The mid-market: driving the CRM revolution

The South African economy: a tantalising combination of challenge and opportunity set to inspire even the most reluctant entrepreneur. With the SME market booming, previously small enterprises are rapidly transforming into mid-sized companies - and changing the way people do business and what consumers expect of business in the process.

Despite being smaller in size, this "middle" market is typically bursting with big ideas and the blood, sweat and tears required to make these realities. How are owners enabling their upstart companies to take on big business? Customer relationship management.

CRM is arguably not a new idea when it comes to business and doing business. Knowing your customer intimately enables you to serve them better and add value, boosting their loyalty and giving you undeniable competitive advantage. Medium-sized enterprises are critically aware of this - and are starting to use CRM to this effect. This is exciting news for all of us in the applications industry.

Customer relationship management has to be the focal point of a mid-sized company because of the very nature of these enterprises. Their survival is directly linked to their customer base. They thus cannot be complacent when it comes to service. Each and every customer very literally has to be treated as "king". They cannot afford the consequences of bad press. These companies have typically had their reputations built via word-of-mouth and know the value of it. This makes CRM a "must have" as opposed to a "nice to have".

The CRM revolution in the mid-market is good news for both customers and the applications themselves. The demand for products has forced these to adapt to this market`s unique needs. Applications need to be easy to use and easy to install.

A medium-sized enterprise can`t afford to lose two years during implementation; it needs everything up and running in a matter of months. In addition, because smaller offices are staffed by employees who generally multitask and perform a number of functions, employees must be able to use the product virtually immediately: there`s no time to send everyone off to do training.

This is something our Softline ACCPAC application developers have worked extensively on. Accpac product tutorials mean that employees don`t need more than an hour of training which is done online using product tutorials. The products are so simple to use that employees want to use them - this has to be the goal of any developer.

While CRM is all about improving service and delivery in all businesses, in the mid-market it`s definitely also critical to improving workflow and achieving business collaboration. In the past, in large corporations, CRM arguably only enjoyed limited levels of success. In the medium-sized enterprise environment this cannot be tolerated. These businesses can`t afford to buy products that don`t work. CRM applications have to change their enterprises. As application providers, we must therefore sit up and take note of these companies` needs, and develop our products accordingly - especially with this segment of the market as bullish as it is.

The mid-market looks set to continue aggressively impacting on CRM as a concept and as a product well into the foreseeable future. And, with the South African species of entrepreneur having proved themselves in growing simple start-ups into multinationals, who could ask for better CRM ambassadors? My advice to anyone in the business of CRM - you probably want to manage these customers particularly well yourselves...