The Top 9 Benefits of CRM For the Retail Industry

Social media is a key marketing channel for any industry and now CRM has capabilities to monitor social media and publish content to enable you to better promote brand and manage your image. You can also implement promotions, discounts, coupons, and more via social sites. CRM also enables you to spot trends and receive alerts about how people are feeling about your products or brand – making your sales messages more effective.

Social Listening and Engagement

Vendor and Supplier Management

CRM is a key tool for managing vendor and supplier relationships. At a glance, you will be able to connect vendors to customer-focused efforts, and streamline the info into analytics – allowing your team to manage suppliers and link them with sales and marketing efforts.

Sales Force Automation

Monitoring your leads and opportunities while managing existing accounts is the foundation of sales force automation which is a key feature of any CRM. You can also better utilize sales order processing and pipeline management prospecting functions. Seamlessly integrate your CRM with familiar applications such as Microsoft Excel and OneNote for increased productivity.

Marketing

CRMs now have features for media buying and planning. You’ll also have the tools to nurture campaigns, automate processes, manage content, and seamlessly execute campaigns. CRM also allows integration of planning, budgeting, and tracking across all channels – whether it be e-mail, digital, social, or traditional.

Collaboration between Sales and Marketing

Looking for synergy between your marketing and sales teams? You can collaboratively manage leads and campaigns with CRM; combine your sales and marketing funnel to better serve sales efforts and outreach. With CRM you can manage projects, digital assets, workflows, and approval processes across your team and other departments and agencies—all from a single platform.

Contact Center

CRMs now consist of customer service features where you can manage cases and claims. You will have the tools to host a contact center, mobile and chat services, and self-serve customer service functions. With CRM you can easily create a consistent and seamless branded experience for your customers, or create unique portals for each one of your multiple brands from a single deployment.

Store Operations

Store operations features allow you to better manage your store configuration, statements, and cash reconciliation. You will also have the capabilities to customize your pricing, promotions, and offers. CRMs can also provide the functionality of creating and executing loyalty programs while also allowing you to manage your Point of Sale profiles and user interfaces.

Mobile Solutions

Give your field sales, mobile professionals, mobile service technicians, or support staff greater flexibility with integrated mobile ERP and CRM capabilities. Create new records, schedule meetings, set reminders, and find information while on the run with mobile voice commands. Looking for online and offline mobile support? CRM has that too.

Business Intelligence

With all of the data that retailers have to sift through, it helps to have robust business intelligence capabilities so you can collect and analyze data and generate reports with customizable dashboards. This allows you to gather insight on customers and trends to better plan inventory and sales planning.