Before we get excited about the top 20 CRM Transformation Benefits, let us stipulate that not every company will derive all or most of the benefits outlined below. The volume and the value of the CRM transformation benefits vary by size of the company, the competitive factors, customer expectations, sales and service model. However, the key determinant is what has been the CRM Transformation Strategy and the areas of focus. So please do not be miffed if you are only seeing 2 or 3 or 5 of the CRM transformation benefits.

Before you derive the benefits of the CRM transformation, you must have an approach, a well-defined strategy and a roadmap to get there.

Top 20 CRM Transformation Benefits:

1. 1. 360-degree view of the customer: A full spectrum view of the customer, their profile, purchasing patterns and any other attributes will be of immense value to a company. This is one of the greatest benefits of a success CRM transformation.
   2. Data-driven sales and service interactions: When data can alert a salesperson – like a CD (certificate of Deposit) coming due in a week; or a milestone birthday of the spouse of a key client – it can lead to better relationships and better sales and client satisfaction.
   3. Optimal handoffs across digital, physical and mobile channels: A customer may work on a transaction at work and leave it midway and then pick it up on the train on his/her mobile device, and complete on a home laptop at night. A seamless transition and data sharing/saving, and context passing could be extremely valuable. Imagine, if a transition can be made to a physical channel (such as a retail store or a branch).
   4. Decision support: Which deal to chase or not to chase is left to just gut feel. While intuition and experience are awesome to have, supplementing and complementing it with hard data can drive better decisions.

1. Personalized Experiences: Ability to provide a personal experience to a client based on his/her preferences when they interact with the sales and service teams. Things as trivial as how to address them (Ms. Austin or just Jane) or what language they wish to speak or what time should you call to more serious things like content customization, price customization could lead to the superior client experience.
2. Reducing churn and attritionBetter customer relationship lead to lower attrition and churn, thus saving the company a lot of time and effort in finding replacement customers.
3. Increasing wallet share thru cross selling and up selling: A good CRM system should allow for cross selling and up selling thus resulting in profitable sales and a better share of client wallet.
4. Acceleration of the sales process and support process: Shaving a few days or weeks of a long sales process or a customer incident resolution can yield higher revenue throughput and lower costs.
5. Cross-functional team collaboration to facilitate sales and service: Today, serving customers is not just a sales or service person’s job. A well-designed CRM system can improve team collaboration.
6. Customer delight in every interaction: The aspirational goal of customer delight in every interaction is a signature CRM transformation benefit.
7. Better customer segmentation: Segmenting customers by several attributes and grouping them helps create campaigns and serve them better.
8. Customer account profitability analysis: A salesperson focusing on a profitable customer is worth more than wasting time on an account that is dollars down the drain. “No profit zones” could be avoided.
9. Effective Sales Forecasting: Modern CRM systems allow for more streamlined sales forecasting.
10. Visibility and transparency into the prospect to customer value stream: One of the benefits of CRM transformation is visibility and transparency, from the hitherto opaqueness of the sales process.
11. Developing customer champions and advocates to increase net promoter score: Helping transform customers into evangelists is possible thru better relationships.
12. Higher productivity for sales and service teams: All the tools, templates, techniques and training offered as a part of the CRM transformation will help improve productivity.
13. Data mining for intelligence, insight, and actions: CRM transactions and interactions can be improved by crunching past data combined with external data feeds.
14. Access anywhere and anytime with mobile and offline modes: Sales people can be more productive – for example on a call in a remote location – if they can access the product catalog offline and submit a price quote and sync with the system when they are connected.
15. Lower operational cost: By reducing friction in interactions and transactions, a CRM transformation helps lower operational costs.
16. Higher potential customer close ratio: Imagine if instead of 2 customers converted out of 10 prospects, the ratio increases to just 2.5 customers out of 10 prospects.

CIOPages.com can help you with your CRM transformation journey with a variety of resources.

• Build a business case for CRM Transformation
• Jumpstart your CRM Transformation Business Requirements
• Build your CRM transformation based on a stable set of CRM business capabilities
• Conduct a well-thought out CRM Vendor Evaluation
• Craft an accelerated project plan using CIOPages.com CRM Sample Project Plan