In Réunion, barely more than 15% of companies have installed CRM software, the customer file management tool. While more than one in four in mainland France are equipped with this tool, why are companies slow to install a CRM in Reunion? However, with 593,000 Internet users and completely different (omnichannel) purchasing behavior from recent years, companies are not yet taking the measure of such a tool in their digital transformation process. Why don't they equip themselves? We provide some answers below, taking into account the information reported from the field.
What is a CRM?
As we detailed in our article "Implementing a CRM
at the service of business strategy", a CRM is "a set of systems that
optimize the relationship that the brand maintains with its customers, in order
to build their loyalty. and increase its turnover per customer” (definition).
It allows “to coordinate a multi-channel customer
journey (point of sale, mobile, Internet) in order to offer a unified customer
experience” and “brings together the analysis of customer data and the
marketing actions put in place”.
If you want to know more about CRM, see the article
What is a CRM for a business in Reunion?
From a more concrete and material point of view, a CRM
is a software allowing to gather the data of your prospects and customers:
- those collected via your website
- those from your social networks
- those provided by your sales representatives following a meeting
- those collected during events.
- those from quotes, purchase orders, requests for information, etc.
These solutions are mostly accessible via a simple
internet connection (and even on your smartphone for the best of them).
At the service of your commercial performance and
while its usefulness is demonstrated, these solutions are nevertheless shunned
by 84% of Reunionese companies (all sizes combined). For what ? What are the
barriers to implementing these solutions? Here is a small anthology of the
objections we have encountered in recent months.
Barriers to implementation
During our various interviews, audits and meetings, we
found that at the mere mention of the customer file or a CRM project, certain
barriers closed. Here are the main reasons mentioned (some gossips, like me,
would even go so far as to call them “pretexts”).
1. My current information system is not compatible
First reason mentioned, the incompatibility of a CRM
solution with the current IS (information system in the jargon of technicians).
Many CIOs (Information Systems Departments if you
follow), have chosen to develop an in-house solution in order to stick to the
tailor-made data model imagined at that time. Many systems have also been
grafted onto this IS (production, payroll, logistics solution, etc.).
However, with the new expectations of customers and
prospects, the needs of the marketing and sales teams have changed, and have
not been taken into account because this required a complete rethink of the IS:
- audit of the existing time-consuming,
- specifications that change every 4 mornings,
- responses to RFIs (Request For Information, or Request for Information in VF) sent to potential service providers that are rarely satisfactory for CIOs, etc.,
- the engineers who spent weeks developing it don't want to see their baby replaced by obscure American software over which they have little or no control.
Before even addressing the possible solutions: native
integrations with many software packages, APIs, etc. which tend to be
simplified and which allow the majority of systems to communicate with each
other, CIOs close the debate by pulling out the “ This is not compatible with
our current IS”. All of this, of course, to the great dismay of the marketing
and sales teams, who suddenly have to fret with a good old excel spreadsheet
running at full speed on a version of Windows XP that their IT department was
kind enough to install for them.
2. The CRM will not adapt to my future needs
Reason N°2: in addition to not adapting to current
needs, the proposed CRM will not adapt to future needs either. After all, it is
well known that the IS Departments (again) can read the future.
More seriously, (because I have nothing against CIOs
and love exchanging with them), we are aware that a majority of IS are real gas
factories and that each migration takes months.
Let's not forget that in 2018, data is more than ever
the sinews of war (along with finances) and it will be necessary at "given
time" (as we say in the country of rugby), to abandon the old systems in
favor of its slightly scalable solutions.
Under the pretext that the CRM would not adapt to
future needs, companies are unfortunately confined to using a system blocked in
the past (rather contradictory, isn't it?).
3. There is no CRM that fits my job.
Overheard in a meeting:
"Ah but that's not going to be possible with us,
you know, we do a job apart".
The problem is that many confuse product and business
offerings. Differentiating your offer from that of your competitors is a good
thing, even necessary. Not doing like your competitors does not mean creating a
new profession.
The beauty of technology (and a team that understands
your business if you take the trouble to explain it to them) is that it can
easily adapt to your “business specificities”. It is even possible that a
company with similar activity in another country has already successfully implemented
a CRM.
The leading solutions on the market (mostly
international such as SalesForce, Hubspot or Microsoft Dynamics), provide their
subsidiaries and partners with a huge knowledge database (“knowledge base” in
VO) in order to allow users to capitalize on this which has already been done.
Pretty handy, no?
There is also the case of “we have already tried in
the past, and it did not work”.
There are several phrases of this type that block the
digitization of your activity. But the real question to ask is above all: did
all the stakeholders feel concerned by this major project? Have all efforts
been made to ensure that the objectives are achieved?
