Category: Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation and Customer Engagement

Digital transformation involves modernising processes, systems, and customer engagement strategies to improve efficiency, scalability, and the overall customer experience. It is a complex journey that explores every digital component of your business and either enhances, replaces or discards it. The result is a business that can meet the demands of the industry and its customers.

Central to this transformation is implementing a robust CRM system like Dynamics 365.

CRM systems provide businesses with tools to streamline operations, personalise customer journeys, and gain insights that drive growth. However, as with any notable change, adopting a new CRM system can present challenges. Particularly when moving away from legacy systems that feel familiar and comfortable.

However, while businesses or individuals within those organisations may want to maintain the status quo, customer expectations are changing.

The ubiquity of personalisation in multichannel communication makes the absence of any personalisation in a communication strategy more noticeable. To be clear, using a customer’s first name is not personalisation. In today’s competitive markets, it’s just below the bare minimum.

With relevance a key factor in buyer decision-making, generic communications will not cut it.

However, without moving through a sometimes painful, digital transformation process, businesses cannot hope to engage with their audiences in a meaningful way.

The Challenge of Letting Go

For many organisations, abandoning a legacy CRM system that has been in place for years can feel daunting. These systems, while often outdated and no longer fit for purpose, are familiar to employees and have shaped how their role is conducted. Moving away from these systems means stepping into the unknown, and that can be intimidating for any workforce.

A key principle of digital transformation is bringing everyone along for the journey. It has to be collaborative. Equally, it isn’t reasonable to hold back an entire organisation and shared future success because some find the thought of a new solution intimidating.

The adage of innovate or die has never been truer for businesses faced with making these kinds of decisions.

Sunsetting the Incumbent System

Legacy systems, despite their limitations, are heavily integrated into the workings of the business. Users are familiar with its workings, and they know all the quirks, bugs and workarounds.

Often, despite these challenges and the lack of insight, or actionable data, the familiar comfort of repeated processes is preferable to learning a new system.

This is despite the incumbent CRM lacking the functionality and flexibility required to meet the evolving demands placed on the business. Without even knowing it the business can become its own bottleneck for growth and innovation.

Transitioning to a CRM like Dynamics 365 as part of a digital transformation can be met with resistance. It requires not only a shift in technology but also in mindset. Employees may be reluctant to embrace the change, worrying that the new system will be difficult to learn or that it won’t accommodate their specific needs. This resistance can slow down adoption and hinder the success of the transformation.

Resistance to Automation: A Common Fear

One of the major hurdles in digital transformation is the fear of automation. Automation is a key feature of Dynamics 365, streamlining processes, reducing manual workloads, and enhancing efficiency. However, many employees perceive automation as a threat to their job security, fearing that automating certain tasks might render their roles obsolete.

Perceived Threat to Jobs

Automation is heavily associated with robotic production lines and the gradual process of replacing human workers with machines. While automation does reduce the need for manual, repetitive tasks, it doesn’t eliminate the need for human input. Certainly not within the realms of CRM and customer engagement. While AI, for example, can help us to understand data, it still requires a human mind to understand the data and make a decision. Automation frees employees from tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic, higher-value work. By automating data entry, routine recurring payments or basic customer interactions, teams have more time to build relationships, innovate, and work on more engaging tasks.

Reframing automation as an enabler, rather than a threat, is essential to overcoming this resistance. By showing employees how Dynamics 365 can improve their productivity and enhance their roles, businesses can reframe the solution as an opportunity, rather than a treat.

Opportunity for Higher-Value Work

The reality is that automation through Dynamics 365 opens the door for employees to focus on the work they enjoy and bring value to the business. Handing off the monotonous, time-consuming jobs to the CRM creates the capacity for strategic planning, creative problem-solving, and personalised customer interactions. boosts productivity and improves job satisfaction, leading to a happier, more engaged workforce.

Aside from outputting better quality work, it will also help with staff retention and recruitment.

Dynamics 365: Enhanced Customer Engagement

Once organisations overcome the initial challenges of digital transformation, the benefits of Dynamics 365 are evident. One of the most significant advantages of Dynamics 365 is its ability to provide a unified, single source of truth for customer data. This centralised customer record ensures that every interaction is tracked, analysed, and available in real-time to all departments, fostering better communication and coordination across the business.

One Source of Truth

At the heart of Dynamics 365 is the customer record, a single, comprehensive view of each customer that spans across sales, marketing, customer service, and beyond. This unified source of truth means that everyone in the organisation has access to the same data, ensuring that decisions are informed by accurate and up-to-date information. No more disjointed data silos or fragmented customer journeys—everything is integrated into one system.

The significance of this can’t be understated as internal silos are one of the biggest barriers to both innovation and delivering an effective customer engagement strategy.

Silos make it easy for multiple departments to speak to the same customer without any knowledge of that fact. This creates a frustrating experience for the customer and costs the business money through lost opportunities.

