Hi everyone, my name is Kuren and welcome to the CRM landscape. So I'm the Enterprise Business Consultant over here at Omnitas. And with me we've also got our expert, -Lee Ingham. -Hey how's it going? Nice to to meet you and see you. Yes, Kuren, what are we -talking about today? -Awesome. So I think we should just take it from the top. Really? You know, a lot of acronyms always get thrown around. As you know, Lee, CRM is certainly one of them. What exactly is a CRM? CRM. So me just go back a little bit. I've been working with CRM and different CRM for over about. I think it's it's about 2014. now CRM what is it is a suite of software. Part of your tech stack within your business or an organization, and it's really there. It's part of the if you define it. The contact management or the sales management side of the system. Okay. It's a system that's designed to manage your company's interactions with current or potential customers. And I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through. But it basically is there to help streamline your processes, improve your customer service, increase your profitability by basically organizing and automating various aspects of your customer interactions. So CRM stands for customer relationship management. And that's key for me. And it always has been. It's been drilled into me for many, many years. It's that one source of truth where you can go to, first of all, find out who your customers are, what conversations you've been having with them, where they are in their journey and their life cycle. Are they very early on in there. So are they a prospect or a lead? are they existing customers? If so. What? What are we doing with them? Are we? How we communicating with them? What's what's in their journey? We talk about different types of objects or entities within any CRM. And depending on how you operate your business, you know, there's various ways of thinking about it. But the core of a CRM, we have something called leads, which are unqualified sales prospects that people could be businesses. it's information about them and it's activities recorded against them. And from there you can qualify them to be non leads anymore. So qualified sales prospects. So from that point they become a contact with maybe an account depending on which model you use, whether that's B2B, B2C. So people entities, business entities. And then from there then one of the core parts of the CRM really is the opportunities, which is the pipeline record could be called the deal, proposal, whatever, but it's that particular part of the sale. So it's everything wrapped up about your customers. But encompassing all those that part, all those different aspects of the relationship, the communications, the knowledge, the data about them, their stage or status within the lifecycle. And then it has lots of different branches that come out from there. -Perfect, And let's say I'm a business today and I'm looking at purchasing a CRM. What are some of the common challenges or pitfalls that I might come across? Yeah, so common challenges really. You know, there's I mean, when we're looking at the environment around what we are, there's lots of different CRMs out there that offer lots of different services and price points. But those are the key challenges that we need to consider. Like, let's take price for instance. Okay, generally, CRM, when you buy a software, it's either license based. So how many seats do I need? Is that what products and features do we have within that particular chosen application or considered application? How do they evaluate and equate across to the competitive CRM or other ones you're looking at. So just looking at that pricing structure versus the features, you know, that's one of the key challenges is understanding across this vast, wide landscape what it's going to be the best option for me. Things that comes really comes down to is okay, there is a cost. There is these features in there. But one of the other challenges. Okay, well, how can we is it scalable? How much capacity does the system have versus the other system. Can we customize it? Can we turn this off the shelf product into something that actually speaks my language rather than the, you know, the one that's kind of on the shelf over there? I'm not going to name any names because they don't talk about any of them. But can we make it speak our language or do we need to adapt to that language? Is it easy to customize? Is it expensive to customize it when we're customizing it? When we customize it because it doesn't give us this set of reports that we need. But that product over there does. Okay. There's a cost in time and money but essentially or effort in that. And that's another thing like if we are going to customize it who's going to do this. Is it going to be us as in the client, the customer, the person looking at the CRM? Or is it going to be maybe a partner or an external consultant? How much is that going to cost? Can we take some of that ourselves? So there's lots of different costs around that. But ultimately like what is the return of investment on that if there's a little bit of cost now, is it scalable later on? Can we then take control of it? And there's lots of different aspects within that whole ecosystem that you do have to consider. To make cost scalability is definitely one customizations. Reporting all of those different factors is what a core what I need within CRM. There is one more I forgot to mention there