When is CRM worth the cost?

Dear Bob,
My CFO is asking if our Dynamics CRM deployment was worth the cost. We are in year three of our use of Dynamics and I was not here for the decision to purchase. How do I respond?

-- Jack, New Sales Manager

Dear Jack,

Since you were not part of the decision process it will be difficult for you collect all of the deployment cost to build your case. I therefore suggest using a combination of the following approaches:

Cost Avoidance
Consider not only the savings over what was in place before but what insights have been learned from using Dynamics that has caused you to reduced spending. For example, you have now been able to better measure the return for a specific marketing campaign and find that it’s not worth the resources.

Improved Sales
​Not only look at improved actuals, but also look at the speed of the sale flow. Is having a sales process spelled out in Dynamics 365 helping your team to move through the sales process faster? Does having a believable pipeline help account mangers better focus?

Customer Retention
Where you losing customers before CRM, possibly not even noticing that they were gone?  Now with Dynamics in place is there better attention on those “B” level customers that got lost in the fray of holding on to the “A” customers tightly or reacting to the calls of the “C” customers?
 
Service Vision
With RMAs and customer issues now being tracked in Dynamics and shared easier with account mangers, has service gone from being a cost to a profit center?  So often I see that organizations deliver repair service when an equipment upgrade should be sold.
 
Lead Tracking
Has Dynamics helped you better align marketing and sales so you how know what happens to leads?  Lead generation costs something and can you now take the cost of lead and track it all the way through the process to a sale.
 
Restructure Sales Team
With Dynamics CRM you how know how much time account managers need to manage their territories. Has this knowledge allowed you to reorganize workloads and possibility move the “C” customers off the account managers list to a more cost-effective inside sales group?
 
These are just some the areas to look at for building an answer for your CFO. As always, I am happy to chat with you on these approaches or others.

[email protected] or call me at 330.929.1353 x 5224.
 -- Bob