The ultimate guide to understanding types of CRMs

Developing a personal rapport with your clients is relatively simpler when your clientele is small, as you would be familiar with their objectives, purchasing histories, and patterns.

But when your company grows, things become more challenging. How can you guarantee that each client receives the same high level and standard of care? When you have thousands of consumers, how can you offer personalized, pertinent interactions?

That is exactly where Customer relationship management (CRM) software can help. Even when your firm expands, CRM helps to lessen administrative strain and enhance customer experience.

TL;DR

What is a CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system or technology that allows businesses to manage all of their interactions and relationships with current and potential clients. Its straightforward goal is to strengthen commercial ties and business relationships. CRM systems assist businesses in maintaining contact with clients, streamlining procedures, and boosting profitability.

Why is CRM important?

CRMs are generally designed to streamline and improve customer interactions, the sales process, and the running of marketing campaigns. They do this by improving efficiencies across workflow and the sales pipeline—automating tasks and analyzing data. CRMs can aid in improving customer interactions and internal efficiency, which together can lower costs and boost income. To put it another way, applying a CRM solution in place can help you increase your profit margins, assist you in better organization, and ensure increased client communication and streamlined internal communication. This, in turn, will lead to an increased automation potential for booming businesses.

What is the CRM Process?

A CRM process is a strategy for maintaining personalized customer interaction through various stages and involves managing customer data, analyzing information, and generating meaningful reports. The purpose of the CRM process is to increase brand awareness, enhance business loyalty, strengthen customer service relationships, and aid in client retention, and promote sales growth.

The CRM process consists of five stages, namely, reach, lead acquisition, lead conversion, customer retention, and customer loyalty, which require the joint effort of a business’s marketing team, sales team, and customer support team. The advantage includes access to a complete overview of the customer’s journey.

Types of CRM

CRMs can be divided into four categories. This classification is mainly based on how they perform tasks and functions and their business orientation. 

CRMs based on functions

• Operational CRM
• Analytical CRM
• Collaborative CRM
• Strategic CRM

Operational CRM (to manage your business.) 

Operational client relationship management software assists you in coordinating the efforts and streamlining the activities of different teams and departments, mainly marketing and sales. It enables you to gather and compile all your customer interactions into concise, practical, and insightful customer data.

Offerings: Operational CRM’s major objective is to increase customer acquisition and retention. In order to do this, they help you produce new leads, nurture them into customers, and then keep them as customers through ongoing marketing and advertising communication and excellent customer service.

Benefits: The benefits of these types of CRMs include customer satisfaction, positive referrals, expansion of the network, and boosting profitability.

Examples: Orgzit, Salesforce, Propeller.

Used by: Operational CRM solutions are used by companies of all sizes, and they frequently enable CRM automation to save time.

Analytical CRM (to evaluate your business’s success)

An analytical CRM system enables you to comprehend how your prospects are progressing through your sales funnel, as opposed to an operational CRM system, which assists in bringing leads into your sales funnel. Analytical CRM systems collect, archive, and analyze customer data to reveal insights into how customers engage with your company. 

Offerings: The information mentioned above enables you to evaluate the success of your marketing, sales, and customer service initiatives and accordingly guides you to modify and adjust your strategy as necessary.

Benefits: Benefits of this type of CRM include lead conversion into a customer, predicting and analyzing buying habits and patterns, and helping you predict financial forecasting.

Analytical CRMs are used by businesses of all sizes and are especially helpful for companies looking to enhance their customer relationship management procedures.

Examples: Orgzit, Hubspot, Zoho Analytics, Creatio

Collaborative CRM (to support managing teams)

In a large company, the teams in charge of sales, marketing, and customer service commonly work together on client accounts. A collaborative CRM’s primary objective is to enhance customer satisfaction and expedite business operations by facilitating smoother and more efficient departmental collaboration.

Offerings: Collaborative CRM facilitates document management, allows managers to assign responsibilities and priority levels, and allows team members to connect with one another via a variety of channels.

Benefits: Saves time by making communication transparent and efficient.  It also benefits companies with remote setups or a workforce with multiple offices.

Examples: Orgzit, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SugarCRM, Copper

Used by: Collaborative CRMs are particularly popular with large businesses—companies with sizable customer bases where numerous employees handle individual client accounts.

Strategic CRM (to organize new offerings and commercial strategies for consumers, businesses, or industries)

The newest CRM solution in the market is strategic CRM. The focus of strategic CRM is on sustained customer involvement. Their main objective is to foster client loyalty and customer retention. Strategic CRM gathers data on customer priorities and demands and needs to add value for your clientele.