is actually like integrations. I have a suite of software here that deals with my customers, but in my tech stack, I have all of these other tools that we use within the business. Do I need to replace them, or do I need to customize them to integrate into my system? Or can we actually do that natively? Maybe with a few tweaks within my existing system. So it can actually now reduce costs because I've got everything in kind of one pocket. Lots and lots of different things to consider around that. Really, really good point. Just to kind of like springboard off that and just touching upon some of the points that you've just mentioned. So you know, let's say we were looking at let's say a dedicated CRM system. So I'm sure everyone's familiar with the powerhouses of like Salesforce for instance, compared to, you know, a tool like a monday.com, which. Can do a CRM, but also can do kind of a bunch of others. Is there kind of would you say there are times or actually it's better for a customer to go to just a pure dedicated solution rather than, you know, a system that can do lots of different things and vice versa. What's your kind of take on that? I prefer personally having everything kind of in one place. Now, if you take a system like monday.com, it's got CRM, it's got service, it's got lots of different. It's got like project management and work management side of it. It's all in one place. The beauty of having it in one place is I can use its native functionality to communicate and talk around those different, different, you know, services or systems that we need within there. So it's simplifying down. What is a large tech stack? You know, you look at Omnitas, we have only a few. We don't have many different texts that we actually use, and we actually pull everything directly within to that one system. monday.com. And it does all of our, you know, all of our stuff, rather than having to go over there for my CRM, for that system to go over here, for my marketing, to go over here for my project management, you know, yes, we can integrate and make things happen and get those systems to talk between themselves. But we can also use a single system that has multiple different effectively products and abilities and features within it that allows me to just talk internally within that system so my CRM can feed my project management, it can feed my, task manager. It can feed all those different things that I need to do. Marketing can take the information from the from the CRM. It's all connected. But the beauty of it is, is I don't have to go and break down all of the important things that I need to see, which is kind of the top level reporting. I don't have to go to lots of different systems and get a spreadsheet from that particular project management flow or list of projects that I have, and then submit that over to my to my C level to, to track down I have another CRM over there to go and do that part of the particular products or services or whatever we're doing, it's all in here. Like monday.com can encapsulate everything that we need, either via integration or natively with within itself, because it is that adaptable. It does have those features and functions and connectivity within itself. I completely, completely agree. just kind of moving on then to to next question as well. So, let's say that you are the owner of a business, right? And you were looking at a plethora of different CRMs that you had to choose from, and you're evaluating every single one. Now. If you have to give yourself advice in that situation. What would you be looking for? Or what things should you be looking for to ensure that you're going to choose the right solution for you? And of course, you know that's going to be slightly different from person to person. Yeah. Well then my business. So I want a bit I want a solution. I want a system that is, first of all, easy to adopt. It doesn't look terrible. I want my users to be able to want to use it, and not have to do a lot of manual entry. So on the back of that, I want it to be automated as well. I want the system to start being reactive rather than proactive on certain things. So using automations is great for that. I wanted to click one button and 15 things automatically happen rather than go in and do something manually over here, and then manually over there and not having connectivity between the two. So I want it all to speak the same kind of language throughout, and I want it to communicate with itself, but ultimately it's all about that user experience. That's one of the key things I'm looking for a great user experience, ability to automate. But coming off the back of it really is the reporting side of it. I want to see the value of it. I want to see instant reports and charts and being able to drill through to them. As a business owner, you know, how are we getting on with our projects? What is in my pipeline? What things are taking, how long? You know, if I'm if I'm thinking about opportunities, am I measuring the time it takes for an opportunity to close? Are we on the time? Are we over time, same thing can be said about projects. But then I want my system to tell me that we're under time, either visually with my charts and I can drill in and understand what's going on, or send me notifications that are easy to configure and easy to target at the right people within that particular process. So I just wanted to be talking to us all at the time, but I also want it to be. In a story like in it. I