Agile CRMs for Small-Medium Businesses in Asia
Every business starts out with a common goal – to strive for growth and success. But stumbling blocks are inevitable, and can make your business feel more like a chore than a passion. According to Investopedia, some of the biggest challenges faced by small-medium businesses include client dependence, money management, and keeping a balance between quality and growth. These challenges can be addressed by using a platform that helps keep your business in check while making sure it keeps up with the changing needs of both you and your customers.
Enter the agile CRM: a customer relationship management tool that not only assists with your sales pipeline, but can also grow with your company and adapt according to your industry’s ever-shifting landscape. Companies both big and small that use CRM software often find that it aids in decision-making thanks to all the information it mines and keeps readily available at your fingertips. The right CRM can also prompt your sales team to manage their time more effectively with schedules, automated reminders, and red alerts if any action is missed – allowing them to make the appropriate follow-ups so customers feel prioritized.
An agile CRM that scales with your company is also a boon, as it means less time is wasted having to train your team all over again if you are forced to move to a software that can accommodate a bigger company. This is particularly necessary for Asian companies, where time is of the essence in a business environment that can often be cut-throat – this is particularly true of retail and e-commerce, as shown in a report by A.T. Kearney. Larger, foreign players tend to outweigh smaller online companies thanks to their access to complex resources.
But choosing the right CRM can be a huge step in steering your company in the right direction, with undeniable business benefits.
Here we’ve picked our favorite scalable CRMs for small- and medium-sized businesses to help your company excel in the region:
Zoho
The latest version of Zoho CRM packs a punch for fast-moving companies in Asia looking to get the most out of relationships with their customers. With multi-channel functionality, sales and marketing teams are able to decrease time spent navigating between apps and platforms by using a single, seamless platform to engage with customers.
One of Zoho’s most attractive features is its customizability – the CRM adapts to the way your team works, rather than the other way around. Instead of having to adhere to a strict system, or even layout, Zoho lets you pick and choose the features most important to your team, using a layout that works for you.
The specially-designed SalesInbox was built with sales people in mind. Instead of getting emails lumped together in one inbox with the latest email right at the top, SalesInbox sorts your mail between Deals, Contacts & Leads, Not in CRM, and Colleagues so that your time is spent focusing on the company’s best interests.
Zoho CRM has also added a feature that few other CRM providers have – GameScope is a built-in gamification tool that encourages healthy, robust competition among sales teams. In addition, if your teams are spread out across different locations or product lines, Zoho CRM’s territory management can handle any form of customer segmentation, and lets you keep track of each region according to their profits and performances. Read the full review here…
SAGE
Sage CRM’s extensive software helps drive organizations forward by making certain processes more efficient. This includes automating information processing, resource planning, and inventory management so that employees can focus on driving growth in their small businesses. Sage’s software is easy to use and requires minimal customization thanks to their many years of experience in tailoring software for small- and medium-sized business’ needs.
Their On-Premise and cloud CRMs allow businesses that need the flexibility to access information while on the move, as well as a system tightly integrated with back-office accounting software. Sage also provides sales opportunity tracking to help your sales teams convert leads into opportunities, and allocate them to the right reps efficiently.
Company executives and managers are also able to gain a bird’s eye view of what’s going on throughout the sales process with Sage CRM’s dashboards, which update in real-time and help leaders make informed decisions quickly. This is made even easier with the software’s forecast and opportunity reports, which lets you see deals in their current stages alone the pipeline.
Using Sage CRM can lead to an improved customer service as your teams are able to stay with customers every step of the way, as well as market more efficiently to your audiences by creating targeted campaigns based on customer information. Read the full review here…
Bitrix24
With over a million organizations using it, Bitrix24’s comprehensive collaboration suite takes just about every aspect of a business into account. Its CRM comes embedded in an intranet, which adds up to more of a social enterprise network than a standalone CRM software. Users are able to collaborate and pitch in on customer records created under the CRM subhead, allowing teams to work closer together to snag a deal.
The tool allows sales people to divide contacts and leads according to their individual regions or markets, leading to a more organized and productive sales process. You can also analyse marketing campaigns to see what works and what doesn’t, in order to make the best decisions on how to proceed. Bitrix24’s CRM offers open channels that connect to Facebook, Telegram, Skype, and other social networks to communicate with customers using their preferred method, in real-time.
A mobile version gives small businesses the freedom to work from wherever they are – an especially positive feature in Asia where there is much field work to be done when establishing relationships with customers. Information logged into the CRM, including sent emails, updated records, and messages, all sync up among the multiple devices Bitrix24 is being used on.
Apptivo
The software also helps collect new leads coming in from your website through a sales tracking system that integrates with WordPress or Apptivo’s developer API in any language, which is flexible and designed specifically for developers with a basic knowledge of web services and XML, so it makes for a great introduction to web hosting. Additionally, it can also modify marketing targets, manage jobs and candidates, as well as company events and news stories.
Apptivo CRM is in Finances Online’s Top 100 list of CRM software products. Features include app integrations – including with Google Apps like Google Drive, Calendar, and Contacts – as well as a dashboard to monitor your employees’ performances, analysis of your wins or losses, unlimited storage for customer and contact data, and video tutorials. Their customer support service team is highly recommended by other small businesses with experience using Apptivo.
Pipedrive
Trying out a new software that could change the way you work can be intimidating, but Pipedrive’s pippy, friendly manner seeks to minimise that apprehension and get your company going. With helpful blog posts offering advice on how you can get the most out of their CRM and an extensive support center, Pipedrive aims to make adopting their technology a pain-free experience.
Pipedrive’s CRM manages your sales pipeline into easy-to-navigate sections that show your sales team which stage they’re at with any customer at any given time. The software, according to their website, “has no silly restrictions” in terms of customisability, giving your company full control over your pipeline priorities. It also offers a statistics tool that gets you the important figures quickly so employees can choose options on how to proceed at the right time.
These options can be laid out in the Activities and Goals feature, in which you can pay attention to details that will get a customer that much closer to signing a deal. Built-in notifications and reminders ensure your sales team never misses a beat. Pipedrive’s scheduling tool, which also syncs with Google calendar, lets you attach activities to certain deals and view important to-do lists all in one page.
*Some of the companies featured in this article are commercial partners of Tech Wire Asia