By creating a single view of the customer, businesses can deliver more meaningful customer engagement strategies. Whether it’s tailoring marketing campaigns, providing personalised recommendations, or offering faster, more effective customer service, Dynamics 365 empowers businesses to create highly personalised experiences that resonate with customers.

Personalised Customer Experiences

Personalised customer engagement isn’t new which means customers expect personalised interactions that cater to their unique needs and preferences. Dynamics 365 makes this possible by enabling businesses to capture and analyse detailed customer insights, such as purchasing behaviour, engagement history, and preferences. These insights can be used to build tailored customer journeys that nurture relationships and foster loyalty.

With tools like Dynamics 365 Marketing and Customer Insight Journeys, businesses can create automated journeys that deliver the right message at the right time, based on real-time customer behaviour. Whether a customer is browsing the website, engaging with marketing content, or reaching out for support, Dynamics 365 ensures that every interaction is seamless and relevant.

Customer Insights and Automated Journeys

The insights gathered through Dynamics 365 enable businesses to take customer engagement to the next level. By understanding individual customer needs and behaviours, companies can tailor their communications and offer relevant solutions at just the right moment. Automated journeys allow businesses to guide customers through a personalised path, whether it’s a marketing funnel, a service interaction, or a post-purchase follow-up.

This level of personalisation builds stronger relationships with customers, increases satisfaction, and ultimately drives growth.

Overcoming Resistance: Embracing the Future with Dynamics 365

While change can be difficult, especially when it involves introducing a new and advanced CRM solution, the benefits of Dynamics 365 far outweigh the initial discomfort. Digital transformation is essential for businesses to stay competitive, and the opportunities that come with it are vast.

Streamlining and Automating Processes

Streamlining processes through automation isn’t just about doing more with less; it’s about empowering teams to work smarter. By automating routine tasks, businesses can operate more efficiently, reduce errors, and scale more effectively. This allows employees to focus on the areas where they can have the greatest impact, such as developing customer relationships or driving innovation.

Empowering Teams with the Right Tools

A successful digital transformation isn’t just about implementing new technology, it’s about providing employees with the tools they need to succeed. Dynamics 365 empowers teams by giving them access to data, insights, and automation that help them do their jobs better. When employees understand the benefits and have the right support, they are more likely to embrace the changes and contribute to the system’s success.

Start your Transformation

Digital transformation, particularly with the implementation of Dynamics 365, is a game changer for businesses looking to enhance customer engagement and streamline operations. While the journey to transformation can be met with resistance, especially when it involves letting go of familiar systems and processes, the opportunities far outweigh the challenges.

Dynamics 365 offers a unified source of truth, automation, and customer insights that empower businesses to personalise customer experiences and drive long-term growth. By focusing on the benefits of automation, streamlining operations, and engaging employees throughout the process, organisations can successfully embrace digital transformation and position themselves for future success. To learn more about how we can help you start your digital transformation, speak to a member of the team.

Let’s Talk

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments.

Learn more

October 16, 2024
How AI is Revolutionising CRM Strategies and Operations
The better you know your customers, the more you can offer them. For SMEs in particular, the value of this resource should not be underestimated.

But just because the tools exist to mine this data gold, it doesn’t mean businesses know how to use them. One of the core challenges QGate helps people deal with is rescuing CRMs that are underperforming – either through low user adoption or a lack of understanding around the features and opportunities on offer. One way QGate can help address these challenges is through AI-based tools that help create efficiencies, generate insights, and generally leverage your data for improved sales performance.

The AI revolution in CRM

CRM systems contain some of your most vital and valuable data, ripe for AI-driven efficiencies.

AI can save you precious time and put you in a great position to increase sales, from aggregating and sorting relevant customer information to help you decide on marketing strategies or even product development to providing insights and sales forecasts that would previously have taken you days to write up.

Some examples of how AI can help your business succeed include:

Talking the talk

Many businesses use chatbots to help answer customer questions and act as a triage to direct questions to the most appropriate respondent.

Chatbots have come a long way in recent years, and the availability of AI-powered chatbots with natural language abilities ensures you can provide personalised service 24/7/365. And of course, your CRM can record all these conversations for further analysis and follow-up.

From the customer side, receiving a quick, helpful and ‘human’ response will help ensure customer loyalty.

AI prompts

The kind of data analysis offered by AI goes beyond what most people would be able to manage themselves.

It’s possible to analyse everything from customer interactions, like clicks on your website, to customer sentiment, such as on social media or chatbot conversations, to empower salespeople to make the right offer at the right time. These nudges might include specific products or offer recommendations that help drive sales.

Sales forecasts

Gone are the days of spending hours – if not weeks – of your life trying to build a detailed sales report, including a forecast for the next quarter. AI-powered algorithms can analyse historical data and relevant market trends, providing comprehensive reports that enable you to plan and ensure you’re well-placed to meet demand.

