Too many SME businesses in the UK have invested in either CRM or Contact Management systems with the aim of gaining better business control and being able to ‘drive’ the business from that position of informed control – but then find that those very systems are not delivering anything of real use to the business, rather have degenerated into simply being a Name, Address and Notepad at best.

How can you avoid this? How can it be remedied? – the key is to concentrate on business issues, processes and benefits – then chose the technology to suit, not the other way round. Don’t go and buy what looks like a clever bit of software and then try and make it fit your processes, or worse try and make your processes fit with it.

Look at the staff that will use the system – what day to day benefits can they get from it? What features would drive them to use the system more and more, rather than less and less?

For example, do they speak to customers regularly? Is there information from other systems that you have which could be presented in a more useable way? If a customer called in & I could see instantly what they have been buying recently, what their spend with us had been so far this year compared to last year, who has been reading our marketing emails & where they have visited on my website – I would certainly be more inclined to make my CRM system the first port of call when dealing with a customer.

Once you can deliver this level of intelligence, your system takes on a whole new role – for everyone – and only then do you have the all the pieces in place that will allow you to drive your business at higher speeds, knowing that you are in full control from the CRM steering wheel.