Introduction
I have been involved in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology business since 1988. As in all areas of technology, the pace of change and progress in CRM software has been remarkable. In particular, the mid-market CRM software marketplace can provide tremendous benefits and efficiencies to your Agency or Brokerage, with a modest investment and a reasonable Return on Investment (ROI).

CRM Components
As the CRM software industry has matured, the integration and functionality between sales, marketing, and customer service has improved dramatically. With modest customizations, you can easily manage the entire lifecycle of marketing, selling, and supporting your customers in a way that is specific to your business processes.

Accessibility
Today's mid-market CRM software solutions provide you with numerous ways to access your system including your internal network, web, mobile, PDA, and phone. For those firms who may not have or want to use their internal IT resources to support a CRM system, there are a variety of hosted solutions, including those that are designed specifically for the insurance industry.

Integration
Your agency infrastructure runs on a variety of systems. In order to leverage the various aspects of your back-office (accounting and agency management), Web Page, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Office, you want to integrate each of these systems in a comprehensive solution.

Here's an outline of each of the items mentioned above:

Back-Office Integration - You are going to have data within both your Agency Management, Accounting, and CRM software that you will want to share and manage. Depending on the mid-market CRM solution you select, you will have a variety of solutions available that will allow you to integrate you various systems.

Web Page Integration - With minimal customization, you will be able to capture inquiries
gathered on your web page and import them directly into your mid-market CRM system. At that point, you can start a variety of pre-defined processes that are covered later in this article.

Microsoft Outlook Integration - Outlook has become the office productivity standard over the past few years. This has been recognized and addressed by the CRM industry, resulting in very nice out-of-the-box Outlook Integration.

Microsoft Office Integration - Most mid-market CRM solutions provide out-of-the-box Microsoft Office Integration. This would include mail merge capabilities along with recording all correspondence activity within the individual contact record within your CRM system. In addition, database queries and reports within your CRM system can be easily exported to Microsoft Excel for further data analysis.

Development/Programming Environments
The strength and subsequent ROI on mid-market CRM solutions is the full-featured out-of-the-box functionality provided along with an industry standard development environment. This allows you to do detailed customization to meet the specific requirements of your agency or brokerage. These development environments are based on programming standards that allow you to hire readily available resources.

Process Automation
One of the biggest areas of progress over the years in mid-market CRM software has been the development of Process Automation. You have the ability and tools to automate your sales, marketing and customer service functions. For example, you can have the following sales cycle automated:

1. Inquiry generated from your website imported directly into your mid-market CRM system;
2. Based on pre-defined criteria, this inquiry can be routed to a specific individual for follow-up or;
3. Set off a series of correspondence (email, direct mail, or fax);
4. A subsequent form of contact can be scheduled;
5. All of this activity is automatically noted in the history of the prospect record;
6. Once your lead becomes a prospect, you can be scheduled for another set of processes based on your sales methodology;
7. If the prospect becomes a customer, you can scheduled them for a another set of processes for customer maintenance and marketing of other products;
8. Renewal dates can trigger another set of processes to inform internal staff of pending renewals.

If process automation is properly thought-out and executed, it can provide tremendous efficiencies and benefits to both your firm and your customer base.

Cost and ROI
Every agency and brokerage is going to have their own specific requirements on how they want to use their CRM System. However, here are some guidelines on the cost of implementing a new CRM solution. Most mid-market CRM software includes a server component, individual end-user licenses, and support and maintenance. The implementation services would include needs-assessment, planning, programming/development services, testing, rollout, project management, and training. Here is an example of the cost of a 25-user system:

Each firm will have different components in determining their ROI calculation. Because of the reasonable cash investment in a mid-market CRM Solution, you should get a favorable ROI based on even modest improvements in your sales, marketing, and customer service functions of your agency or brokerage.

One of the issues and cost in the calculating ROI is the internal time and human resource aspect of implementing a CRM solution. If you have a well-planned mid-market CRM implementation, the time involved should be only a matter of weeks, increasing your ROI.

Summary
With the maturation of the mid-market CRM industry, this is the time to review your own internal systems and evaluate how a reasonable investment can help you become more efficient and effective in your sales, marketing, and customer service aspects of managing your agency or brokerage.

About the Author
Sidney C. Lejfer is President of Harvest Solutions, a Customer Relationship Management Consulting and Training Organization. He is a featured writer and speaker on the benefits of Customer Relationship Management Technology. Please contact us for additional information.