AI can massively streamline some workflows and replace others altogether. However, to make the most of this opportunity, businesses must have a joined-up strategy that connects the dots across all CRM-based workflows.

It’s also vital that AI tools are provided with good, accurate data to help them work more accurately and efficiently. Implementing AI-powered CRM tools to improve the performance of a system full of inaccurate or incomplete data won’t bring the desired results.

Addressing common CRM pain points with AI

In our experience, there are five core pain points with CRM systems:
- disappointing ROI
- lack of strategic alignment
- operational inefficiencies
- low user adoption
- deteriorating relationship with the current CRM partner
AI can help address many of these challenges and support end users to get more from their system.

Disappointing ROI

A disappointing ROI is often the result of low or inefficient use of the system. AI-powered CRM automation helps reduce workloads – making the sales process more efficient – but also opens up new opportunities by delivering customer insights and prompting salespeople to create the right offer at the right time.

Strategically using these tools will empower salespeople to make data-driven decisions that increase ROI.

Lack of strategic alignment

When a CRM isn’t meeting its potential, it’s often because there’s no alignment between CRM use and business goals. Are you mining the CRM for relevant data to help meet those goals? Did you use CRM data to help inform your strategy?

If the answer to these questions is no, then you have, if not a problem, a missed opportunity. AI-powered CRM tools analyse your data to provide insights that can shape your strategy. Plus, they can automate many processes that help you reach your targets.

Operational inefficiencies

If people don’t know how to use the CRM fully, or they’re not aware of all the available functions, then they won’t see the value of it. They might even see it as just another job on their list – when, in fact, the AI-powered CRM tools within an advanced system like Dynamics 365 could reduce their workload.

Automating repetitive tasks and using AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot, which integrates with Dynamics, enables you to automatically input data with a simple click – for example, updating contact information or copying across meeting summaries or task lists. These features streamline workflows, enabling you to gain efficiencies.

Low user adoption

Low user adoption is usually a side-effect of other challenges – when users do not see the benefit of a system, they won’t use it.

Every CRM implementation should begin with a good roll-out plan and ongoing training. You can also utilise AI to support this process with personalised data-led recommendations, such as those prompts mentioned above, which increase user engagement and adoption rates.

Deteriorating relationships with current partner

If you have lost faith in your CRM supplier due to poor results, talk to our team. We can help rescue your CRM and empower you to achieve the performance you hoped for – or even better – using all the functionality (AI and otherwise) of your CRM system.

QGate’s approach to AI-powered CRM recovery & optimisation

We have a four-phase approach to helping customers rediscover the value and potential of their CRM, including AI-powered CRM recovery and optimisation. It begins with a system audit, where we seek to understand your business, goals and ambitions and how you currently work. We then conduct a thorough review of your CRM setup to identify the performance gap between where your usage currently sits and where you need it to be to meet your business goals.

At this stage, we’re looking at the quality of your data, how it’s structured, to what extent you’re using the features included in your CRM and your business processes. This leads us to phase two, in which we gather user feedback to understand pain points from the end user’s perspective, as well as areas for improvement. This helps us understand priorities as we move forward with fixes and enhancements.

Phase three is where we customise and optimise your CRM based on the information gathered in the first two phases. Depending on your priorities, this might include adjusting workflows, improving data quality, or integrating with other systems to enhance functionality.

Finally, we reinforce user training and support to ensure everyone is empowered to use the system to the best of its ability. We can offer ongoing training sessions and a helpdesk for CRM-related queries if required.

The future of AI-powered CRMs

Looking to the future, it’s easy to imagine a time when you will have an AI assistant managing many of your tasks. You might come into your office in the morning and ask your assistant – is today a good day to approach X company? – and rely on your assistant to draw on what they know of a contact’s calendar, business and market context, plus history with your own company, to give you an answer. Better yet, they will probably be able to trawl your CRM to tell you (without waiting for you to ask) which customers should be on your target list for the day. With AI tools developing at speed, all of this will be on the radar sooner rather than later.

For SMEs, this means less time wasted and more time selling, shorter sales cycles and more personalised, higher-value deals.

Of course, just as with existing CRM technology, availability does not necessarily equate to a good user experience. It remains important to align CRM use with business strategy, to take the time to communicate both things to end users and to support people to get the most from their CRM. Also, bear in mind that not every system will suit every business, so take your time before investing to ensure you have selected the CRM and integrated tools that work for you.

If you have questions, we’re always happy to advise. Get in touch with our team today for further advice and information.

Start the Revolution

AI and CRMs are natural partners: one a data mining and analytics superstar and the other a hub for all your customer-related data. Their co-evolution will bring tremendous benefits to businesses – but only if businesses are both open to and aware of the value on offer.

We’re excited about the transformative potential of AI and highly focused on providing a kind of ‘translation service’, bridging the gap between the two and empowering businesses to make the most of the services and solutions available to them. If you’d like to talk about how AI-powered CRM can transform and supercharge your business performance, get in touch.

