CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) software provides a consistent method of managing the customers of your business. Knowing the current state of your business’ customer relationships can provide invaluable insight into where and how to increase revenue.

Originally only sales organisations used CRM systems to manage leads and report on sale conversions. These days most companies use some form of CRM to keep track of their customers.

Many standard packages exist that do do an excellent job of managing your business’ customer relationships for 90% of the time. That remaining 10% can make all the difference. It’s the unique parts of any business that make them successful over their competitors, and many standard packages either cannot do the job as you need them to, or require expert configuration to get the most out of them. Common issues are:

  • Complex sales processes
  • Integrating with your current backend
  • Reports that only applies to your type of business
  • Custom user interfaces to remove useless fields or add essential ones

Usually whatever it is, it is the deal breaker that makes you walk away from an almost perfect solution. It doesn’t have to be that way.

At TI Tokyo, we can customise many of the mainstream CRM packages to your business. For clients desiring the ultimate in a personalised CRM, we can build you a system that matches your business process every step of the way.

How To Think Of CRM Solutions

The possibilities below have a lot of cross-over or combined approaches, but we believe it’s best to think about your solution from two points of view: where your data should be stored, and what does it need to do.

Where Should Your Data Be Stored?

  • In the cloud – the CRM system runs on servers on the internet that are owned and managed by someone else. The software package will be shared by many other businesses, but your data will be kept hidden from them. The main downsides are that your data is stored somewhere out of your control, and that customisation is very limited. The upsides include that everything is managed for you, from backups to upgrades. Access by multiple people in multiple locations is very easy, and normally done via a web browser using the internet. This setup is common for companies of any size with fairly basic requirements.
  • On private hosted servers – the CRM system runs on servers you own or lease, and everything is managed by you (or by someone you know on your behalf). The upsides include making customisation more possible (as only your company will be using the system), and that your data is under your control. You (or your agent) are responsible for all management and software upgrades. Access by multiple people in multiple locations is very easy, and normally done via a web browser or dedicated client. Access can be easily restricted to your offices and through secure VPNs. This setup is common for medium-to-large companies, or companies with many remote staff.
  • On a local server – the CRM system runs from a server hosted in your office. This is essentially the same as using private hosted servers, except that access is much more secure and your data never leaves your office. Access by multiple people is very easy, and normally done via a web browser or dedicated client. Access from multiple locations can be made through secure VPNs. This is normally used by SMEs with a single office and few remote staff.
  • On a local PC – the whole system runs directly from your PC. This is the ultimate in privacy, as your client information never leaves a single PC. Access by multiple people or from multiple locations is difficult. This is normally only used for a small company with only one person managing your clients.

What Does It Need To Do?

  • Customised – many pre-existing CRM systems allow for some form of customisation. Customisations normally allows you to get the reports you want or to tweak how information is gathered and processed.
  • Integrated – not all pieces of software are willing to talk to others. Sometimes it is impossible without hours of manual work to take information from one system and put it into another (for example, export your sales data and import it to your accounting software). Integration of these two systems will allow the two systems to talk to each other, removing the manual time-wasting work you had to do before. This saves time and removes the chance of errors creeping in from manual processing.
  • Custom-made – we build you a fully customised CRM system to the specifications we are provided with. This is the ultimate bespoke solution and will fit your company like a glove.

Contact Us

Contact us to move to a solution that lets you stay on top of your customers.