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Don’t Get Started With CRM Until You’ve Read This
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER
GeauxPoint is pleased to release its newest white paper, The Beginner’s Guide to CRM: An Honest Look at the Pros and Cons. The CRM guide will help businesses get the most out of their investment, avoid CRM pitfalls, and learn CRM optimization strategies.
This blog post is the first installment of the series on the white paper. The series will go into depth about the topics presented in the document.
Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can be either the best or the worst thing to happen to your business. While many sources say that CRMs are quickly becoming must-have business tools, not everyone will experience an easy adoption.
This guide will help sales managers and business owners to fully understand, evaluate, and get started with CRM. It will explain what CRM does, evaluate CRM platforms, and provide a series of tools to help the reader decide if CRM is a good fit for them. Ultimately, the reader will gain a healthy understanding of CRM pros and cons, and will be able to make an informed decision of how to proceed.
So, should you set up a CRM right now? Although you may get the impression that CRM adoption is inevitable, it’s better to wait until you can commit the time and resources to a successful implementation.
However, once you are ready, a successful CRM launch can lead to breakthrough results for your business. This, of course, depends on your ability to implement and administer the system in accordance with best practices.
Have a question about CRM? We’re friendly — get in touch with us today!
5 Reasons Why Businesses are Hiring Management and Technology Consulting Hybrids
Traditional business consultants are largely falling out of favor for management and technology consulting hybrids. While there are many business consultants who are truly worth their rates, a pervasive feeling in the business world is that a business consultant is someone who “takes your watch and tell you what time it is.”
There are five main reasons why businesses are opting to hire management consultants who are also business technology experts:
Reason #1: Business Don’t Know What They Don’t Know
This is a common problem as workplaces become more invested in powerful but highly complex technology. Often times, these businesses will hit a technology roadblock and have no idea how to overcome it. And while IT experts can straighten out the tech problem, the problem often lies at the crossroads of business and technology.
Reason #2: IT-Only Firms Are Not Understanding Business Objectives
Many times, clients seek help from the big IT firms or hire techno “geeks” to directly interact with business processes. While the valuable work of these professionals is not to be understated, their interest and focus lies sometimes exclusively with the tech and not the living, process-side of the equation. Frequently, this results in technology that runs fine but goes underutilized. Itcan also lead to an expensive misalignment of technology and business objectives.
Reason #3: Management and Technology Consultants Creatively Offer Solutions
IT firms are great if you already have a good idea of what you want, but unfortunately sometimes the solutions aren’t always so clear. A common mistake businesses make is feeding info to an IT person, only to have them completely misinterpret what was said. This can be a costly mistake.
Management and technology expert listen with both an ear for business goals and technology requirements. As such, they can help clients make informed decisions in regards to their sales, data management, security, and other goals.
Reason #4: Management and Technology Consultants Can Become Trusted Advisors
In many organizations, technology experts with business skills are moving up the corporate ladder and into the boardrooms since their input is necessary for modern problems. Those that have the propensity for business activities as well as the technology are valuable assets to the company. Someone who can wear both hats can make a great addition to a leadership team, especially in a part-time or contract capacity.
Reason #5: Top-tier Performance with Technology is a Necessity
Technology is slated to be the cause of most business growth for at least the short term future, according to a 2014 survey by McKinsey & Co. As such, technology-based leadership is growing in demand, and professionals who can do this are harder to find. Many businesses are getting their relationships in place now to strengthen their business/technology infrastructure for the future.
GeauxPoint Celebrates Six Years, Releases White Paper
GeauxPoint is pleased to release our newest white paper, “2020: Will You Get There? A Business Guide to Overcoming Disruption.” The paper helps business leaders prepare for change by listing four major sources of disruption and how to get past them.
The four categories of disruption according to the guide are 1) Disruptive innovation 2) Technology upheaval 3) Cultural Shits and 4) Changes in pricing determination.
The guide take a close-up examination of the banking, healthcare, non-profit, and business association industries. It also traces the histories of businesses that either succeeded or failed to navigate change. The paper uses these cases to demonstrate effective change-handling strategies.
The guide coincides with GeauxPoint’s entering into its sixth year. Over the last two years, we’ve more than doubled our book of business, adding multiple national and international clients.
Thought leadership is a core value of GeauxPoint, and as we grow, we intend to share as much of our knowledge as possible with our friends.