Excel is Not a CRM

How are you managing your Sales and Marketing processes?  Did you know, half of CRM buyers (53%) currently use manual methods*, such as paper and spreadsheets? Are you one of them? Sad to say, Excel is not a CRM.

Excel is not a CRM

If that’s the case, think about the reasons why Excel became your winning choice…

It might be because it’s easy to use; your employees are already confident with this software. Or perhaps it’s because it solved the issue of a tedious and expensive set up process?

Whatever your reason, this “trusty old friend solution” can’t and won’t fulfil all your needs

nor the expectations of your whole Sales and Marketing process. By now maybe you’ve realised how difficult is to update, manage, process and integrate your complete database compared to other CRM solutions? Take a look below:

Excel’s Advantages

Simple to use
Well known by employees
Affordable solution for a small database without a complex sales process (transactional sales)

Excel Disadvantages

Not appropriate for multiple users to make quick changes
Difficulty to report relationships or tasks related to a customer, company or deal
Requires a lot of time to report and comprehend data
Sharing specific data presents few difficulties
High risk of losing data
Low data security

If you are still looking at Excel as a viable option, you can download a simple CRM template here. Let’s take a look at the cases in which Excel performs best:

1. Financial data storage
2. Complex formulas made simple
3. Calculations

However, as you can see none of them relate to CRMs.

As the market is growing and maturing, fresh innovative solutions have emerged to fit the needs of Startups and SMEs, and help you to manage and profit from your company’s data.

A new generation of cloud-based and integrated Sales and Marketing software is quickly becoming the industry norm as a result of their data visualization benefits and for creating a comprehensive summary of Sales and Marketing operations. Further more, they have helped companies employees with their workflow, making it a product they love not loathe. And far more importantly, they bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing departments, without the usual “your leads are useless” or “your reps are cherry-picking”, Sales and Marketing quips. They bring harmony in place of discord.

Gone are the days when Excel was your only answer to manage and make your business flourish. CRM solutions are no longer just for those with big budgets with an unlimited amount of tech support, 2015 is the year to say ‘no’ to Excel.

Take advantage of a 14-day free trial of SalesSeek.

*2015 Report Data provided by Software Advice.