How To Combine CRM And Project Management

Without constant lead generation and improving customer service, any company would have no chance of success, and the business would lose its purpose. That is why you can not do without effective client relationship management.

In addition, you need to successfully and wisely manage all projects, budgets, and resources so that the company meets customers’ requirements, successfully generates leads, and does not stop its development.

To efficiently and successfully cope with these aspects and not forget about anything, you should use a combination of project management and customer relationship management.

What are the differences between CRM and PM software?

Below we will look at the most critical differences between project management and CRM software.

If we talk about the parameters of CRM software, such a program allows you to collect the necessary data about each of the customers, provide support and track customers. In addition, it is possible to manage any offers and prices, track referrals, manage sales results and fully automate marketing processes.

In turn, PM software boasts the following parameters. It allows you to plan projects, manage the timing of their implementation, manage the budget and portfolio, automate workflows. In addition, such software provides advanced tools for more effective collaboration, more flexible management functions, and Gantt charts.

Now let’s look at CRM and PM software’s most important benefits:

• Programs for customer relationship management help understand the peculiarities of customer relationships, allow the company to have a shared database of users, speed up responses to customer inquiries using approval and automate feedback.
• Meanwhile, PM software allows you to monitor the implementation of projects, plan the execution of various tasks, take advantage of remote work, significantly increase the team’s efficiency, and reduce costs and workload.

Often, these two functionalities are combined in one solution. 

What makes a good CRM project management solution?

The best CRM project management solution should have the most user-friendly interface and a wide range of features, high reliability, and flexibility. In order not to make a mistake in the choice, you should take into account the following characteristics that make project management CRM solutions as effective as possible:

• Ease of use. This software should be equally simple and understandable for your employees and your customers. Think carefully about whether the program is suitable for your business processes and whether there will be problems with its implementation and use.

• Customizability. It is very important that you can customize this software to meet the needs of your business. In particular, such a function as custom task status makes it possible to organize employees’ work so that the work process is focused on solving problems and meeting customer needs.

• Cooperation with clients. Choose only the tool that will introduce your clients to the CRM project space to see for themselves what stage their projects are at.

• Management of documents and information. With this feature, you will provide customers with access to knowledge bases, share user guides and various documents with them.

• Other key features of the CRM project management solution include the following: portfolio and visual project management, optimized communication, data-driven analytics, integrations, and sales funnel management.

What are the pros & cons of an all-in-one tool?

If you are determined that you need a CRM project management program, you should know the main pros and cons of such an all-inclusive solution:

Pros:

1. The software allows you to better manage your data,
2. All-in-one tools can improve quality control,
3. They save you money and time,
4. They ensure cross-departmental alignment.

Cons:

1. Some universal tools can be costly.

What are good all-in-one solutions?

Zoho

Zoho is a CRM system that helps marketers and sales specialists manage projects and tasks and control sales.

It has a well-thought-out user-friendly interface and extensive capabilities — from invoicing to order management and accounting. Here you can optimize all operations for efficient work with your projects.

Zoho CRM will also help track clients’ activity and traffic sources; send emails to your customers using automatic templates; create a to-do list; organize operational, technical support; generate reports on clients and transactions; and integrate with various services via an open API.

You can easily understand this CRM and customize it yourself. By connecting to all Zoho apps, you can work with them from one control panel, which is very convenient. To do this, you first need to subscribe to Zoho One.

Snov.io

Snov.io is a simple CRM that will become an ideal assistant in managing projects, tasks, and sales. It’s a one-stop solution for any niche.

With Snov.io, you can check what stage each of your projects is at, which sales and marketing team closes more deals, how good the lead generation process is, how many deals may be closed shortly, how many of them have already been closed, and so on.

This flexible platform has a simple and intuitive interface and several tools that will help optimize and automate many tasks for product promotion and sales departments — Email Finder, LI Prospect Finder, Email Verifier, Email Tracker, Technology Checker, Drip Campaigns. Thanks to an open API, you can also integrate it with different services (over 2000 integrations available).

Perfex

Perfex is a CRM system with which you can easily manage tasks, projects, and sales.

The distinguishing features of this platform include an easy-to-use interface that will allow you to easily do all the work you need to manage projects successfully. Here you can access information about leads and customers, find out how they use your product, get data on internal actions, and control business expenses.

The most important thing is that you can optimize your team’s work processes and automate them, for example, create proposals and assign them to team members. You can also schedule tasks and prioritize them.

Wrapping up

CRM helps to establish and maintain good relationships with regular customers and at the same time attract as many new customers as possible, developing your business. As you know, no company will be able to grow without customers, so you need to provide them with quality services and goods. That is why you can not do without project management.

Fortunately, many effective universal solutions will help you greatly facilitate your work. Thanks to the effective software, you will conveniently manage any tasks and communicate with customers.

With the introduction of a CRM or PM solution, you will have new features and tools that will help to configure and optimize all workflows. You can use two such tools at once or one universal solution, but in any case, you will get increased productivity, improved customer relations, and a high company’s reputation.