Top 10 Signs You Need New CRM Software…and Why X2CRM Is It.
The biggest obstacle for any business implementing a customer relationship management system is ensuring that their employees actually use the CRM system. If your company struggles to fully utilize your current CRM software, it’s probably time to consider upgrading. I recently came across an article from CIO magazine, “10 signs your CRM system needs an overhaul” by Bruce Harpham, who lists his top 10 signs that your current CRM software isn’t working. Harpham hits the nail on the head with his list – many of X2CRM’s own customers mentioned these same frustrations with their previous CRM software when I asked them why they switched.
When designing X2CRM, we wanted to create the best CRM and marketing automation application we could. Usability was our main priority – and it shows. X2CRM combats every single indicator that Harpham points out in his article, proving that X2CRM is the best choice CRM choice for your business.
1. “Your in-house CRM system is brittle — and sucking up resources”
In today’s ever-expanding market, there is most likely a company that offers the exact product or service you need for a fraction of the effort it would take for your business to develop it in-house. This is especially helpful for small businesses who do not have the resources to hire engineers to design all of their applications themselves.
By allowing specialized development teams create the software your business needs, you now have the freedom to spend that time and money on advancing internal operations and grow your business. With our veteran team of software engineers, architects, and CRM professionals, you can trust that X2CRM is being developed by the best and is always on the cutting edge. Let us focus on developing your CRM system so your teams can focus on expanding your business.
2. “New sales leadership has new CRM priorities”
As a growing business ourselves, we know that businesses never progress in a straight line. Throughout the evolution of your business, I’m sure you’ve had to change leadership, goals, or business strategies numerous times before finding the right mix. However, for many businesses, changes mean that the CRM software you’re using may become obsolete – especially if you’re using a customized CRM software for specific needs.
We designed X2CRM to be able to combat this. First, X2CRM is an all-in-one platform, meaning that it has all of the capabilities that your business may need, no matter what direction your current leadership decides to take. No matter if you want to focus on outbound marketing, improve your internal business funnel processes, automate daily tasks, or maximize interactions on your website, X2CRM can do it all. Additionally, X2CRM has an extensive customization studio that allows you to easily modify X2CRM’s fields, forms, and even modules to adjust to your new business priorities.
3. “That one CRM expert leaves”
Many other CRM applications are extremely difficult to fully understand. They require dedicated experts or entire teams in order to manage their complex systems. What happens if that specific CRM expert leaves? Your business is left scrambling to find an expensive replacement or struggling to quickly learn a complicated application.
X2CRM is different. It’s an extremely intuitive platform, meaning that anyone can become an X2CRM expert in a fraction of the time they would need to learn other applications. All of X2CRM’s features are designed so your business can begin using them from day 1. Even our customization studio uses a friendly drag-and-drop interface so anyone can easily customize X2CRM – no programming knowledge needed! If your business does come across any issues with X2CRM, we have a very active community of users and developers who frequently help each other out as well as a very dedicated in-house support team.
4. “Integrations are more manual than effective”
We know that your company likely uses multiple applications to manage different aspects of your business. However, making sure they’re all connected is often extremely tedious or even impossible. X2CRM is an all-in-one application, meaning that many of the features, such as marketing automation, you’re using third-party applications are already natively built into X2CRM. If you’re looking to easily integrate specific business applications with your CRM software, X2HubService can make that a painless process.
X2HubService is our cloud intelligence and social media gateway that lets you easily sync your X2CRM installation with numerous third-party applications, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Dropbox, and many more. Additionally, our HTTP-based API can also help you seamlessly integrate X2CRM with your existing software and third-party frameworks. Easily create, modify, and delete records directly through API commands.
5. “Standard reports take several days to create”
Reporting is an extremely powerful tool for many businesses. It allows management to easily see the status of their company within a few pages or visual diagrams. X2CRM offers many reporting capabilities directly within the application.
X2CRM’s reporting and analytics capabilities enable you to monitor and react to marketing, sales and service performance, and ultimately make changes to improve performance. Easily create a variety of custom reports. The visual, easy-to-read charts allow users to easily examine data from different perspectives, and quickly spot trends, issues, and opportunities.
