The Owners' Manual - Issue 9 - Winter 2017

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.

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