Benefits: It has tools and modules that help you with all major business decisions.

Used by: They’re handy for companies that need to handle long-term client relationships, like an IT firm that offers continuous data management services to customers.

CRMs can be further classified and distinguished based on business size and business process. Below is a comprehensive CRM table to help you understand these distinctions better.

CRMs based on business size

Business size	Introduction	Best Fit	Pros & Cons
Enterprise	CRM for enterprises assists organizations in managing a vast number of clients, facilitating seamless team collaboration, and gaining insightful data on consumer behavior.	Salesforce Sales Cloud	-Marketing automation -Opportunity management and customer support -Complex to use -Very expensive
SMB (small & medium businesses)	CRM for small and medium-sized organizations assists in enabling visibility, control, and value for money overall business activities.	Orgzit	-Fastest customization -Best value pricing -Not for marketing automation -Lead management -Quote Management
STARTUPS	CRM for startups assists in establishing and maintaining relationships with customers, improving customer service, and converting more leads into sales.	HubSpot	-Intuitive user interface -Integration with Outlook and Google -Limited customization -Potentially high cost with add-ons

CRMs based on business process

Business process	CRMs and Features	Examples
SALES	CRM software for sales is required for tracking and controlling processes throughout the sales and lead generation cycle.	Orgzit, Freshsales, Pipedrive, Zendesk sell
MARKETING	CRM for marketing helps you leverage data to create personalized communications. The aim is to optimize customer relationships and increase customer loyalty and revenue.	ZohoCRM, Mailchimp, SugarCRM
OPERATIONS	CRM for operations speeds up daily chores and processes for the entire team by automating activities like contact organization and communication.	Orgzit, AgileCRM, Keap
SERVICE AND SUPPORT	CRM software for customer service enables businesses to provide custom support and improve client relationships at all stages of the customer journey, especially post purchase.	Orgzit, Capsule, Nimble, Creatio

Debunking myths about CRMs

Customer Relationship Management is often viewed as something very complex and technical. While this is only an aspect, many myths and less knowledge of the same play an important part in creating the stigma around CRMs. So, let’s take a look and debunk some of the most common myths about CRMs.

#CRM isn’t really a need.

It’s entirely a myth. If you own a business and you have customers, you do need a CRM. Your business can maybe survive without a CRM, but thriving and prospering is where CRM comes into play. 

#All CRMs Are Pretty Much the Same

Not at all! Let’s understand with an example. While Salesforce is a giant and can do pretty much everything, it might not be as friendly and suitable for small, very small businesses as Orgzit (designed for employee size <100) will.

#Implementing CRM is really hard

It’s a common myth that using a CRM requires technical and programming expertise. While some CRMs do require a computer guru to set them up, most CRMs like Orgzit, which use no code technology, don’t involve these hassles, and you can use them straight out of the box.

#CRM costs a lot of money

This is a prominent big myth, so let me clarify it all. CRMs come with huge benefits, and while some big CRMs like Microsoft and Salesforce can be expensive, there are plenty of great CRMs that are extremely pocket-friendly and even have free as their starting price range. Now, How cool is that!!!

#Running a CRM requires a big team

That is totally a myth. In fact, Adding CRM actually makes it possible for a smaller team to wrangle a lot more data effectively.

Comparative analysis of CRM (How to pick the best one)

Given below is a CRM comparison chart:-

CRMs	Orgzit	Zoho	Hubspot	MS DYnamics	Pipedrive	Salesforce
Target Size	<100	100+	100 +	100+	<5	100+
Ease of Use	Easy	Moderately Difficult	Moderately Difficult	Complex	Easy	Complex
Budget	Best Value	Expensive	Expensive	Very Expensive	Affordable	Very Expensive
Pricing	$29-$69 per user per month	Free- $52 per user per month	Free-$360 per user per month	$210 per use/month	$25-85 per user per month	$25-$330 per user per month
Customer Success	Dedicated Success Team	Pay Extra	Pay Extra	Pay Extra	Not Available	Pay Extra

Conclusion: How do you choose which CRM best fits you?

Good customer relationship management equates to a better business. A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a piece of software that aids business owners in creating and maintaining relationships with their clients. Choosing the right type of CRM solution requires you to research and identify your goal. After identifying a clear business goal and budget, you can choose your CRM type and set it up, followed by implementation and analysis. With the presence of multiple options in the market, you can easily find a CRM that matches your vision. I hope this article was helpful. All the best for getting your ideal CRM solution.

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