Helping a UK furniture business choose its next CRM

A CRM decision shapes how a business attracts prospects, manages customer relationships and follows opportunities through to service and repeat business. For this organisation, the choice needed to reflect how teams worked across the customer journey and how customer information connected with wider operations.

The discovery placed particular emphasis on visibility into sales activity before an opportunity became an order. The business also needed to consider forecasting, marketing effectiveness and consistent reporting across business areas. Choosing a platform required a clear view of these needs and the capabilities behind them.

AO reviewed the existing application landscape and mapped the customer journey from initial awareness and consideration through to purchase, service, loyalty and advocacy. This connected the platform discussion with the work people needed to do at each stage.

The review considered how customer-facing processes related to enterprise resource planning (ERP), digital channels, documents, payments and reporting. It helped frame the CRM decision within the organisation’s wider technology environment.

The discovery covered requirements across several connected areas:

• Marketing: customer segmentation, lead generation, campaign management, customer preferences, personalised engagement and campaign reporting.
• Sales: leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities, alongside engagement tracking, pipeline management, forecasting and sales automation.
• Customer service: case management, knowledge management, digital self-service and a consistent view of customer interactions across channels.
• Client engagement and contracts: relationship activity, commercial opportunities and contract processes from creation through renewal.
• Quotations and product information: pricing, product catalogues, quotation management and related requirements needing further clarification.
• Technical foundations: integration, data quality, a consolidated customer view, reporting, document generation, mobile access and workflow automation.

This broader view helped distinguish the core CRM requirements from capabilities that would depend on other systems, supporting tools or further business input.

AO assessed capabilities using business impact, complexity, business value and maturity. The approach considered the processes and technology supporting each capability, as well as how the business depended on it.

This created a structured way to discuss priorities and the level of capability required. It also connected the selection exercise with the process and data considerations a future implementation would need to address.

The discovery identified reporting needs covering customer engagement, sales performance, revenue forecasting, segmentation, marketing effectiveness, customer lifetime value and satisfaction. These requirements gave the platform evaluation a business context beyond a list of features.

AO also considered the foundations needed to support that information: data quality, a consolidated customer view, connections between applications and the movement of data into reporting environments. These considerations helped make integration dependencies visible during selection.

The work produced a structured view of the capabilities a future CRM needed to support, criteria for assessing them and their connections to existing operations. This gave decision-makers a clearer basis for comparing platform options and discussing the next stage with prospective delivery partners.

AO’s contribution covered discovery, requirements assessment and CRM selection advice. System implementation and integration were outside AO’s scope on this engagement.

If your organisation is considering a new CRM, AO can help define the business requirements, assess capability needs and evaluate how platform options fit your operating environment. The work can also identify data and integration considerations before you commit to implementation.

Book a discovery call to discuss your CRM requirements, or explore AO Consult’s technology strategy and enterprise architecture services.