For last almost 2 decades, MS Excel has been my favourite applications, and still it is. Spreadsheet is the most wonderful and effective software ever created by Industry. The versatility of excel is simply unchallengeable.
However businesses have evolved. The complication and the pace at which complications have to be handled has changed. Customer Relationship is one of the most focused areas these days. You need a specialised tool to manage / monitor / analyse entire gamut of variables in Customer Relationship.
We have to admit that spreadsheet cannot do everything that a modern Sales/marketing team would require. Hence we need to think of Spreadsheet to CRM software.
For example take lead or funnel management. You cannot do that effectively, once you have more than one person team, in Spreadsheet. Add to it the intricacies of Service and support or team communication. The list is long. CRM cannot be handled in spreadsheets, we have to move from Spreadsheet to CRM.
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Here are seven reasons to switch from Spreadsheet to CRM Software
- Security problem. Who owns information?
The most easy way to steal your entire customer list, just save that spreadsheet on pen drive, and you are gone. Spreadsheet has this biggest disadvantage. There is a huge security concern. - Difficult to find errors
94% of the spreadsheets contain errors (this was found by study by Dartmouth college). Most of the people don’t use spreadsheet correctly. There is almost no data quality control. Would you rely your business (i.e. sales / service) on it?
Further, when multiple people use same spreadsheet, the chances of errors are multiplied. - Not useful on the field
Sales people are always on the move. They cannot get excel there. Result, everybody has a printout, that might be different from others. So on field, sales people are using printed lists, which are very inefficient. - Powerful formula have powerful errors
Do we ever check the formula that we have been using for last 7 years ? Most of people don’t understand formula correctly, hence lots of mistakes are bound to happen. Errors increase with multiple people using same sheet. - Multiple versions, Multiple truths
Everybody in the team has his own master copy of spreadsheet. There is no one master, you have many masters. Every time it is updated, a new copy is in circulation amongst members. - Time Consuming data entry
Remember Excel is a data analysis tool and not data storage tool, it is not designed for data storage. Further there is lots of duplication of work, as there is no master / transaction data structure. The magnitude of problem is increased with increase in Number of customers or products or even number of team members using spreadsheet. - Reporting and analysis requires Excel Expertise
Excel is a power tool in the hands of a powerful user, what about regular users ? Most of people are not very good in creating analytics, they need ready made reports. It is also very time consuming.
A proper CRM system helps you overcome all above challenges and achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. If you need one for your team, call us
