Calculating the return on your CRM investment

Well done!  You have summarised the costs of the new CRM and so by this stage you are well on the way to calculating the return (ROI) on your CRM investment. You have dealt with the debits and should now be summing up the total system savings to your company in terms of money, time and effort; the credits. Every bit of research and discussion time needs to be translated into a cost saving, leaving you with a financial value which you can apportion to the CRM system being up and running.

Now you are ready to total up all of the figures. This involves pulling together all the data with regard to the new system such as its performance and the positive changes it has exerted upon the organization.  You will do this by using a mix of methods of measurement that you can then utilise to compare the current status of the Sales Department to the historical one.

Methods of measurement

So what methods are you going to use to collect and analyse data and assign a monetary sum to? You may decide to use the reports and analytical information provided by the CRM system, in-house surveys, performance monitoring or a post-operative focus group; it doesn’t really matter how you do it as long as you access a wide range of data relevant to the operation and success of the system, comparing the ‘then’ and ‘now’ situations.  If you are struggling on where to look for this essential and valuable data, here are a few ideas to point you in the right direction:

• Increase in your sales performance and productivity due to fewer manual processes
• Time savings applicable to sales processes being much faster and automatic such as the raising of sales confirmations
• Quicker and better-informed decision making

This five-step guide to calculating CRM ROI will help you quantify your CRM's financial benefits

Value the improvements created by the new system

There may of course be many more improvements that you can work out a cost for and apportion a cost saving to.

Overall, you should now be providing a much improved and sophisticated sales facility, perhaps with fewer staff. It is vital that you include this in your calculations. For example, your huge sales department may have been minimized with the new CRM system shortening the time it takes to conduct laborious processes through automation. However, to begin with there may be a lot of manual entries to be compiled for a larger customer base so the reduction in staff may not happen immediately.

Using a spreadsheet, you can put a description alongside each figure and then tot up the totals at the bottom. This will make it easy for you to see where the CRM cost savings have come from and will be essential when you submit your final ROI report to management and stakeholders.