One of the primary goals of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system should be Increasing Revenue. This is accomplished by leveraging many aspects of the system, the most important of which are: Communication, Collaboration, Follow-up, Reporting, and Forecasting. I was recently asked what we should expect from our corporate CRM (Deltek Vision) and I thought that you might find the list helpful as well.

A Good CRM should:

• Be the corporate Client Database
• Measure Business Development outreach efforts
• Remind you to follow-up in a couple of days, weeks, or years
• Become a central repository for notes and information on a given client or lead
• Manage qualified leads and keeping them from falling off the radar
• Manage and track outstanding fee proposals, including forecasting revenue
• Manage and track outstanding Statements of Qualifications, including forecasting revenue
• Track customer interactions
• Identify Business Development Tasks that need to happen
• Identify if those Business Development tasks are actually happening
• Notify Client Managers about interactions everyone else the company is having with their client
• Provide feedback on projected revenues and actual revenues
• Report projected revenues by group/division/ company
• Increase collaboration between groups and divisions through information sharing
• Flag Client Managers and management when revenue is declining for a given client
• Provide a historic record of project files prior to the award of a project
• Identify money pits (people we’ve been pursuing for years to no avail)
• Be a central repository of information on winning firms (ex: Architects that are winning Higher Ed, Local Gov, K12, work that we can team with to pursue future work)
• Report on Business Development activities: “That which is measured is improved”
• Manage conferences – costs, exhibiting, attending – and relate it back to specific employees
• Track and measure Master Contracts (term contacts) to ensure they are being leveraged fully
• Answer the question: What happens to someone’s contacts when they leave?
• Provide historic Information on pursuits, lunches, relationships, and more

A Great CRM should:

• Integrate with existing project and client data, allowing for cross reporting related to current revenues and past revenues and how these relate to future revenues
• Identify “Stuck Opportunities”
• Report on the effectiveness of the Business Development staff
• Identify who and what efforts result in new work
• Integrate with a Client Retention Program (ex: survey feedback loop to measure success)
• Become a measurable part of the employee review process