Let’s Talk!

Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we help businesses like yours navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 recovery and deployments. Learn more
April 3, 2024
Unlocking Business Potential: The Benefits of Software Financing

Staying ahead in terms of technology is crucial for success but the cost of acquiring and maintaining cutting-edge software and equipment can be a significant challenge for many businesses. This is where software financing steps in, offering a strategic solution to help businesses thrive.

Software financing is a credit agreement that allows you to spread the cost of your investment in a new CRM with QGate through affordable monthly payments spread out over a period of between one to five years.

Arranging finance for your business software provides your business with the purchasing power of a cash buyer, enabling you to make strategic investments in technology without depleting your cash reserves. This financial flexibility allows for agile decision-making and quick adaptation to market trends.

Cost-Efficient Cash Flow Management

Financing offers a structured approach to paying for capital purchases with low fixed monthly repayments. This method allows businesses to budget effectively and manage cash flow efficiently, providing stability and predictability in financial planning.

Obsolescence Management

One of the significant challenges in technology is the rapid pace of obsolescence. Financing addresses this issue by allowing you to upgrade outdated items as needed. This ensures that your business is always equipped with the latest technology without the burden of paying out or writing off large capital sums.

Optimised Capital Employment

Financing frees up capital that would otherwise be tied up in equipment purchases. This liberated capital can then be strategically invested in areas where a higher return on investment is achievable, enhancing overall business profitability.

Access to Tomorrow’s Technology Today

Financing bridges the gap between what your business needs and what it can afford. With a finance arrangement, you can have access to tomorrow’s technology today, staying competitive and future-proofing your operations.

Tax Efficiency

Finance payments are fully allowable against taxable revenue, providing a tax-efficient way to acquire and use essential equipment. This advantage makes financing an attractive option compared to similar outright purchases that may not offer the same tax benefits.

Flexible Terms

Financing provides flexibility in lease terms, ranging from 12 to 60 months. This ensures that businesses can choose a duration that aligns with their specific requirements and financial goals.

No Upfront Deposit

Unlike traditional financing options, there’s no requirement for an upfront deposit. The first payment is due in accordance with your purchase terms, simplifying the acquisition process and easing financial strain on your business.

Upgrade Options

QGate understands that technology needs evolve. With an upgrade option available, businesses can seamlessly adapt to changing requirements within the term of the lease, ensuring continued access to state-of-the-art equipment.

In conclusion, financing offers a comprehensive and strategic approach to acquiring and managing essential software and equipment for businesses, from unlocking the purchasing power of a cash buyer to providing tax-efficient solutions.

Whether you’re an existing QGate client or not to find out more about how flexible payments can help you accelerate the investment and deployment of software in your business please contact us.

February 16, 2024
CRM for Membership Organisations

Membership organisations have a lot of data to keep track of. Whether they are academic institutions, geared towards professional certification, or more commercial enterprises catering for specialist interests, the more these membership organisations know about their members, the better they can serve them. But managing that data grows more complex as the organisation evolves, and the old ways of doing things don’t always support current needs.

Let’s look at the specific needs of membership organisations and see how an advanced CRM system can help.

Tracking accreditation

Some membership organisations bestow upon their members a certification or accreditation that is necessary for their professional practice. To keep this accreditation, members must renew their membership periodically and perhaps provide evidence of their continued expertise or employment in this field. Reminding members that renewal is due, giving them the information they need to fulfil requirements, and removing those who don’t renew from the ‘active members’ list are all tasks that can be automated using an advanced CRM.

Selling events

Many membership organisations will offer professional development courses, in-person events, exhibitions, etc. either as part of or in addition to the membership package. Making sure the right people are targeted with the right communications is another job for the CRM and can also be automated if you’ve captured the detail for every member. For example, if your organisation is open to all boat owners, you would want to distinguish between people who sail dinghies and people with super yachts, knowing they have different interests and different budgets. Likewise, if your events are location-specific, it makes sense to target members geographically. All this information can be held by your CRM and utilised to produce a targeted marketing campaign.

Long membership durations

There are membership organisations that are most relevant for specific periods of your life. For example, most people will only be part of the National Union of Students for a few years. Whereas there are other organisations, like the Royal College of Physicians, whose members remain for the duration of their career. Long-term membership organisations have to deal with the challenges of keeping up with members throughout the many moves and changes that take place through their lives. Managing this data, or allowing members to manage their own data, can also be conducted through an advanced CRM and usually with very little manual intervention.

Managing lots of data

Membership data will vary from one organisation to another, but can end up being very complex. Some older organisations, due to the nature of the technology available at the time, have separated data across different systems, making it hard to access all the data, let alone keep track of a member’s history within the organisation. This can lead to confusion and missed opportunities, as it’s hard to approach members in a targeted way if you don’t have all the information readily to hand. An advanced CRM has greater capacity to hold, sort and glean insights from your data, enabling you to really make the most of what your members are ‘telling’ you with every interaction you have with them.