can't say the word now. Sorry, but I wanted to actually, you know, can we grow this system as well as my client book? Is it. Now, is there a great roadmap of features and functions that are going to enhance it even more, making the user experience even better for my users? Those are the key things I'm really looking for. I mean, one of the things that I think I would really, really struggle with is let's assume, you know, I've got a team we've been using. A certain CRM for a very long period of time. But we think, let's say let's use monday.com as an example. You know, we think, great, that's all that we want to go to. We want to be moving everything all in just a single platform. We really like monday.com CRM capabilities now. What should I expect from a typical migration? How long would that typically take? And should I actually be running both of those systems in parallel to each other, or do I need to kind of cut off one straight away and start the -next? How does it all work? -There's always going to be a crossover when you're taking one way of working and transitioning into another. Okay, now, depending on how well the the old system, kind of the data or all of those little kinks and things that need to be considered when you're migrating stuff over, you know, there's there's going to be friction on there. First of all, we need to make sure that the the users are receptive to that and having good champions within there, within the organization to promote this and show that value. That's one of the key things that, you know, is a big, big struggle for a lot of companies and businesses. You know, if you go from the abacus over to a digital system, there's going to be problems slightly. Scales of counting numbers on here might not match over to what we're trying to achieve because of our objectives and our goals within within like monday.com. You know, we're talking about pipelines and opportunities and return of investment and all that. So the data needs to be obviously, first of all, we need to make sure the data is clean and it's easily transferable. Okay. That's one of the big things to consider within the obviously the training side of it is a big thing. We have to adopt and make sure that the system is prepped and ready to the guys can go hit the ground running on that go live date. So that phase between, and the delivery to the kind of before they go live, there's a good training phase in there that needs to be to be measured at the same time. Right. The world doesn't stop. There's still things that are going on in there. So it is key to have a specific cut of point that by means you can migrate all of that old data into the system. But is that a valid data in there anymore? Not really. Is there a way we can just kind of archive that? Do we need to store that away so we can reference that and then have that, you know, Monday morning, 7 a.m. if you like that early we go live with this system. Now, it's tough to actually say what is going to be not the best option. But what we don't want to do is migrate all the data over early, and then the world is still turning on the old system, and now we're out of line. You know, we open up monday.com. We haven't got those communications that happened last week because we migrated the data a month ago. So absolutely that that timing is crucial with all the other factors that are in there when we're doing these migrations. So there's the right answer is for me, have a hard stop and then just transfer over. But, you know, it depends on how complex the data was from its source to how it is going to be in the new system. But that's where the us, like consultants can come in and help out to, to plan and map that to make it as painless as possible. Yeah, I guess it's like how long is a piece of string right in. In the sense of there's so many different CRMs that people might be using, you know, do we need to actually integrate with that service first, pulling data that way? Do we need to maybe export data into a CSV file, bring that into. There's all sorts of ways, right. But you talk about the integration side of it as well. Like if we do connect into the old system, we can push and pull that data in relatively short time. There's a bit of prep to get that all ready. But you know, on that 7 a.m. point, pull all that data straight in, map it in the correct ways. Make sure it's all speaking in the right language. You know, definitely testing that beforehand is definitely going to be key. But yeah. How long is a piece of string. How complex is side A to side B. But it's manageable. Absolutely. Something which I personally come across a lot with clients and also prospects is, you know, is it better to have a champion or is it better to have almost like decentralized champions, right. In the sense of, you know, we speak to organizations, they've got someone running the show. My opinion is it can make things a lot easier, right? Having that one dedicated person. But then there's other companies that seem to be operating quite well under, almost like a decentralized championship. So how would you what's your kind of take on that based on what you've seen. Like champions, groups and having champions in there is fundamental, right? If you've got that key evangelist in the system who is promoting the product as the like, say monday.com is promoting that and then getting everybody on board, putting that hype in there, showing how great it's going to be in there, that's that's going to be