How can sales management softwares, often called CRM, help your business?
Organise your business and team with efficient and complete sales management software! These tools, often called CRM (customer relationship management) software, help companies automate certain commercial tasks to save time, boost efficiency and streamline communication, whatever the size of the business. No matter what industry you’re in, the important thing is to take control of your data sets and ensure effective follow-ups that will drive sales.
Beyond its day-to-day role, sales CRM software offers a complete overview of your business, thereby helping you make strategic decisions for your company.
So, how do you use sales CRM software? And what are the essential, must-have features of CRM programs?
Centralisation of commercial information in a dashboard
To save time and facilitate collaboration between in-house teams, a user-friendly dashboard is a must. Part of any good sales management platform, this dashboard will display all of your company’s important data: turnover, average shopping cart total, operational visibility and performance indicators (overall sales, performance of salespeople, etc.). A reporting system is particularly useful for analysing this data in depth and readjusting objectives if necessary. In addition, some software packages include the collection of all subscriptions and deadlines so that you don't miss important dates in the sales workflow.
Given its importance, be sure you don't underestimate the value of a good user interface and experience (UI/UX), so that you can see all the information you need, simply and intuitively, day after day.
Purchase, sales and stock management
Do you want to track orders as they’re being dispatched and delivered to the customer? If so, your business management software should allow you to monitor purchases and sales administration. And don’t forget, you need to see the stock available in your storeroom to replenish it when necessary.
Your CRM software will be all the more useful if it displays supplier prices and payment deadlines.
Monitoring customer relations via CRM software
Sell more and save time: this should be the motto of your sales and marketing team…and the software they use! It’s also the reason why this tool must integrate excellent CRM architecture, collecting all the necessary information on prospects and leads and following up with customers. This ‘agile’ functionality will offer a pipeline view to focus on real opportunities and never miss a single sale!
Invoice optimisation
Your sales CRM software should be able to issue quotes in one click and produce invoices that comply with current standards. It should be able to generate documents automatically by tapping into stored company and customer data, and even automate late payment reminders.
The invoicing section should also include VAT management, calculated and generated automatically. To learn more, please consult this article on the 10 must-have features of an invoicing tool.
Integrated electronic signatures and payments
In tandem with invoicing, we recommend commercial management software that integrates legally-valid binding electronic signatures for important documents (purchase orders, quotes, etc.), and software that allows you to generate and receive payments quickly and easily compared to traditional online banking systems.
You will thus avoid intermediaries and save time again and again!
Setting up the accounting system
Accounting no longer needs to be a hassle. Thanks to powerful software with artificial intelligence (OCR), bookkeeping becomes child's play. Opt for a product that allows you to manage your day-to-day accounting operations and even bank reconciliation to facilitate the creation of accounting entries: salaries, taxes, expenses, etc.
While software will not replace a chartered accountant who takes care of your profit and loss accounts, balance sheets and other appendices, it can facilitate accounting operations. Indeed, this functionality produces a large part of all accounting entries through a wide range of exportable accounting books.
Integration with other software and applications
It’s a given that you have to use several software packages to run your business. So why not opt for a business management software that connects to other tools?