The challenge of managing member data

Managing all this data in a way that is efficient and accurate can make all the difference both to organisation employees and to the membership experience. On the organisation side, no one wants to waste time inputting data if it can be reliably automated. On the member side, no one wants to be on the receiving end of poor customer service as a result of slow, faltering, or inaccurate comms, which is what can happen when the CRM is not up to task. Of course, members won’t know it’s the CRM at fault. They will blame the organisation.

So why do membership organisations often struggle with their CRM? What’s going wrong?

The problem with bespoke CRMs

Many membership organisations – but particularly the long-established ones – operate bespoke CRM systems that were designed especially for their purpose. This can prove to be a challenge in the long-term as the organisation evolves and the CRM ages. How do you get a bespoke CRM to grow with you?

Often, the CRM is designed to meet a specific brief, but over time a number of variables come into play. Hardware evolves. Other, interlinked software is upgraded. The old programme doesn’t remain compatible with new ways of working. The organisation that developed the software for you disappears or changes hands and can no longer provide tech support. The membership organisation itself changes so drastically that a new CRM is required.

These changes are like cracks spreading through the CRM, rendering it unstable. Glitchy software puts your data at risk of security breaches and technical issues. And if your CRM lacks the capabilities to support your needs, you can find your organisation’s growth and development is limited to ‘the way things have always been done’.

The potential of advanced CRM systems

This is why we would advise working with an advanced CRM provider that has the flexibility to tailor to your needs with the backup of global, high-quality support and an established backbone of tech to underpin your operations. This type of CRM can be designed to your specifications, with the fields, processes and workflows required to support your requirements, within the scope of a system that is regularly and automatically updated to the latest spec, and which is designed to integrate with your other core tools.

The additional benefit of advanced CRM systems is the potential offered by Business Process Automation and Robotic Process Automation to reduce the workload and keep on top of day-to-day data management. Things like responding to member enquiries, updating contact details, chasing renewals, etc can all be managed automatically, ensuring your system runs more efficiently, and optimising your operations.

If you’d like more information about how we can help your membership organisation improve customer service and optimise member insights, get in touch.

December 14, 2023
CRM and ERP Integration: Why Is It Important?

What happens when crucial departments don’t talk to each other? On a small scale, there’s the possibility of miscommunications and misunderstandings. But when those escalate, it can lead to further division, poor morale, and ineffective business practices.

In short: silos don’t work, and customers pay the price. Integrating related digital tools, like ERP and CRM systems, is one way to break down those walls and improve process transparency.

What is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system?

Whether your turnover is measured in millions or billions, ERP helps ensure that you’re properly managing the supply chain to meet the needs of your organisation, focusing on inventory, warehouse, shipping, logistics, and billing. For example, if you are a mover, you ensure you have sufficient boxes, tape, bubble wrap, vehicles, and people to complete the jobs you’ve been hired to do. If you sell paper, you need to know you have the supplies to keep up with demand, as well as the means of getting it from A to B.

Running your resource planning through a purpose-built platform ensures everyone within the organisation has access to the same information (process transparency), allowing them to contribute and learn from the planning process.

What is a CRM?

A customer relationship management system, or CRM is more than just a digital Filofax of names and contact details; it’s a history of a customer relationship, which provides you with insights into the future of that relationship, enabling you to track all customer interactions.

An advanced CRM includes a record of all correspondence, a summary of in-person meetings, details of what the customer is interested in, your proposals, and your sales. Again, this is accessible to all relevant parties, meaning the relationship is not in the hands of one salesperson or account manager – it’s with the company.

How do ERP and CRM systems work together?

Traditionally, salespeople have worked in isolation, developing and later closing a deal with very little input or interaction with other departments. However, a great deal of effort is being spent on trying to dismantle these silos to deliver a better, more streamlined customer experience.

In today’s busy workplace environment, structured ERP integration with your CRM system is as important as ever and is a vital part of the effort to streamline customer experiences. Let’s look back to the movers as an example: the salesperson produces a quote based on the size of the relocation project. If this information is passed to warehouse management, a stock check can be undertaken to be sure the required number of boxes, tape, packaging, etc. is available for the given date, keeping HR in the loop and ensuring staffing is sufficient to complete the job.

CRM and ERP Integration enable these ‘conversations’ to happen automatically so that the necessary stock is ordered or ring-fenced for moving day.

What are the benefits of CRM and ERP integration?

Accuracy and efficiency

Here is another (very simplistic) way of looking at the special relationship between the two systems: the CRM is populated with salespeople’s promises; and the ERP ensures they can deliver.

If you sell a product, you need to know that the product is available, and utilising CRM and ERP integration within your business processes ensures that these two important aspects are working together to meet expectations, both in terms of what is being delivered (accuracy) and when (efficiency). It also avoids the ‘human factor’ of forgetting to pass on a message, waiting to relay information until a specific meeting time, or even mixing up orders.