key. But should that be one person, should there be a team of people? For me, it should be a team of people. Right. Because. Organizations, businesses. They have multiple different departments. Okay. We have multiple siloed pieces of information in there. monday.com can join all of those together, but sometimes it doesn't. But if you've got those champions in there that can kind of whisper in the ear of the other teams in the departments, either they can, you know, be pulled in and come on board, and then you've got that lovely one big solution where everybody's talking within that, within that same screen effectively. But the different departments have different needs. Okay. If you've got one person that's running the show, they may not be considering everybody else, okay. Even if they're not part of the same system. The data, the processes and what I'm doing in my, let's say, my CRM directly affect my marketing. They directly affect my projects. The data into my CRM should be feeding all of those different things. Having those key stakeholders in them, other areas all working together to agree on what is going to be effectively the best output that we need from these systems. Okay. I think the Champions groups are fundamental for this. Then they are setting the key objectives, the key goals for the whole of the system, the implementation. Everybody needs to be on board, but if you've got everybody within that group. And me. Like if I'm making changes that have directly affects somebody else, there could be friction. There could be a conflict on there because I'm not actually giving them what they need. I'm actually maybe even making their life harder. So champions are groups of champions within the organization are key. Everybody gets round the table, agrees, disagrees, but comes up with a plan on how to modify the system. You know, what they need to see in the reports, except whatever they need. But it's setting those clear objectives. Those goals are fundamental. And in a business, you need that agreement from all sides, from the bottom to the top -and down again. -Okay. So you've kind of touched a little bit on my next question as well, which is, you know, yes. Okay. Having a champion that's going to increase both the user adoption, but also the success of platform rollout. To you've also mentioned kind of like goals, objections, setting those up. Are there other things as well which can maybe drive adoption drive engagement and are there other ways as well which you know, that champion, for instance, can actually make sure, that the other stakeholders -in the organization are engaged? -Yeah. Great question. So kind of going on so this roll back to the word, the goals and the objectives that are in there. Having those clear goals and objectives and having people that are behind them, driving the system forward, driving the processes forward to achieve them. That's key. These are things that needs to be measurable. And how do we what are we measuring? Are we measuring the return of investment? Is it time? Is it money. Is it whatever. So the making sure that we can get to them again, everybody needs to be aligned on that. Okay. And then where we've got these different teams in there where we're trying to drive towards a greater, return on investment on, on sales or lead conversions or on marketing, you know, targeting marketing teams based upon products sold, etc, So all, all of those different aspects are there in there or the all the champions of making sure they're aligned on that. That's really key. To kind of measure that effectiveness against, you know, the overall goal and objective. But having those teams and those groups within the organization. Setting these clear objectives. Well, maybe there needs to be change within the system. It needs to facilitate that. Okay. So they can then agree that we need to put this process in place, this process in place and so on. So it's all part of one big thing. Like they should be central within that whole, business and actually fully understand everything that we need to have in order to achieve and get that return on investment within our solution. I don't know if -I answered that one, but. -No. You absolutely did. I think you also touched a little bit on kind of like reporting. And that's so key, right? Like if you're managing an organization, especially very large ones, which, you know, are thousands of people strong, you know, one champion is not necessarily going to be able to do that all probably need a few champions on top of that. Having kind of top level reporting can allow you to see their kind of usage amongst the different teams or even on an individual scale. In some platforms, you can even see what kind of features those, stakeholders are using as well. So it's things like that that can really help optimize the business engine. Lastly, as. Well, you know, a question probably all partners get, right. Why should we use a partner? Why not go directly to the vendor? What's the benefit? The vendor, I mean. I mean, that is a great question, isn't it? Right? If I'm going to go and buy monday.com, I want to I'm going to go to monday.com. And I'm going to speak to the sales team in here. And then they get, you know, these products and services that will fix my solution. Where do partners fit into that whole thing? Well, we don't just work with one type of customer. We with many different types of customers. We've got lots of experience. I myself have been doing this