Failure to understand your customers’ needs and wants could result in ill-informed marketing strategies. And when your company can’t satisfy their demands, they’ll likely turn to your competitors instead. To prevent this, deploying a customer relationship management (CRM) system can make a world of difference. Here’s a handful of reasons to make the switch.

Grows with your business The ol’ Rolodex may have been useful for managing a few clients, but you’re going to need a better solution if you plan to maintain relationships with hundreds, possibly thousands, more. CRM scales with your business, meaning it can handle larger data sets and more clients as you expand your sales operation.

Organizes your data CRM software acts as a central database for all your sales records and transactions. This means important customer information can be retrieved in just a few clicks rather than rifling through thousands of documents, sticky-notes, and disorganized cabinets. And since CRM is hosted in the cloud, sales data, customer interactions, and other actionable information are available for the entire company.

Improves customer service Your sales team could be the most persuasive individuals in the world, but this means nothing if they can’t recall anything about their clients and their preferences. When your sales staff follows up on leads or existing customers, CRM will automatically retrieve contact history, past purchases, and customer preferences from your client database and display them on a single page during the call.

From here, sales representatives, armed with detailed customer information, will be able to recommend products and services that meet the client’s needs. So instead of struggling through a sales call, marketing employees can focus on delivering a professional sales pitch.

Streamlines your sales funnel CRM comes equipped with workflow management functions, supporting your sales pipeline in a number of ways. For example, you can configure your CRM to send instant follow-up emails when a lead visits a particular product page. You can even use automation to track where certain leads are in the sales pipeline and delegate the task to one of your closers.

Analyzes sales data With real-time sales information, business managers can track marketing campaigns and adjust their strategy accordingly. For instance, you might notice that click-through-rates for promotional emails and company newsletters are higher during Tuesday afternoon rather than Friday night. Having this information can help you focus your marketing efforts and message to generate more leads.

In addition, you can use CRM to analyze customer calling activity, market demographics, lead conversion rates, and key performance indicators to help inform future business decisions.

Understanding your customers can put you several steps ahead of the competition. If you need to manage contacts, eliminate time-consuming procedures, and improve your sales performance, CRM is the perfect business solution.

Contact us today to find out whether CRM is the right fit for your business.

Business Intelligence strategies have been utilized by company owners for decades, but only in today's Internet-based market do they have access to all the information they need in one location. See how business owners can use their business intelligence technology to budget for the coming fiscal year.

Compiling Data Across the Board Business Intelligence is not a new concept. Companies regularly compile data from many of their departments to make important business decisions. The manual process of gathering spreadsheets of data is cumbersome and time-consuming. BI software allows company owners to look at data from the various departments in one location, an online dashboard that can be manipulated to provide the exact information needed at the time.

Putting it all Together Business intelligence software extracts information from raw data provided by various departments to help business owners make important decisions in marketing, budgeting and financial planning/prediction. All on one dashboard, marketing campaigns can be tracked and evaluated for effectiveness, money can be moved from one department to another, and companies can see the financial health of the company.

In the past, IT companies provided BI solutions that used complex algorithms to gather intelligence. Now, the use of BI software is geared for the end user, providing self-service reporting for the individual business owner.

Moving Forward As the new fiscal year approaches, it is important for companies to incorporate business intelligence software into their yearly budget. The price of BI software varies, but because you are probably already spending the money on BI solutions for various segments of your business, it won't be a huge investment to compile the data in one location.

Today's business infrastructures are technologically driven. They need a solution that uses the same level of sophistication to make the best financial decisions for their companies. Business intelligence technology is that solution. Contact us today if you’re ready to take the next step.

Costs are a major concern when it comes to IT solutions, and the healthcare industry has its struggles trying to keep up with the latest technology on the market. Thankfully, cloud solutions and increased storage availability mean hospitals and clinics finally get some relief. Although most of the biggest cloud providers are pushing their data analytics solutions on businesses and corporations, many are targeting the medical industry. Read on to find out how this popular trend can help your facility.

Business intelligence (BI) software truly lives up to its name. At its core, BI is all about data analytics, and it is able to accept overwhelming amounts of data in short periods of time to use advanced analysis algorithms to search for trends that even the most experienced statistician cannot find.

By swapping out customer fields such as previous number of purchases, order size, and order frequency, in favor of patient fields such as income level, English proficiency, housing conditions, and community resources, hospital administrators can provide extra care that will help prevent expensive readmissions.

By combining socioeconomic data with electronic medical records (EMR) in a BI software environment, hospitals and doctor’s offices can easily create patient profiles that will predict how likely they are to require readmission, even before care is provided.

For the context of this article, readmission is when a patient returns for more care within 30 days of the original hospital stay. Cases like these usually stem from conditions immediately following the initial visit, such as mismanagement of the original condition, improper self-medication, and not enough access to proper medical services and medications in their community.

For practices looking for methods to reduce readmissions by three percent or greater, predictive analytics allow doctors to ensure that certain types of patients can totally avoid readmissions with proper initial care.

With effective implementation of these solutions, hospitals can save a lot of money. After reducing the incidence of readmissions by 6,000 patients annually, one particular practice was able to save $72 million on medical services, avoid $4 million in Medicare penalties, and boost its reputation by leaps and bounds.

Big data isn’t only for big business. BI software can deliver your practice unprecedented levels of care and efficiency, and we’re the ones who know how to get it done. Whether you want to lower readmission rates or ensure your EMR compliance, call us today to partner with a trusted IT expert.