you can investigate how the product has worked in live business settings by looking to a vendor's previous clients. Sites such as Capterra make it easy to compare various ERP, CRM, or accounting packages to find a 5-star solution that's right for you.

ERP Disruptors — From the viewpoint of a small or medium-sized business, this trend may be the most unsettling. It appears that SaaS-only startups are targeting large enterprise customers. This pattern is more likely to be a result from the sample selected for the survey. You can be confident that aACE Software and other high-quality ERP providers are dedicated to supporting local and regional businesses.

Internet of Things — Looking farther into the future, more devices and products will be linked to the internet. When more of your company data is channeled to your ERP system, it gives better oversight on your supply chain, shipping partners, and appliance performance. The primary obstacle is price. Few companies can afford to outfit their entire operation with codes and sensors.

 

These trends may not be patterns you can duplicate. However the directions they suggest can spark creativity for improving your own business processes, no matter whether you fall into the category of big, medium, or small; Mac or PC; or light manufacturing, wholesale distributor, or professional services. For example, moving toward the valuable goal of greater business intelligence, you can gather info from all sections of your company. An ERP system integrated with CRM, accounting, and inventory tools can help your existing business data coalesce into insight.

"The aACE team has provided a system and support that has really allowed us to do more than we expected to be able to in switching to a new software. It unified functions within our company that previously had little to no communication with each other." — Ted Fotopoulos, Raydoor

True or false: your company is not a target for hackers because you're not a high-profile, billion-dollar corporation (yet)?

"False" is the obvious answer.

Any growing organization can come under a cyber-attack – your company works with the same kinds of valuable data as Amazon and Eddie Bauer. In fact, whether your infrastructure is on Mac or PC, some reports are showing that small businesses might appear as low-hanging fruit for hackers. This situation can arise for professional services companies, light manufacturing businesses, wholesale distributors – for any small or mid-sized business. We don't always realize the value of the information we keep or the vulnerability of our systems.

In 2015, Entrepreneur.com published an unnerving case study. Joe Ross of CSID explained an experiment they conducted with a fake company. The results showed that a cyber-security crisis only needs these three ingredients:

• 1 email with sensitive information
• 1 password re-used across multiple sites
• 1 hour

Hackers were able to exploit that info, access the fake company's web server details, and shut down the company website.

Awareness, education, monitoring, and a quick response are vital parts of a small-business security plan. It's never too early to protect your future success.

For over a decade, Avalara has been helping businesses of all sizes effectively manage the burden of sales taxes. This month they are hosting a free webinar: "The Definitive User's Guide to Sales and Use Tax."

On Thursday, May 4th, at 2:00 PM ET (11:00 AM PT), you can invest 60 minutes to learn some excellent tips about taxation. Or you can get helpful reminders about details you already know. This is an excellent way to improve how you handle taxes for your business's unique situation.

Avalara has organized this presentation by Aaron Wilson, a CPA and experienced expert in indirect taxes. To help you ensure your company is compliant with sales tax requirements, Aaron will discuss:

• How to quickly access correct rates across 12,000+ tax jurisdictions
• How to determine tax responsibility when you work with a drop shipping company
• How to recognize the distinctions between sales tax and use tax
• How to identify which states you owe sales tax in

Space is limited for this presentation so register now.

 

To further increase your business velocity, integrate sales tax automation with a 360-degree accounting/CRM/ERP suite. aACE 5 is a powerful and affordable solution that deploys on both Mac and PC.

We've got an opinion about where to find high-quality ERP solutions, but it's important for everyone involved in the decision to agree. This article from Manufacturing Business Technology gives excellent advice about how to reach the best decision for your company.

The author, Dave Lechleitner, highlights 5 key steps:

1. Assess functionality needs: Go beyond pain-points with the current system and envision a plan for future growth.
2. Open dialogue with vendors: Look for a strong partner instead of a sleek sales team.
3. Understand the end game: Balance in savings from becoming a more responsive and competitive company.
4. Explore support for the software: Know your IT team's abilities and the vendor's commitment to customer service.
5. Research the vendor: Due diligence will help you find an ERP solution that supports your business strategy and scales with your growth.

 

As part of your research strategy, it can be valuable to find out what past clients say about the vendor and the software solution. Capterra gathers this information into a single site, making it easy for you to find high quality software. View the aACE Software profile to discover the proven benefits we can provide for your company's accounting, CRM, and ERP needs.