since, like I said, 2014. You know, we've got like a company like Omnitas. We've got lots of different skill sets and lots of different specialties within the organization. Hope that that experience has just gone, you know, through the roof or there's so much, knowledge within there. The, you know, I would if I was a. Customer and I was going to, you know, work with a partner. The relationship, I think, is one of the key aspects of it. Like, you know, we are driven to to help you. We're there to give you the best practices, what we have across that whole a whole ecosphere of all, you know, all of the different use cases you have where they're not just to sell you the product and the license. We're there to improve and optimize the workflows. Okay. If I'm if I come to monday.com and I'm just by CRM, I'm going to get a CRM product. But my CRM is also part of my bigger tech stack. It's got project management, it's got marketing, it's got event management, whatever it is, you know, partners have got that understanding of all of those different aspects. And, you know, so we've been doing this for years and years. We work alongside very much like the like monday.com okay. But we offer other different skills and services that are, you know, fully there to be, you know, taken advantage of it. Really. It's about the workflow as much as it is just the licenses, all the tasks. We're not just make or monday.com sellers. That's not what we are. We are, you know, workflow optimization specialists, okay. We work in so many different, worlds and have all of that experience from all of those different things. But being able to connect the world together, see, in the bigger picture or everything, you know, expanding on and improving. Not only like not only the system that you're using, but the actual process behind it all. So it's we're working in parallel. We're working in a partnership with monday.com with you as the customer, but, you know, really driven at -optimization. -Yeah. I mean, just to just to kind of like touch upon that as well. Lee, you know, like if I was just kind of like a one person organization probably, you know, may or may not need a consultant. Maybe I'm just happy going with the free trial of monday.com. Right. I can just, like, play around with it, use the tool as it is and build it as my needs adapt. Maybe as I grow, maybe some of these needs actually change. Maybe I'm not that familiar with the actual platform. Maybe I need some support and training some clients. Time is money. They don't want to spend the time learning system. They just want someone to build it. Yeah, others. They then say, well, actually we do want some help, but we don't want to be completely dependent on a consultant because then that might risk them not actually understanding how things are built and therefore that might incur future charges for them as they make modifications in the future. So I would say it's it's certainly a personal, it depends on a personal level. Yeah. I mean, a lot of. The what you mentioned there about the, you know, the I can do it all myself and I'm going to sit here and build it and I don't need anybody's help and that sort of thing. And I over my years I've seen that way too many times. And then eventually they come back and go, yeah, I need some help. It didn't, really work for me. I, you know, actually get a bit more fuzing. That's where, you know, the partners can come in. And actually, because we understand the product inside and out, we know all of the different features, all of the different ways it can be adapted. We can model that to your processes. And if we don't know we're going to learn about your process. We're going to understand exactly what it is you need. You may think you know what you need as well, but also maybe even having that other other person with working with you to, to highlight potential gaps and things that you're not thinking about, which actually, you know, would be really, really valuable. I think I know everything about monday.com, but there's always like, I always do have to go and ask help, you know, because there is something always to learn. And monday.com is a growing system. It's always improving. It always, you know, it's got features like coming out, the great features on the roadmap. And it's just. You know. If I was a small business and I wanted to grow, my ultimate goal is to grow my client book and grow Expand the company and, fully optimize myself so I can get into the bigger world. Right? That's what we're here to do. We're here to improve all of the time. Partners are geared to help you do that with vested in your growth. Yeah. Awesome. Well, look, guys, that's that's a wrap. if you've got any questions, you know, feel free to pop them in the chat. Now, although we haven't really received much so far. also, you can, you know, add myself, or Lee on LinkedIn and you can pop up, pop us a message there as well if you're unsure or have any questions, because I know what we have discussed. It's been kind of top level, quite broad. What would you do, you know, if you were just starting that kind of CRM journey? But of course, if you've got more nuanced questions that you might want to ask, then, you know, we're more than happy to help. -Sorry, Lee. -I should say. I think I have another webinar following this is about building CRM within within monday.com as well. So maybe check that out guys. That'll be that'll be good to -see. -Absolutely great. Thanks, everyone. Cheers.