7 / 28
By now you have probably heard the acronym,
CRM, or hopefully read about it in a BITE committee
e-mail. But do you know what CRM is? Or what
the acronym actually stands for? If not, you’re not
alone. We are here to help you better understand
CRM and what it means to BL Companies.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management
(CRM). In a nutshell, CRM lets you store and
manage your business development leads and
returning client information. Information such
as contact info, meeting activities, and proposal
opportunities, to name a few can be stored in one
central location.
Don’t be fooled. This is not just a fancy contact
list. Ultimately, a CRM system is a game-changing
piece of technology for a company like ours.
From the primary markets of retail/commercial, to
energy and public infrastructure, a CRM system
will help BL Companies, increase our awareness of
opportunities, drive strategies to closure and create
a communication of targeted activities throughout
the organization.
There are many CRM systems out there. You
may have heard of some of them like Sales Force
or Dynamics. BL Companies will be adding the
CRM module to Deltek Vision, a system already
in place for accounting and project management.
The main benefits of a Deltek CRM are one’s of
business development and growth. Deltek CRM
is an opportunity-centric system that will allow
BL Companies to manage and store information.
Information that we need to track from initial lead to
project close out.
You are probably thinking, “aren’t we already
capturing this information?” Yes, and no, would be
the answer to cover that question. Our business
development teams are capturing this information
on Excel spreadsheets, in Deltek and even Microsoft
Outlook. We’ve been successful with utilizing
home grown systems like the “super tracker” but
these current tools do not allow us to shape the
opportunity lifecycle process with one integrated
system.
The BL Companies’ CRM module will allow our
opportunities to be captured in one central database.
This will allow us to get a complete and accurate
picture of opportunities while easily sharing
documents, milestones, activities and client contact
information across offices, disciplines and markets.
Implementation and ongoing training is on the
horizon. Teams are already hard at work getting the
CRM module to work for us in way where access to
information and easy follow up with team members
and clients becomes an opportunity in itself.
Although it would be nice, the thing to remember
with CRM is that there is no “magic button.”
Training on how the process works, and what
information is put into the system are the keys to its
success. The value of the human element cannot
be underestimated in a CRM system for you cannot
truly have customer relationship management
without that essential component.
issue 9 // 5