CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a business strategy that a company deploys for managing its interactions with its existing and would-be customers. CRM enables businesses to:

• Have a better understanding of their customers
• Retain the existing customers through better services
• Draw new customers
• Significantly reduce the expenses encountered in customer management
• Gain more contracts
• Magnify the productivity

Businesses have been a witness to how rapidly customer dealing has been changing over many years. Earlier businesses had to face a stiff competition in order to get new clients but now they face competition even in retaining the existing clients. This is the point where Customer Relationship Management comes into play.

You would have realized that everything these days is moving on the cloud. Whether it a business data, or a crucial software, or anti-viruses, or books, everything is there on the cloud. It would be highly profitable for the businesses if they move their CRM on the cloud. Here are some reasons to prove that the combination of CRM and cloud is worth million dollars.

1. Let's you save a lot of money

One of the most important advantages that cloud hosting yields is that it lets its users save money. In fact, the amount of money that cloud lets its users save is not at all possible with any other method or technology. It is not possible and affordable for every organization to manage an on-site server to deal with CRM. Cloud hosting reduces this unnecessary expenditure and lets small organizations encounter the operational cost only, which is much more affordable for the business.

2. Improved accessibility of your Information

With the conventional mode of working, it is not possible for you to access the crucial information related to your company if you are out on a vacation, or if you are travelling, or if you are exercising in a gym. In such situations where you cannot access important data, it is almost impossible to close a deal. In such circumstances, you are at a big loss. However, cloud eradicates such situations. Cloud allows its users to access the stored information and applications from any corner of the world; all they require is a good internet connection.

3. Let's you set a prompt reminder

There are a number of businesses which promise to deliver their product to the customers after a fixed amount of time and on a due date. Businesses who work this way would have at least once witnessed such situations where they would have failed to make the delivery on time. In most of these situations, failure to make the delivery on time results because the responsible authority forgets to contact the customer. If you adopt the cloud, all such issues would be eradicated. Cloud lets you set reminders in order to keep you updated with the delivery dates. With such a system, you will always win the hearts of your customers as anything delivered timely helps you to stay ahead of your counterparts.

4. Let's you save time

CRM software hosted on the cloud is very instantaneous to work with and hence, helps in saving a lot of time. You do not require a costly and complicated hardware or employ a team of IT experts in order to run the hosted software. Besides this, it is quite easy to quick-fix the issues, if any, through various troubleshooting measures which are generally provided by the service vendor. You do not need to sit and wait for the IT team to resolve the issues. You save a lot of time as a single phone call of yours to the vendor would activate him to sort out the issues.

5. Enables you to streamline the workflow

CRM software based on the cloud enables you to delegate the work in your organization in a very efficient way. This simply helps in streamlining the workflow. If you are not using the cloud yet, you would have realized that a sales call is routed to a number of people, thus wasting the time of those who are not responsible to the call. With a cloud-based setup, call reaches the specific destination and saves the time of each and every one working in the enterprise. This is how the workflow is streamlined in the organization by the adoption of cloud hosted CRM software.

Thus, it is more or less becoming a necessity for the businesses to adopt the cloud hosted CRM. If you are still not planning to join this uprising venture, then you are at loss, both in terms of capital as well as services.

• TechNet Radio: Virtually Speaking with Yung Chou Joined by Keith Mayer (Part 1): Greg Shields on Deploying and Managing a Service in the Cloud
• TechNet Radio: Virtually Speaking with Yung Chou Joined by Keith Mayer (Part 1): Greg Shields on Deploying and Managing a Service in the Cloud
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