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While a customer relationship management solution is an important tool for any industry, it may be easier for companies that sell products to make a case for the use of a CRM than it is for professional services firms. As the latter sell time and expertise, they may not need to track which products clients use, but it’s just as important to properly manage client connections and business relationships, and to catalogue communications and proposals sent to clients.
Manage longer sales cycles and proposals
Typically, the higher the dollar value, the longer the sales cycle. Depending on the type of service you offer, your sales cycles are probably longer than most, and the necessity to track what has been done in the past becomes even more important. Dynamics 365 Sales lets professional services firms tailor the sales cycle to their specific reality, as it probably involves quite a few more steps than just a quote and a follow-up.
A CRM solution lets all the various stakeholders involved through the sales cycle have access to the information they need to facilitate the hours required for a particular mandate. It also provides an easy place to store all your mandates, as the integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 (previously known as Office 365) lets you store your proposals in SharePoint, facilitating collaboration when putting proposals together in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.
Strengthen your business relationships
After the initial sale, other critical elements for professional services firms is better visibility on future cross-sell possibilities, as well as retaining all contact information and the different influencers and connections within your firm. Having all this information centralized ensures you never miss an opportunity. Your professionals can manage and foster each client to build strong business relationships and ensure appropriate follow-up on all tasks, activities and opportunities.
Streamline and automate your business processes
An automated approval process within your sales cycle is another functionality that offers major gains to professional services firms, as it allows you to personalize your business approval process depending on size, industry or service. Automations can also be used to send reminders for follow-ups, meetings and other client tasks. Dynamics 365 also lets you incorporate other business processes into your solution, such as your employees’ various competencies and specialties to find the ideal staff members for a particular project.
All these features make Dynamics 365 much more than a traditional CRM system. One of the major benefits of a CRM solution for professional services firms is having a platform that will help structure your organization. At a certain point, you will need to systemize and automate certain processes to maintain the growth of your organization. To learn more about how a management information system can help you in your growth journey, check out our eBook
By JOVACO Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation specialist in Quebec
