A Comprehensive Review of Infusion CRM

Introduction

Experts have estimated that by the year 2010, organizations that are relying and spending considerable capital on CRM or Customer Relationship Management would spend approximately $11 billion yearly. The software has been designed to increase sales and the organization's customer base by helping improve the customer experience that clients get from their products and services through the improvement in efficiency and productivity of the workforce directly in contact with the customer. Good CRM software should enable small businesses to improve how they manage their sales, marketing and customer service management through one complete and automated system and these small businesses can get this through Infusion's CRM software.

Summary and Product Overview of Infusion CRM

Infusion is a privately-owned company from Gilbert, Arizona that offers an all-in-one CRM software program geared towards improving the sales and marketing practices as well as the customer management system of small businesses to achieve a significant increase in their sales revenues. Infusion provides these small businesses with a complete system that integrates all the best practices in small-business management, e-commerce and direct response marketing by automating the management of the sales process.

This includes activities like generating sales leads, conducting a follow up, processing and delivering orders and collection of payments. With the use of Infusion's CRM package, small businesses can generate more revenues at a shorter period of time without being tied up with the intricacies that are inherent with business operations.

Key Features of the Product

To meet the requirements of their client's, Infusion has included a variety of features in their software package that can help automate the way clients manage their sales, marketing, customer follow-up, billing and other operational activities.

Infusion CRM includes:

• Marketing Automation - this automated marketing system includes an automatic follow up of potential clients and existing customers through direct mail, email, fax messages, voice messages and other tasks.
• Automation of the Sales Force – is a customizable sales system that can maximize the ability of these businesses to track down all their leads by automatically distributing these sales leads to separate teams. For instance, this feature provides an automatic triggering system to ensure that a timely follow-up is rendered for these sales leads.
• Email Management - the Email Deliverability Assurance program ensures prompt delivery of email to inboxes by bypassing spam filters. Other email tools help manage auto-responders and newsletters.
• Contact Management - the sales and marketing teams can have a better relationship with their customers and potential clients by putting all their communication tasks and correspondence in one location.
• Affiliate / Joint Venture Programs - the multi-tiered structure of their affiliate program helps businesses manage their affiliates and partners using the Affiliate Resource Center.
• Online and Offline Ordering - the integrated e-commerce and shopping cart system allows businesses to track, manage and consolidate their online sales including the automation of credit card payments.
• Accounting - sales and accounting reports can be easily generated including other relevant financial information. Recurrent billings can be automated and payment failures and other indicators are notified automatically. The system can also be integrated with external accounting programs.

Customer Base

Infusion CRM can be used as the backbone of operations for small business with a customer base that spans several organizations coming from different markets and industries across Canada, Europe, Australia and the United States. The CRM software can also be used by large organizations to automate a specific function or division in their system.

Weaknesses

Infusion CRM, although designed for small businesses, is a complex tool and software that has a high learning curve that requires more time for staff to learn how to set-up, configure, use and customize. Businesses have to invest in training programs for their staff so that they can learn how to fully utilize the program.

Product Costing

Infusion CRM is an all-in-one hosted sales and marketing solution that costs $4,697 for licensing and set-up and another $297 per month for the monthly membership that includes 5 primary users. The cost includes hosting, online training, and unlimited tech support, assistance in implementation, monthly upgrades, security and data protection. There are no contracts required to avail of the software package.