When the two systems are not integrated, the same data is often input into both systems, which is extremely tedious and time-consuming.

Improved visibility

Integrating the ERP and CRM systems enables greater visibility of demand so that inventory can be more effectively managed to reduce delivery times and prevent shortages. Over time, you can automatically build a better picture of customer trends, seasonal demand, etc., for more visibility of what’s coming to the business, enabling you to plan accordingly.

Improved synergy

When systems don’t work together, there’s less impetus for departments to work together. However, CRM and ERP integration allows you to align the different workflows, making all teams more efficient and enabling the organisation to deliver a better customer experience.

Cost savings

When your ERP and CRM systems are integrated, you can create automation across your quote-to-cash process. You gain cost savings from streamlining operations and improving decision-making. But you also free up your employees to focus more of their time on the jobs that they were employed to do, as opposed to all the laborious tasks that they have to do in order to do their jobs.

Bridges, not silos

Connecting departments by integrating key digital tools ensures business processes are moving in the same direction for the benefit of the customer but with the added benefits of improved cost-efficiency, better working relationships, and improved morale.

Hopefully, this article has highlighted the importance of CRM and ERP integration to your business and how refraining from connecting the two systems can hinder your operations massively. If you’d like to know how we can help you break down walls and start building bridges, get in touch.

November 17, 2023
How CRM Automation can boost productivity in Recruitment
The recruitment industry runs on relationships. Without the ability to act as mediators, negotiators, and advisers recruitment consultants struggle to build trust. This is made harder still as they have to nurture relationships with two distinct audiences: candidates and clients. Both require much of the same level of care and attention, but have very different needs and measures of success. Without a robust CRM and CRM automation, maintaining these relationships becomes difficult.

With so many active candidates and clients, managing the flow of information and communication manually can create bottlenecks and manual errors. This should be where a CRM system comes into its own, automatically capturing key information and adding it to candidate and business records.

By creating a single source of truth for their data, recruiters can leverage all the information available to them. Without the tedium of searching through emails or spreadsheets. Despite this, some recruitment consultancies see CRMs as another tool to maintain, despite it’s capacity for integration and automation.

CRM – A Recap

Originally, the CRM was a way to store all customer details in one place; essentially a database with a decent UI. Today, CRMs still retain the capacity to house a lot of data, but they take care of how the data is gathered and provide the means to communicate.

The ability to gather, house and segment data allows businesses to gain actionable insights faster. Specifically, when it comes to candidates, a CRM like Microsoft Dynamics 365 allow you to identify which candidates have skills that match open roles.

This alone can save considerable time as candidate CVs no longer need to be screened. Rather an alert can be created so recruiters know when a candidate has come in with the desired skillset.

This shortens the hiring cycle as recruiters can draw up shortlists without manually scrutinising hundreds of CVs. Similarly, when a strong candidate lands in an inbox, recruiters can use Dynamics 365 and tools like it to cross-reference those key skills with the kind of skills their clients look for.

This increases the hit rate of speculative CVs when they go out.

In addition to all this, the CRM should also keep the specifics of every interaction with both candidates and employers. Everyone in the business can see the latest developments allowing for a slicker more professional experience. When used well, the CRM enables you to:
- Attract and engage the right candidates.
- Collect and maintain relevant and searchable candidate data.
- Facilitate easy communication with candidates and employers and provide accurate, real-time updates.
- Report on your processes. Reports give you oversight on the whole recruitment process and identify potential issues early.
What is CRM Automation?

Without functionality like CRM automation, working with so much data has the potential to be highly labour-intensive. With recruitment so dependent on building strong relationships and the ability to respond quickly, it’s hard to scale.

The challenge is that the processes exist for a reason and mistakes can be costly. Especially if a recruiter misrepresents a role or a candidate.

Similarly, as recruiters are often targeted on the amount of outreach they do each day, manual processes can cause good recruiters to fail simply because they’re busy.

Fundamentally, there are only so many vacancies that one recruiter can manage, and so many conversations they can have. This can lead to frustration on an individual and business level because it leaves roles unworked and stalls growth.

Reducing the level of admin and manual processes allows everyone in the business to go faster which allows for more profitable business outcomes.

Business Process Automation (BPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) come in. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as CV screening, interview scheduling, and reference checks, CRM automation allows recruiters to give their time to high-value people-centric activities, such as candidate assessment and client relationship management, and reduce the workload of administrative tasks.

How can CRM automation help recruiters?

Manual processes are always at risk of errors. Mistakes get made and a certain margin for error is acceptable. But the busier we get or the more pressure we feel, the propensity for making mistakes increases. Between the many steps of the hiring process and the number of people involved, it’s all too easy to lose a CV, miss an email, or schedule an interview for the wrong time. Any of which could impact any deals that are in the works. Automated workflow systems ensure that recruitment processes follow standardised procedures, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring consistency across the organization.

