Why Your Company Needs a CRM

Your company’s lead sales person just quit on the spot. The business needs to reach out to all her accounts and contacts to maintain continuity. Are you panicking on where this wealth of phone numbers and emails might reside? Is your next step to rifle through a stack of business cards, or search through her Outlook contacts? If that’s the case, and this entire scenario gives you a bit of heartburn, it’s time to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

A CRM is many things, but at its root, is a simple premise building off the scenario above. No single person should ever “own” contact information. It should never be held on one sales person’s phone or desktop. Continuity of business – the if-you-were-hit-by-a-truck-today scenario – requires that contact information reside in a central location.

Additional benefits a CRM will bring to a business include:

Marketing Automation link – A CRM linked to your company’s marketing automation system will archive what campaigns, emails, and invites business contacts were included on. In addition, most will note when they visited your website, and what forms were completed. Basically, the CRM will give you a snapshot of marketing touches with each individual.

Running history of accounts – Many CRMs will archive emails, proposals, and calls to contacts, as well as offer a notes section. They also enable you categorize the account, for instance as a prospect, former customer, etc., as well as note what services (purchases) they bought. The benefit here is if a new sales manager takes over a particular account they can quickly get updated on previous, current, and future sales activity.

Lead management – What happens after a lead is handed off to a sales manager? Many CRMs can codify the process and be built to provide follow-up reminders for specific actions in the sales cycle. The end result is better accounting for leads once they enter your system.

Reporting – A CRM will allow you to run any number of reports from simple customer lists, prospects lists, sales opportunities, etc.

A well-maintained CRM will not only help sales and marketing work in sync, but also will ensure continuity of business. While staff is responsible for accounts and their respective contacts, by housing contact information in one spot, companies set the baseline expectation that the information is solely owned by the company.

What Should You Look For In a Transportation Management System?

Are you looking to streamline your transportation department with a transportation management system (TMS)? If so, it can often be difficult to know where to start. There are many different systems on the market – all with different functionalities, prices, and customer service. It might seem logical to choose the most popular system; however, top-tier systems are typically the most expensive and robust, which means you could be paying for features you don’t need.

It’s important to assess your requirements for a new TMS, and research systems that meet those needs to ensure you get the best value and the most use out of your system. Below are a few things to consider when you take on the task of selecting a new TMS. 

Customization – For companies like 3PL’s, which have multiple customers with different requirements to manage within their TMS, customization is essential to meet customers’ unique needs.

Cloud-based – If you want your customers to have access to their load information, it’s important to focus on cloud-based systems that offer a customer portal.  This gives them the ability to sign on to their account at any time, enter loads, check load statuses, look up invoices, POD (proof of delivery), and much more.

Automation – A highly automated system will be a huge time saver by performing functions such as sending carrier tenders, storing carrier and customer rates, automatic track and trace of loads, and invoicing.

Optimized loads –To get the best prices on loads, look for systems that provide a number of optimization options.  You want a system that easily identifies loads that can be consolidated into multi-stop shipments or backhaul options. 

Reporting – To keep track of key metrics, it’s necessary for your TMS to have robust reporting capabilities. Reports can show things like carrier costs, customer spend, specific lane volumes, and other important load information.

Customer service – As with any piece of technology, you are bound to run into questions and problems. Understanding the training and customer service that your TMS provides is key. You don’t want to lock into a system that provides little onboarding support and bills for every question you have.

Price – Once you have narrowed down your requirements, get quotes from all of the systems that meet your needs. Furthermore, ask each TMS supplier to provide you with a list of references. Ask around and see if each TMS provider was able to stay within their quoted amount and how happy the references are with their chosen system.

Be diligent in your research to ensure that your TMS has all of the functions you need now, while also considering how those needs may change in the future. Imagine spending numerous hours implementing and training on a new system, only to find out it is lacking in features you’ll need a year or two from now.

After you find the right system, be sure to thoroughly clean any data that will be imported into your new TMS, so you are set up for success from the start.