1. Scattered Data
Important prospect and customer data is scattered all over the place, which results in costly inefficiencies and potential missed revenue opportunities.
2. Limited visibility to sales pipeline
Without a CRM system, pipeline data can be a weekly information extraction and compilation exercise. Salespeople need to be repeatedly reminded to email a spreadsheet of potential deals and then an administrator manually consolidates the information for management.
3. Marketing operates on its own island
Marketing does its job of generating leads, but new leads are not distributed in a timely fashion. The marketing department receives no metrics as to which marketing efforts have been the most effective, which means that marketers “fly blind” on an ongoing basis.
4. Slow Customer service response
If a company does not have a structured, shared system for fielding customer service issues and collaborating on issue resolution, client problems can languish. In some cases, an important customer issue can be lost sight of completely.
5. Lack of Internal collaboration
Within many organizations, internal communication and collaboration are accomplished by copying a lot of people on a lot of emails. Staff becomes overwhelmed with email and people often overlook critical information since they don’t have time to process the relentless flow of information.