Customer Relationship Management

Where CRM sits in Lead-to-Cash

Lead-to-Cash is the stream that runs from a stranger's first interaction to money in the bank. CRM owns the front of it and hands off to supply chain and finance at the order. Treating it as a self-contained module is the most common way to end up with a sales system that nobody in finance trusts.

1. 01

   Contact to Lead

   Marketing generates interest and captures consent. A contact becomes a lead once there is enough signal to act on.

2. 02

   Lead to Opportunity

   The lead is qualified and handed to sales, who judge whether it is worth pursuing and convert it to an opportunity.

3. 03

   Opportunity to Quote

   Sales assess whether the opportunity is ready to be priced, and a quote is raised — by the rep, or by the customer through a web store.

4. 04

   Quote to Order

   The quote is negotiated until agreed, then converted into an order.

5. 05

   Order to Cash

   The order is fulfilled, invoiced and collected. This stage lives in supply chain and finance, not in CRM.

The handover at Quote to Order is where most CRM implementations leak. If the order that lands in the ERP does not match the quote the customer agreed to, no amount of pipeline reporting will save you.

What the module actually does

• Contact management: Centralises contact detail and the full history of interactions, so the relationship survives a change of account manager.
• Sales management: Tracks opportunities, pipeline and performance against target.
• Marketing tools: Campaign management, lead generation and the analysis that says which of them worked.
• Customer support: Service requests, ticketing and the feedback loop back into the record.
• Analytics and reporting: Insight into customer behaviour, sales trends and marketing effectiveness.

Setting it up

• Integration with other modules: CRM must share data with sales, marketing and support, or you have simply bought a second customer database.
• Data migration: Existing customer data comes across checked for accuracy and completeness, not copied wholesale.
• Customisation: Tailor the system to the processes the business actually runs, rather than reshaping the business around a demo.
• Security settings: Access controls and permissions that reflect who should be able to see which customers.
• User training: Sales teams abandon CRM faster than any other module when it feels like admin. Training is adoption work, not a formality.

Implementing it

1. 01

   Requirements gathering

   Define what this business needs CRM to do, in its own words.

2. 02

   Vendor selection

   Choose a CRM that integrates with the existing ERP, or an ERP whose built-in CRM is good enough.

3. 03

   Customisation and configuration

   Configure against the documented processes.

4. 04

   Data migration

   Move existing customer data with a cleansing pass, not a straight copy.

5. 05

   Integration

   Wire up real-time exchange with the other ERP modules.

6. 06

   Testing

   Prove the whole Lead-to-Cash path end to end, not each component in isolation.

7. 07

   Training

   Get users genuinely comfortable before go-live.

8. 08

   Go-live

   Launch, then watch adoption and data quality closely in the first weeks.

Questions to ask vendors

Metrics and KPIs to track