At first, Excel seems capable of handling your customer relationships. But as your business grows, you’ll soon need more adaptable tools. You may be familiar with the expression, “What got you here won’t get you there.” At first, Excel got the job done. He might even save you money.
You will lose money just as quickly through inefficiency and wasted time. While an Excel spreadsheet might be handy, it’s too often used for tasks like customer management, billing, and list building. But when we compare it to specialized CRM software, the world’s most popular spreadsheet could be better in these areas. As your business grows, I will need more adaptable tools.
Disadvantages Of Excel
Occasionally, Excel is referred to derogatorily as the worst CRM tool in the world because that’s not what it was made for. You can easily add a new customer or personal data in Excel, but that’s about it. Who are your customers? What do you know about their profile? How important are they to your business? This information would allow you to better respond to your customer’s needs and achieve better sales results. We agree that Excel also offers several advantages:
- It’s easy to use.
- Most people already know how to use it.
- All data is on a single worksheet.
It is no coincidence that Excel is the all-time most-used program in MS Office. But it takes a little while before you run into its limitations.
Manual Data Entry
Excel can perform many tasks, but you have to do it manually. Any data you want to store on a worksheet has to be added by one of your collaborators. Just entering and keeping up-to-date customer data becomes a highly time-consuming task. And also, entering data manually has a higher chance of making mistakes.
Waste Of Time
Managing your contacts in Excel is one of many things that take time. If you want to visualize your sales results in valuable statistics, you better work immediately: select the correct data, create rows and columns, draw a graph, and select a format (Do you prefer a bar graph or a pie graph)? If you invoice in Excel, you already know that I have to do it manually, and you won’t be able to automate the process in any way. And remember: what isn’t done automatically is sometimes wrong or forgotten.
No Real-Time Collaboration
The ability to collaborate in Excel is equally limited. Sure, you can share Excel files, but real-time collaboration? Impossible: the standard version of Excel only allows one user to work on the same worksheet simultaneously; Microsoft Excel Online is cumbersome at best; and even Google Sheets has its limitations (Fewer functions, slower loading, formatting, and printing are more difficult).
In other words, if you need to access a file your colleague is working on, you’ll have to wait for him to finish. Or make another copy, but then I should not forget to integrate it later. It works, but it’s not practical or fast.
Lack Of Ability To Handle An Ever-Increasing Workload
The Age of the Customer began in 2010, meaning all business and operational strategies should be carefully aligned to contribute to customer satisfaction. An Excel spreadsheet will quickly become insufficient as your business grows and your customer relationships evolve. For example, Excel won’t tell you anything about sales opportunities for a particular customer or when you should call them to follow up. In an age where customer relationships are crucial, you must take advantage of tremendous opportunities.
Additional Benefits Of CRM
Personal Communication
A CRM tool serves as a central database and is the ideal source for miscellaneous communications and marketing objectives. Furthermore, a CRM allows you to track all your company’s and its customers’ interactions in a single database. As a business, you can collect data for each customer and better respond to their needs. In return, you can create a more personal approach based on that particular client’s wishes.
Real-Time Data Access
The CRM allows you to manage your leads more efficiently, follow up on sales dynamically and straightforwardly, and optimize management costs. At any time, in any place, you have the correct data to make strategic decisions in court. And your Excel documents can be imported easily.
Why Should You Choose CRM Software?
Do you want to keep doing something just because it’s what you’ve always done in the past? Change is never easy, but it is still the key to growth, success, and progress. Choosing a CRM tool can be a big step forward that will allow you to grow.
With CRM software, you get valuable information about your customers’ wishes and preferences since customer data and all forms of communication with them are stored in a single database. This allows you to focus on customer satisfaction, collaborate more efficiently, record recurring problems, and analyze globally. Because a CRM tool automates your administrative tasks, your team will save valuable time that can then be used to do more meaningful and profitable jobs.
Also Read: How To Choose The Best Software Outsourcing Destination In 2023?
