Customer Management Systems - Part One

Australian printers have generally been slow in the uptake of Customer Management Systems, despite the fact that they have the potential to deliver sustainable financial returns.

Customer Management Systems (CMS) focus businesses on what is possibly the most important asset they possess. They have the ability to store customer details, monitor sales performance, improve efficiency, identify profitable clients, identify profitable market segments, improve the way you service them and make your business more profitable. Not a bad list of achievements for a capital outlay of between $300 and $30,000 depending on business size.

I believe there is not a printer in the land who should not consider implementing a CMS. They are just as relevant and practical for one person operations as they are for organisations with hundreds of staff.

Before I explain why I hold this view, I'd like to identify two common types of CMS that could be used by today's printers.

Contact management systems.

These store basic information (company name, address, contact name, title, phone numbers, web site address and e-mail address etc) and, amongst other things, have the ability to monitor sales opportunities, send and receive e-mails, record notes, post simple follow up reminders - i.e “call John on Friday 25th March re four-colour brochures,” a diary including “things to do”. Examples are “off the shelf” software such as Best Software's 'ACT!' and FrontRange's 'Goldmine', which retail for under $300 per copy at retail chains. SalesLogix, also from Best Software, is a step-up for middle-sized organisations.


Customer relationship management systems.


Similar to the contact management systems above but with more integration, the ability to have more users, more sales and service functionality. These products are more likely to be tailored to each business, starting with the likes of Microsoft CRM, starting at around $20,000 (five user licenses, some hardware and training)

Of course there are others, this is just a very basic overview of what some systems offer.

I think you'd agree that they are both relatively cheap, and would most certainly be at the very bottom of any capital investment decision you may be considering.

Promises, promises.

Now I've whet your appetite, here are some reasons why you should explore customer management systems further:

A quality CMS is very valuable! The most common differentiator in any printer's business is its client base. This is far and away the most common, number one, part of your company sought by prospective acquirers of your business. Except for “fresh starts” (those wishing to establish a new printing business), most acquirers are not interested in your equipment, they have their own.

As is the norm in the printing industry, customer data is spread all over the place; in job bags, in accounting software, in salespeople's diaries, in MIS systems, and in accounts packages. This hardly shows any real proactive system of customer contact. What would be more enticing and valuable is a centralised CMS which details all your current, past and prospective customers, what revenue they give, who the contact persons are, what market segment they belong to what sales opportunities exist.

Risk Management.

In the November 2004 issue of Print 21, Les Burger described in his article, “How risky is my business”, (pages 32/33), two major risks to businesses as:

1) Loss of a long standing major blue chip customer
2) Loss of a sales rep owning key customers

On the first point, if you had a method of monitoring and recording contact with customers, perhaps you could see it coming, perhaps you could understand what effect the loss of this client has on your business. Maybe you could save the deal. How angry would you be if you found out the sales rep had not called for six weeks or, unbeknown to you, had a falling out with the this customer? If a change in personnel was the reason for the loss, do you know, or have a relationship with the person higher up? Where is it recorded? Could you have been more proactive in the process?

The loss of sales representatives is commonplace. That's part of the problem with the sale of print, it's very transferable and the relationship between print buyer and sales person often plays a major part in the placement of the order. With a CMS, if used correctly, you should have a very good insight into what all clients are doing, when the last quote was delivered, which quote you missed out on, when the next big job is due. If your sales rep leaves suddenly (and they often do), you can immediately shore up your clients with a quality CMS.

Next month I'll look at deploying a CMS, and a checklist of warning signs that you need one!

Bio

Richard Rasmus is the director of Graphics Marketing (Aus) Pty Ltd, marketing and business broking consultants to the graphic arts industry. He can be contacted on 0402 021 101.

Email: richard.rasmussen@optusnet.com.au