MANILA, Philippines – New businesses will need to invest in customer relationship management (CRM) tools to boost sales and remain competitive, ePLDT Inc. unit IPC (IP Converge Data Services Inc.) said.
While businesses that are just starting are already using digital tools such as social media and cloud to manage and promote their products and services, Dave de Leon, chief financial officer and head of business solutions group of IPC said they still face challenges in generating, winning and keeping business leads.
“Here’s where an effective CRM tool comes in. It affords a startup’s sales team access to crucial real-time information, thereby empowering them to make better business decisions,” he said.
By using CRM tools, startups would be able to understand who has bought what, how much they spent, as well as predict demand for future product offerings.
According to Salesforce, one of the largest cloud computing companies providing CRM solutions, a good CRM can increase sales by 29 percent, sales productivity up to 35 percent and forecast accuracy by 42 percent.
IPC is currently the only partner of Salesforce in the country.
“Whoever can understand the customer better, wins the competition. So that’s why you have to have CRM to manage and analyze customer information which helps businesses to understand them even before they look for a product,” Brian Dizon, director for sales – business solutions group of IPC said.
“When you empower your sales reps with the right tools, they can focus more on hitting their quotas instead of working on reports that can otherwise be automated or simplified,” he added.
As part of efforts to promote the use of CRM, IPC is hosting a workshop which will discuss the role of CRM in a company on Nov. 22.
IPC is an internet data center, telecommunications and cloud services company, providing local and regional enterprises with managed data services and business solutions at international standards.