6. “CRM governance is missing or ineffective”
The best CRM software is one that you can easily integrate into your system. If you deal with sensitive information or your business operates in a hierarchy, then you’ll want administrators have complete control over their users’ level of record access, permissions to edit or update data, and group memberships.
We added another layer of functionality within X2CRM by enabling administrators to control user groups and roles. They can create new users and assign them to different group categories based on their position within your company. Administrators can control each user’s ability to view and edit records, specified right down to the individual field level. Each role has its own defined access to modules and sensitive record data to give you complete control over your CRM software.
7. “You want to take advantage of new data sources”
In today’s quickly expanding world, technology is constantly changing. As your clients are using new technologies and social media platforms, you need to ensure that your business to keep up. By taking advantage of your contact’s new data sources, your company can discover new leads that they would have otherwise missed.
X2CRM is always developing new connections with data sources to ensure that your employees have all the resources they need to further business relations and close deals faster. To make things as easy as possible, you can monitor and utilize all the data available through social media and cloud intelligence right in X2CRM. This means that X2CRM isn’t just a static application that stores data like many other CRM systems; instead, it is a proactive platform that leverages many outside data sources to help your business run smarter and faster.
8. “Customized add-ons stop working after an update”
To keep your application running as smoothly as possible, you need to make sure it is up to date. However, many CRM systems have very complex update procedures. If you link multiple business applications with your CRM system, such as a third-party marketing automation software, you run the risk of breaking that connection – which would set your business behind and possibly lose you qualified leads or contacts. Your business shouldn’t have to choose between running the latest software or running your business smoothly.
X2CRM has easy updates to make sure your business can always take advantage of the latest features X2CRM has to offer. Because X2CRM already offers many features within its all-in-one application, you do not have to worry about losing some third-party application capabilities while updating. Additionally, whenever you update X2CRM, you have the option to back up your entire database. That means that if you ever run into any issues while you update, you can easily restore your previous version so your business won’t suffer any downtime.
9. “Adoption and usage is low”
Of course, it doesn’t matter how good your CRM software is if your employees do not use it.
Administrators can monitor users to get a better understanding of how their employees are using X2CRM. By getting a better sense of how your business is using X2CRM, you can easily customize the platform to promote usage. Additionally, X2CRM has many design choices to encourage users to use the CRM software. Individual users can customize the look and feel of the application with anything from custom widgets to fully personalized colored themes or backgrounds. By having your employees feel like they can customize X2CRM to fit their needs and aesthetic, they’re much more likely to continue using the software.
10. “Data quality issues lead to competing definitions of the customer”
One of the biggest problems a business can face is isolation between their departments. If they have conflicting ideas on how to best support the customer, the a business as a whole can often struggle moving forward. More often than not, these differences come from what customer data they look at. A sales representative who learns about a customer from their interactions with a new product campaign will have a very different opinion than a customer support member who only interacts with customers struggling with the current product or service.
Because X2CRM is an all-in-one CRM application, it is a platform that you can use across your entire business. By having all of your employees reference the same database, you can ensure that your company uses the same client information and can operate as a single unit.
All of Harpham’s indicators are extremely well thought out and accurate. Of course, it’s important for your CRM software to cover all of your technical needs, but sometimes your business needs something with a bit more edge. The team at X2CRM view CRM, not as a science, but an art – and that’s why we decided to add a 11th sign that your business needs a new CRM system.
11. Your Current CRM Software Doesn’t Offer You an Experience
CRM software is one of the few applications your business uses on a daily basis. Shouldn’t you actually enjoy using it? Imagine that most current CRM applications are giant SUVs; they’re large, bulky, and require tremendous amounts of resources yet offer little efficiency. While you’re waiting in traffic with the other SUVs, all desperately trying to reach your destination (to find new leads), you see a sleek motorcycle zip through traffic and speed past your car. This is X2CRM. We make your business go faster by offering all the features your business needs to run every aspect of your business, within a single, edgy platform. Stop sitting in your chair and thinking “Man, I wish I was that guy”. Take X2CRM for a test ride and experience it for yourself!