CRMs are a great tool to help you manage customer relationships — including managing customer information, leads and opportunities, and deals, quotes and order status — to create better customer experiences.
But many manufacturers think they don’t need one. The manufacturing industry has evolved to be much more customer-centric over the last few years, and a CRM is an invaluable tool to help manufacturers be more organized, sell more products, and create happier customers.
Learn how a CRM can help manufacturers improve sales performance, strengthen customer relationships and better plan for future demand. We also explore why connecting your CRM and ERP matters — and the different CRM options available to Genius ERP users.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is a software tool that helps companies organize all of their interactions with both potential and current customers. CRMs are robust tools to help manage the sales process, and also let manufacturers:
Read on to learn the top 5 reasons manufacturers need a CRM.
A CRM lets you centralize all your sales conversations in one place, meaning your sales team will be able to manage all accounts, leads, opportunities and communications within one system, and no more missed deals or opportunities because information got lost in the shuffle.
Well documented information about a lead or client also helps build a relationship, trust, and respect — all which improve chances of closing a deal with a new client, or re-upping or upselling to an existing customer.
The bottom line is that a more organized sales team, and a better managed sales pipeline will lead to increased performance by your sales team and more closed deals.
A CRM isn’t a valuable tool just for potential customers, it’s also a valuable tool for managing the relationship you have with your current customers.
Having more information about your customers can help you communicate more regularly and effectively with them, which will lead to a stronger relationship. You will also be able to better respond to customer inquiries about current orders, as all customer and job information will be easily accessible through the CRM.
When customer support is strong, and the customer relationship is well nurtured, a customer will tend to report higher degrees of satisfaction, and heightened loyalty.
What does this translate to for you? More repeat business and loyal clients who will return to you again and again for their needs.
A CRM will also help your sales team forecast future sales growth based on their pipeline of potential deals. A better understanding of all of your potential deals, means you know what jobs your shop has now, but also what jobs will be coming your way.
A CRM system provides you with a real-time sales forecast. Based on this data, the rest of your shop can better plan, schedule and allocate resources earlier — rather than waiting until an order is placed by a customer.
Better production planning lets you stay on top of your shop, and makes it easier to deal with any potential problems early on, ensuring a smoother pace of production, and more deals delivered on time.
A manufacturing CRM can also help you better understand and manage your supply chain.
Coupling the sales forecast data from your CRM with detailed and useful insights about operations, inventory management, order processing, warehousing, and distribution chains from your ERP allows for better production planning and supply chain management.
This level of enhanced visibility, catalyzed by the presence of a CRM, is often referred to as an “intelligent supply chain”.
Having an intelligent supply chain can empower you to better manage production schedules and inventory levels, as well as give you a leg up in purchasing and procuring materials.
(Looking for more information on how to improve your purchasing? Check out our blog here on how to use your ERP to improve purchasing processes.)
A CRM can also give you insights into what your customers think about your products, and how you can improve quality and consistency.
Having a more direct line to your end users will give you a stronger feedback mechanism for tweaking your product to better suit the market’s needs.
A CRM leads to better communication with your customers, which means more feedback from them about your products, which translates to more rapid and effective product improvements.
A CRM is an indispensable tool for managing the sales process, but it is most valuable to a manufacturer when it connects with the ERP system at the center of the operation.
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Your CRM manages leads, customer communication and sales opportunities. Your ERP manages estimating, inventory, purchasing, production, scheduling, job costing and order fulfillment. Connecting the two creates a better flow of information between sales and production and reduces the need to enter the same customer, quote or order information in multiple systems.
A connected CRM also gives sales teams access to the information they need to respond to customers and prepare accurate quotes. Depending on the systems and processes involved, this can include customer histories, past deals, product details, pricing and order updates. If a quote requires additional technical input, sales can also bring estimating or engineering into the process without losing track of the opportunity or the customer’s requirements.
The result is a more consistent handoff from sales to production. Sales has better visibility into what is happening with an opportunity or order, while operational teams receive the information they need to plan materials, capacity and production.
There is no single CRM setup that is right for every manufacturer. Some companies need a straightforward way to manage customer information, opportunities, quotes and follow-ups alongside their manufacturing operations. Others have larger sales and marketing teams, more advanced automation requirements or customer service processes that require a dedicated CRM platform.
The right choice depends on the complexity of your sales cycle, the structure of your team, the tools you need and how closely your CRM must connect with the rest of the business. At Genius ERP, manufacturers can use our built-in Genius CRM or connect Genius ERP with HubSpot CRM through our partnership with Lakhos.
Genius CRM is built directly into Genius ERP and designed around the needs of manufacturers. It gives your team tools to manage customer information, leads, opportunities, activities and sales processes within the same system used to run the rest of the operation.
Because Genius CRM is part of Genius ERP, sales teams can work with relevant customer and operational information without moving between separate platforms. They can review customer histories, past deals and product information and use ERP data to help prepare quotes. For complex custom products, estimating and engineering can also contribute the technical details needed to create an accurate proposal.
This approach is well-suited to manufacturers that want to keep customer relationship management, quoting and operations together in one system. It reduces duplicate data entry and gives employees across the business access to a shared source of information.
Some manufacturers need a dedicated CRM platform with broader capabilities for sales, marketing and customer service. To support these needs, Genius ERP partners with Lakhos, a HubSpot Platinum CRM solutions partner focused on industrial and manufacturing companies.
HubSpot CRM gives sales and marketing teams tools to centralize customer information, track interactions, manage sales pipelines, automate follow-ups and segment leads. It can also support personalized communication and customer service processes. However, HubSpot is not designed to manage production, inventory, scheduling or job costing. That is where the connection with Genius ERP becomes important.
Genius ERP manages the operational side of the business, including estimating, production planning, inventory, purchasing, scheduling, project tracking and job costing. When HubSpot and Genius ERP are connected, relevant information can move between sales and production instead of remaining in separate systems.
For example, a typical workflow may look like this:
This process creates a clearer handoff between sales and production. It can reduce manual data entry and the errors that come with it, while helping ensure that important customer and product information reaches the operational teams responsible for fulfilling the order.
The connection also improves visibility in both directions. Sales teams can access more current quote and order information when communicating with customers. Production teams receive more complete information about upcoming work, which can support material planning and scheduling. Customer service teams can work with a more complete view of customer interactions, orders and service requests, helping them respond to questions more quickly.
Lakhos provides the HubSpot CRM and integration expertise needed to connect the two systems. The team works with manufacturers to understand their requirements, configure HubSpot and define the appropriate integration scenarios with Genius ERP.
A CRM helps manufacturers organize sales activity, build stronger customer relationships and gain a clearer view of future demand. When it connects with your ERP, those benefits extend beyond the sales team, creating a better flow of information between customer-facing teams and the people responsible for quoting, planning and production.
The right CRM setup will depend on your business and the capabilities your team needs. Genius CRM gives manufacturers a CRM built directly into Genius ERP, while our partnership with Lakhos lets companies connect the broader sales, marketing and customer service capabilities of HubSpot with Genius ERP. Both approaches help manufacturers keep sales and operations connected and give their teams better information throughout the customer and production cycle.
Find the right CRM approach for your manufacturing business. Explore Genius CRM, or talk to our team about connecting HubSpot CRM with Genius ERP.
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