We remind you that involving your employees is
essential in the deployment of a new method or new tools. The support of the
management, the IT department, the marketing and business departments are
necessary for a project of this magnitude. If your last failure dates back 10
years, there is a prescription… the market has evolved enormously since then
(both in terms of the number of solutions available and the features offered).
4. My employees do not want to change their habits
We could qualify this by “new tools and old methods”.
It is definitely difficult to classify in order of frequency the reasons that
we are presented with, as they come up so often. Change is later and for
others. Especially since this reason is usually accompanied by:
".. it's a waste of time, we've always done
without and look where we are today...".
Change management is a long-term action that should be
anticipated. Notifying employees a week, a month, before the deployment of a
new solution (CRM or other for that matter) is sure to fail. At best, your tool
will be suffered and misused, at worst, it will be rejected.
To put all the chances of success on your side, we
advise you:
- to communicate upstream on the adoption of a new solution and all the advantages it presents.
- offer support for configuration
- communicate on any changes to the organization of your teams
- train your teams
- select a service provider that offers available technical support.
5. My collaborators will feel policed
A CRM allows you to record all the actions of
prospects (web behavior, behavior with regard to your newsletters, last call,
last email exchanged, etc.); but also their interactions with your sales and
marketing teams.
At first glance, the majority of employees, not to say
salespeople, consider CRM as a tool allowing their manager to monitor their
sales performance, and which also wastes their time.
To circumvent this objection, it is necessary to
communicate on the different functionalities that will allow them to manage
their opportunities and ongoing transactions, and which will allow them to
optimize their administrative tasks (65% of a salesperson's day according to
Prialto).
As we detail in our article “What is a CRM for a
Business in Reunion”:
- Productivity increases by 14.6% when sales reps have mobile access to their CRM (according to Nucleus Research).
- Once adopted, a CRM can increase sales (up to 29%) and forecast accuracy (40%) according to the publisher Salesforce.
It is essential to focus on the positive in order to
overcome objections.
6. I already have a client file
A client file only really expresses its value when it
is well exploited. Exploiting a scattered customer file: business cards at the
bottom of your salespeople's briefcases, countless more or less updated Excel
files, quotes in proprietary format exported by your invoicing software is a
challenge.
A real effective customer file must be constantly
updated, accessible by the teams that use it (sales, marketing, after-sales
service, sales administration), and if possible secured (access rights,
encryption) so as not to fall into n any hands.
The majority of CRMs offer all this and even more:
smartphone application, personalized performance reports, etc.
7. A CRM is expensive
Hiii. Fake.
Some solutions are indeed expensive, but these
generally concern the behemoths of the CAC 40 (and other international stock
exchanges), and meet many technical requirements: integrated with around twenty
other solutions, available for 5,000 employees, in 85 different languages.
The majority of VSEs / SMEs in Reunion do not have
such needs and a multitude of solutions could largely meet their expectations.
And you know what ? In most cases, free or basic
solutions could change your life. However, the choice of a CRM solution is made
on a case-by-case basis: the needs of the marketing and sales teams, the IT
department, and the solutions currently in operation must be taken into
consideration.
In the meantime, you can consult our article “6
criteria for choosing the right CRM in Reunion”.
8. We don't have the skills
Closely related to points 2, 3 and 4 of this article,
the “we don't have the skills” can refer to an implementation failure.
- Either because the team in charge of the project was not the right one: the marketing team wanted to manage the project without involving the IT department, or vice versa,
- Either the teams that set up the current system have left the company and no one dares to touch the information system “because it works”.
- The "we don't have the skills" can also arise in the conversation because current teams overestimate the complexity of implementing such software.
3. The different solutions
We will not benchmark the solutions in this paragraph
as there are so many of them, but we still provide you with our advice:
1. Trust market-leading solutions
Rather than developing yet another in-house solution
that only one or two people can maintain, we advise you to trust the
market-leading solutions.
For what ? Quite simply because the solutions that
still exist to this day are solutions that have proven themselves, which have
solid backs as it is customary to say.
Beyond an experience that is no longer to be proven, these solutions will offer a wide range of services in order to stick to as many scenarios as possible. There is something for every need and every budget.
2. Choose a partner to support you in choosing,
installing and using it
Most solutions can be subscribed directly online, but
these giants being mainly American, it is on the support side that you will
have to pay attention.
- Is it available 24 hours a day or at least from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.?
- Is the support in French?
- Is training included? (for current employees and newcomers).
In general, we advise you to deal with an authorized
distributor or an agency which will have the advantage of offering you a local
service that American publishers cannot provide, especially in Reunion.
NB: Find out here how we implemented it at Teralta
3. Opt for turnkey: CRM + automation
Depending on their position in the company, employees
may have different uses of CRM. Salespeople will use it to manage their client
portfolio, their managers to monitor the performance of their teams, and the
marketing teams to measure the profitability of their market campaigns.