SAP Business One includes integrated CRM. Will SAP Business One CRM enable growth in my business?

I have been using SAP Business One CRM for eight years to run a sales and marketing team and I can emphatically answer – YES – we have experienced double-digit year on year growth and we have a sales team that loves using SAP Business One CRM. CRM has been a real enabler for our team.

So what functionality is included and how do I introduce SAP Business One CRM into our company. Let’s start by looking at the SAP Business One CRM functionality.

Activities – you can record meetings, phone calls, notes and reminders into SAP Business One. Manage activities with customers, suppliers and leads. Get reports on activities for your sales team, customer, suppliers and leads.

MS Outlook integration – a standard feature of SAP Business One. Integrate business partner contact information and calendar entries with MS Outlook.

Sales Opportunities – manage strategic sales cycles using SAP Business One sales opportunities. Move away from keeping your sales forecast on a spreadsheet – use the dynamic analysis of SAP Business One sales opportunities. Report on sales cycles by customer or lead, sales rep, region, potential chance of closing and potential close date. Can you imagine the power of running a report today showing all sales that are likely to close in the next 30 days – reported by sales rep and region?

Marketing Campaigns – a new edition to SAP Business One CRM marketing campaigns allows your marketing team to plan and execute marketing campaigns. Newsletters, telemarketing campaigns and more….using your customer list, lead list or an imported list/database that you have purchased.

Sales Reporting – the real power of SAP Business One CRM. Get reports by sales rep, region, sales opportunity and a whole lot more. Image the reports you can run……show me all activities for a particular salesperson for a range of customers by date range or show me all phone calls made by a particular salesperson to our most important customer in the last 30 days…the options are endless.

Mobility – very topical at the moment. Everyone wants to mobilise the workforce and I can understand why – it pays to go mobile. The good news is that SAP Business One has mobility covered. Use the iPhone or iPad app to make sure that your sales team stays connected. Get the information that your sales team needs while they are travelling or in front of customers. Take sales orders or create service tickets from the mobile app.

How do I introduce SAP Business One CRM into my business? The best approach is to keep the initial implementation as simple as possible. Get the sales team and sales manager involved in the system design/blueprint stage. Keep the amount of data capture required by the sales team to a minimum and show the sales team some immediate benefits – better sales reporting, mobility and ease of use. Start with the basics and grow your CRM implementation from the ground up.