Mapping is changing the game in CRM. In fact, it is putting companies ahead of the game.
In a recent blog article by John O'Donnell, titled Integrating Mapping with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, John describes the combination of mapping and CRM as “It is the latest source of innovation adding value to the already value-stuffed Dynamics CRM 2011.”
In the article, he provides some great examples of how integrating mapping with CRM data will provide your business with the ability of getting ahead of the game. Some article highlights are:
How many customers are in a particular area?
Let’s say you are travelling to location X and want to also visit customers in a radius of say 10 miles of that location. If you have geocoded all of your customer addresses you can easily work out all of the customers nearby and visit then.
Display all of your customers on a map
Couldn’t be simpler, display a map of the USA for example and plot a point for every one of your customers. You might be surprised that you have not targeted companies in a particular area for example. Sure you could look at the data directly but displaying on a map makes it so much more visible.
Who is the nearest sales guy?
Perhaps you can use your CRM system to track your sales people in real time as they travel about the country. With a simple service on their phones they could be transmitting their position every 15 minutes or so. With that data you could respond when a new lead comes in and have the nearest sales guy reach out and perhaps visit in the same day.
Marketing
In a real world example I deployed CRM to an organization that did a huge amount of direct mail each month at significant expense. Using geocoding and mapping I was able to display not only a map showing all the addresses they targeted but also overlay demographic data such as income per capita showing they were targeting area where they had little chance of closing business and also missing areas which could be potentially lucrative. This was definitely one of those moments I wish I had a camera to record the reaction when the head of marketing saw his data presented in this way.
Well, John, I also wish you had a camera in that instance. I’ve seen similar reactions from marketing VPs and CEOs when I’ve presented their data via mapping.
With everyone looking for new business, how does your company stay ahead of the game?
