Running a business requires setting clear goals and tasks, followed by a drive to achieve them quickly and efficiently. In situations where a company’s profile largely involves office work, Excel is quite sufficient – it is a program that can effectively organize day-to-day work when maintaining simple databases.
Things are quite different when a company is oriented towards sales or production. In this situation, the complexity of activity structure far exceeds Excel’s capabilities. Multilevel tasks, large databases, consolidations – all of this can be stored in one place and effectively managed.
Each Lead can have an individual profile with assigned activities, detailed reports, and their automatic generation on a regular basis – these and many other functionalities greatly facilitate work and elevate the company to a higher level.
Excel as CRM System – Is it Possible?
Is it possible for a company to prepare calculations, reports, and a client base using Excel? Yes, many small businesses and even large players support their activities with its help. Is this a good solution? At the beginning, “yes,” when the company is not very active and is only building a network of business partners. Thanks to Excel, you can:
- create graphs and tables;
- conduct comparative analysis based on them;
- have constant access to the database;
- control your finances;
- manage income and expenses.
All calculations and information can be stored in the cloud, allowing you to share data with other colleagues. However, you must be cautious about security when uploading important documents to the internet.
Advantage of CRM over Excel
Excel software is a very good solution for small businesses that are just starting to find clients. For managing small databases and a small number of counterparts, electronic spreadsheets are sufficient, but as the company’s turnover increases and the number of business clients grows, Excel’s capabilities become insufficient.
With an expanding database, updates, and new actions, Excel simply can’t cope. Working with spreadsheets often leads to duplication of versions of the same file, creating chaos.
Also, there is no question about managing authorizations, which works excellently in a CRM system – there you can distribute authorizations among employees without the need to divide the database into smaller parts. So why switch from Excel to CRM?
You will get many more solutions, functionality, an intuitively understandable interface, and complete sales security and establishment of business relations. CRM also offers a wide range of system modifications according to your company’s needs and field of activity.