CRM automation allows you to:
- CV screening – CRM automation systems can scan CVs and applications, extracting relevant information such as skills, experience, and qualifications. By using predefined criteria, these systems can filter out unqualified candidates, reducing the chance of human oversight or bias in the screening stage.
- Skill matching – Automated tools can compare the skills and qualifications of candidates with the job requirements. By analysing keywords and contextual information, these tools can identify the best matches, ensuring recruiters don’t overlook qualified candidates or mistakenly shortlist unsuitable ones.
- Updates – Automated communication tools can send personalised emails to candidates at different stages of the recruitment process, providing updates on their application status, next steps, and relevant information. This keeps candidates informed and reduces the likelihood of miscommunication or missed notifications, while also freeing up the recruiter to focus on what they do best.
- Document-gathering – Leveraging functionality in tools like Dynamics 365, you can enable checks at various stages in the recruitment flow. This will ensure documentation is received, the candidate has the required right to work, references and visas. You can add and track various types of compliance documentation checks such as proof of ID, visa status, qualifications, or certifications, ensuring nothing is missed.
Scaling with CRM Automation

Above all, CRM automation helps you do more with less. Growing your revenue doesn’t have to involve increasing your headcount when you’re freeing up your team by automating labour-intensive tasks. CRM automation enables you to handle larger volumes of applicants and applications giving you a segmented talent pool that is easy to access and utilise. Automation can help recruiters shortlist candidates efficiently, and manage multiple hiring pipelines simultaneously without sacrificing the quality of the candidates or the service.

To learn more about how CRM automation within Dynamics 365 can transform your recruitment consultancy, speak to a member of the team, today.

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June 12, 2023
7 Factors to Consider when Choosing a CRM Partner (Webinar Recording)

Are you looking to do a digital transformation? Implement a CRM? Automate your processes and optimise your business operations with technology?

Choosing the right partner to help you do this is essential. Treat it with the same respect and care as you would a friendship, relationship, or business partnership.

When it comes to choosing a CRM business partner, it’s essential to work with someone who understands your organisation’s culture, goals, and objectives. Technology can enable any task, but the right partner should prioritise understanding your business, not just selling you a product.

In this webinar, we’ll discuss some of the key factors that you should consider when selecting a CRM business partner, from their level of expertise and experience to their commitment to customer support.

June 8, 2023
What is Business Process Automation (BPA) and how can it help my business?
What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?

Business Process Automation (BPA) is a powerful tool that you can use to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and drive growth. BPA involves using technology to automate repetitive tasks and introduce workflows, reducing your need for manual human intervention, and increase accuracy.

How can I use BPA and how will it benefit my business?

Invoice processing – Organisations spend significant time and people hours manually processing invoices. BPA can automate this by capturing invoice data, validating it against purchase orders, and routing it for approval. This can help to reduce human input errors, improve speed, and reduce costs.

Customer service – BPA can help automate time-intensive customer service processes, such as ticket creation, enquiry routing, and response. This can help to reduce wait times and provide a more seamless customer experience. For example, a chatbot can be used to handle common customer inquiries, freeing up customer service reps to handle more important and complex issues.

Sales – Automate lead generation, qualification, and follow-up processes, resulting in reduced time and people required to manage leads. This leads to improved conversion rates and increased sales productivity. For instance, an automated lead scoring system can be used to prioritise leads based on their likelihood to convert, making the sales process more efficient and effective.

Supply Chain Management – Automate inventory management, order fulfilment, and shipping processes. An automated inventory management system can be used to track inventory levels and automatically reorder when stock levels fall below a certain threshold, ensuring that products are always available for customers.

HR – Onboarding, payroll, and more can all be simplified. By automating these processes, organisations can reduce administrative tasks, improve compliance, and provide a better employee experience. For example, an automated onboarding process can be implemented to streamline the hiring process and reduce paperwork, making it easier for new employees to join the company.
What should I consider before implementing any type of BPA?

Process Analysis: Before implementing BPA, analyse your processes to identify which are suitable for automation. You need to identify bottlenecks in your business and which areas will benefit most from it. This analysis can help identify areas where you can improve optimise operations.

Scalability: You need to ensure that the solution can grow with your business, and that it can accommodate changing business requirements. This is particularly important for businesses that are expanding, as they need to ensure that their BPA solution can continue to meet their growing needs.

Integration: BPA solutions need to be integrated with other systems and applications within the business. This integration is necessary to ensure that the solution can work seamlessly with existing systems and applications.

Security: BPA solutions involve the automation of business processes, which means that they handle sensitive data. You need to ensure that your solution is secure and that it can protect sensitive data. This involves implementing appropriate security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to ensure that data is protected from unauthorised access.

