How Much Do You Value Data?

There are a lot of managers who don't recognize the data and information that flows through their company as an asset. Entrepreneurs or other managers who think about their assets in terms of human resources, equipment, machines, vehicles, but they never considered data and information as an asset for their company. Of course we are not talking about big enterprises here, most of them are small or medium businesses who never thought of data to be an important factor for their business, companies who never gathered data and they are not afraid to lose it.

Imagine this: a small sales department with 5 to 10 salesmen in a company where every salesman goes to meetings, pitches contacts and makes calls. All the discussions, phone numbers, company names go into employees personal organizers, notebooks. Salesmen come and go, and when they go, they take all the data with them, and when they come, they have to start from the bottom. This is the typical cycle for a lot of companies out there who don't use business software solutions, ERP systems or CRM Applications. What is worse is that they still believe they can work it out the way it is right now, managers who often think that software solutions are too big of a hassle.

Nexus Electronics company, for example, started to use a CRM system for sales since day 1 and just like in any other company or sales department, people come and go, but when sales people go, the information stays in the company's database. We are talking about tens of thousands of contacts who were probably not ready to purchase at first, but every time a  sales person started a new discussion with a lead, they knew everything about the company, who is the decision maker, what discussions other co-workers had with them, what kind of people they are talking to and how to approach them.

For these kind of companies, data is extremely valuable because it actually brings value to the company. Companies who value data will always be one step ahead of the competitors, they can identify needs easier and sales people can come up with a better strategy. We can always stay comfortable, but sometimes we have no idea the performance we can achieve if we step outside of our comfort zone, in this case implementing a CRM solution for the Sales Department.