SMBs are putting their customer relationship management systems (CRMs) to work for a range of use cases beyond just management of prospect and customer contact information, finds Scribe Software in a new report. Beyond managing contacts (94%), 65% are using their CRM for lead nurturing, and 59% each for email marketing and sales forecasting. The results lead the researchers to conclude that “the myth that SMBs might need less or are less sophisticated is simply not true any longer.”
The study also looks at how SMBs value their CRMs. Given that they use them primarily for contact management, it’s not surprising that 85% value them on the basis of their ability to store all prospect or customer information in one place. Many also look for the ability to share data among sales, marketing and other departments (77%), the ability to run reports on the health of their sales pipeline (64%), and the ability to run marketing reports (53%).
Satisfaction with the ease of reporting is not that high, though. A slight majority find marketing reporting to be either somewhat (42%) or very (10%) challenging, while 44% say the same about sales report. And although 59% say that sharing between marketing and sales is seamless, just 39% can say the same about data sharing between marketing and finance.
About the Data: The data is based on a survey conducted in November and December 2012 among 306 SMBs using CRM systems. 68% of the respondents purchase over 20 CRM seats, and the remaining 32% purchase less than 20 seats.