Employee Buy-In: BPA can have a significant impact on employees, as it can change the way they work. You should ensure that employees are involved in the implementation process, and that they are trained on how to use the new BPA solution. This can help to ensure that employees are engaged and supportive of the new way of working, which can improve the overall success of the implementation.

Cost: Implementing BPA can be expensive, and you should consider the costs involved in implementing and maintaining the solution. Be certain that the benefits of implementing outweigh the costs of living with the pain, and that the solution provides a good ROI.
What are the future trends and innovations in BPA?

Intelligent Automation: With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we can expect to see more intelligent automation solutions. This will involve using AI and ML to enable systems to learn and adapt to changing conditions, allowing for more personalised and efficient workflows.

Process Mining: Process mining is a technique used to analyse business processes based on event logs. This technique enables businesses to identify process inefficiencies and bottlenecks, and to optimise their processes accordingly. We can expect to see more process mining solutions in BPA, providing businesses with valuable insights into their processes.

Low-Code/No-Code Solutions: Low-code and no-code platforms enable users to build and deploy applications without requiring extensive coding knowledge. Microsoft PowerApps are a perfect example of these. We can expect to see more BPA solutions adopting low-code and no-code platforms, making it easier for businesses to automate their processes without requiring extensive technical expertise.

Collaborative Automation: Collaborative automation refers to the integration of humans and automation solutions to perform tasks collaboratively. This approach can help to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and provide a better overall experience for employees. We can expect to see more collaborative automation solutions in BPA, enabling businesses to optimise their processes with the help of both humans and automation.

Cloud-based Solutions: Cloud-based BPA solutions provide businesses with the flexibility and scalability they need to manage their processes effectively. We can expect to see more cloud-based solutions in BPA, making it easier for businesses to manage their processes from anywhere, at any time.

So, we know BPA can help businesses to achieve operational efficiency, optimise their operations for growth, and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. By leveraging technology to automate complex and repetitive tasks, businesses can streamline their processes, improve accuracy, and free up time and resources for more strategic tasks. This can lead to improved overall performance and productivity, allowing businesses to focus on what they do best.
April 18, 2023
Unlock the Power of your Processes: How RPA Can Transform Your Business

All businesses face a common challenge – they often have to deal with high volumes of repetitive tasks, which not only consume time but also lead to human errors.

These tasks arise due to anything from data entry, inefficient undocumented uncontrolled processes, and ineffective systems to customer needs, service inquiries and support requests. As a result, employees must spend a considerable amount of their time on carrying out these tasks, which affects their productivity and more importantly their job satisfaction.

Ultimately, carrying out these tasks results in a suboptimal customer experience due to delayed responses, errors, and inconsistencies in service delivery.

People are not cheap to employ, and neither should they be. Whether you are a services business where your people and their expertise are your product or otherwise, it is essential to keep your people for things only people can do – going that extra mile for your clients and your business.

In today’s digital age, customers (and employees) expect fast and seamless services that are delivered with accuracy and consistency. This means that we need to find ways to automate repetitive tasks and optimize their processes to deliver a better customer and employee experience. Not only that, but the transition to remote working has also meant businesses need to find ways to maintain their service quality and productivity in a distributed environment.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging technology, that is essentially the culmination of lots of different technology solutions. AI included, it can help your business automate tasks and processes, resulting in improved efficiency, productivity, and customer experience. This could be anything from a CRM, ERP or finance system to smaller activity specific applications that execute business specific needs.

I do feel a little uncomfortable with the use of “robotic” and “robots” to describe RPA, it does conjure images of car production lines with huge robots building cars. This is not it. Essentially, it is software typically residing in cloud platforms that uses low code no code technology that can be configured to your individual business needs. RPA is used to perform any tasks that has logic and a trigger to them removing these rule-based and repetitive tasks that would otherwise require human intervention.

“If a machine can do it, it will be done faster, better and more consistently with the same result every time. Automate everything! and it will increase your business value.”

Alastair Jupp

So, what are the benefits?

RPA can help free up employees’ time, enabling them to focus on more value-added activities. This improves employee satisfaction and productivity, resulting in better service delivery to customers. Second, RPA can help minimise errors and inconsistencies, resulting in a more accurate and consistent customer experience. Finally, RPA can enable businesses to maintain their service quality and productivity in a distributed environment, supporting remote work.

“Focus on improving customer AND employee experience, particularly in the areas where they intersect, RPA will do this for you.”

Alastair Jupp

I have talked about adding business value but not explained how thus far. Imagine you achieved automation in every area possible of your business, any potential buyer of your business will see the benefits of how your core business runs itself and your people are happy, engaged and focused on great customer experience building. This is valuable and it will directly impact the appeal and valuation of your business.

The best part about RPA is that it has developed a long way, and the pricing has reduced. It is now accessible to any ambitious business, big or small, cash rich or not, that wants to add business value, improve customer experience and ultimately, have a more satisfied workforce, happier customers, and a more valuable business.

More about RPA solutions

How we help clients implement RPA

March 24, 2023