Posts

5 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO MOVE TO AN EDUCATION CRM SOFTWARE

/0 Comments/in /by

What is a CRM Software?

Before we begin to tell you why education-specific CRM software is your ultimate solution, it is important to understand what a CRM is and what it does.
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a software system that helps to unify all communications and data in one place. This is inclusive of streamlining and automating workflows, administrative tasks, tracking contacts, responses, measuring success, and even managing marketing campaigns.

How is regular CRM software different from an Education sector CRM?

A CRM software customized to fit the requirements of the education sector focuses on enhancing the overall student experience as well as easing out the tedious administrative tasks for the institutions. With the education industry becoming a highly competitive market, its CRM systems are also becoming increasingly multifarious. The system has been built to manage your day-to-day operations. An all-encompassing software that takes over student recruitment and engagement improves outcomes and efficiency by automating a lot of the processes across the student life cycle.

How does an Education sector CRM trump your everyday organized spreadsheet?

The Ultimate One-Source Data Hub

You don’t have to go flitting through multiple excel sheets to find the data you need. The CRM software will accommodate up-to-date information about everything within the institution for easy access to anyone within the institution. Student data, admissions information, emails, responses, analysis, reminders, monitoring, and tracking completed tasks and pending jobs are just a few in the sea of information the CRM software will store. Furthermore, the CRM prioritizes data security, a quality a spreadsheet lacks.

Automate Your Daily Administrative Duties

Need to constantly import or export your data from your spreadsheet to various business tools for various purposes and tasks? This is taken care of now. Once again, data storage and tracking prove to be CRM software’s strongest quality. From the tiniest inquiry into the institution through to enrolment, communications, interests, and many other miscellaneous details required for event management or email campaign solutions or any other purpose for that matter – it is all in one place. A CRM will eliminate the process of having to switch between
multiple software’s for different tasks. You can do it all in one place – the integrated CRM software. You can track prospects for different purposes, all within one platform.

Reliable Communication Trail

Imagine having to go back to every email you have sent to thousands of students to track when a communication was initiated and at what stage of the progress a certain student may be at, and then enter it manually into a spreadsheet. Sounds tedious?

A CRM software automizes this process for you by keeping track of every single interaction in chronological order right from emails, calls, tasks, notes, and any other form of engagement used through the student life cycle at the institution.

Standardize The Communication Between the Institution and Students

Let’s face it! Spreadsheets can be cumbersome to browse through and are not really collaboration friendly. Taking on from the data storage aspect of the CRM software, once again, all interactions with an individual are collected and stored by software, allowing you to not only access and share necessary information, but also keep track of notes, assign tasks, and even receive notifications for tasks that require attention. You won’t have to manually keep track of this information on a spreadsheet anymore.

No More Generic Communications

Over a certain period, it becomes a longer drawn-out process to peruse a spreadsheet and send out targeted communication to various students based on their interests. It also becomes easier to send out a bunch of generic messages and hope that one grabs their attention enough for them to engage. A CRM software will effortlessly segregate data based on individual engagement, interests expressed and demographics via the data store through recruitment, applications, and enrolment processes. This makes it extremely easy to target your communications with students specific to their areas of interest.

Say goodbye to the manual work. Do away with those spreadsheets. One pivotal benefit of using a CRM software is its knack for making every single task more time effective. Browsing through or switching between spreadsheets or even importing and exporting data to and from spreadsheets is a time-consuming process. A CRM is a very comprehensive one-stop for any educational institution. With everything you require to ensure a smooth and efficient functioning, centered on one platform, the amount of time and effort saved is remarkable.

Auto Lead Distribution – a big step towards Sales Automation!

/0 Comments/in /by

Auto Lead Distribution – a big step towards Sales Automation!

 

Isn’t it exciting when your business is able to generate new leads? Yes, it indeed is. But this excitement can be a bummer when you have to skim through all the leads and cherry-pick a few amongst them that are aligned with your area of expertise. However, like for any other problem, technology is here for your rescue. This time it is in the form of sales automation.

 

Through sales automation, manual, monotonous, and time-consuming sales tasks can be easily performed using Software, Artificial Intelligence, and other Digital Tools. We all know that leads are like any other resource; what matters is what you do with them. Further, after getting more leads, the chances of losing qualified leads are higher. The sole reason for this is poor lead management. On the contrary, if you automate the task of lead distribution, the leads are assigned to its suitable sales representative and poor lead management would have no place to stand.

 

So, let’s understand the meaning of lead distribution and why should you automate the process.

 

Lead Distribution

 

Lead distribution is the process of capturing, screening, and matching inbound leads to a specific sales person and allowing the business to be even more efficient with distributing leads. There are two types of systems to perform this task; automatic and manual lead distribution systems, each of which involves a phased and standard procedure for lead distribution. In this article, we’ll discuss about automatic lead distribution.

 

How does automatic lead distribution work?

 

Automatic Lead distribution involves using software that pushes leads to sales representatives based on the rules the company has formulated. After skimming through all the leads, the software assigns them based on the criteria like representative’s expertise, capacity, or lead’s location. For instance, you might want all the leads from companies with over 3000 employees to go to your most experienced sales representative. An automatic lead distribution system will perform this operation for you every time you receive a lead within this criterion. 

 

This system is more efficient than the manual lead distribution system because the leads are served to the representatives automatically and they don’t have to do anything once the company has set up the requirements. 

 

An automatic lead distribution system includes round-robin and rules-based routing to distribute leads automatically to the sales representatives.

 

Automated Lead Distribution Methods:

 

 

  • Round-Robin

 

 

The Round-Robin algorithm assigns leads to the representatives on a rotation basis. If there are 10 sales representatives, each of them will receive leads based on where they are in the queue. After completing the first cycle, the next round of leads will be assigned in the same order. 

 

This system ensures equal opportunity to all the team members and the work-load bias is eliminated. This method is suitable if the company has homogeneous sales representatives – perhaps, a sales team of a one-product company. Since the leads are not assigned as per any specific criterion. 

 

 

  • Rule-based assignment

 

 

Along with Round-Robin, lead assignment rules can be specified to improve the lead distribution process. Rather than assigning leads on a rotation basis, you can add rules that further define the type of lead to be assigned to each sales representative. 

 

For example, you may have a rule that says route any lead with a company size of 100 employees to a sales representative with 2+ years of experience. If your sales representatives have different territories, specify a rule that ensures that they receive leads from locations within their territory.

 

Benefits of Automatic Lead Distribution strategy

 

  • More efficient than the manual distribution system
  • It reduces lead response time and conversation ratio
  • Helps to monitor the capacity of each sales representative
  • Automates lead screening time of the sales force.
  • Enhanced customer experience as the lead is paired with its suitable representative. 

 

The Bottom Line

 

Automatic Lead Distribution System helps the business to reach out to a lead quickly, give the best possible experience to them, and ultimately, close more deals. Proper usage of this software will also increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales representative and provide the company an edge over its competitors. 

Contact us at sales@agamedu.com to get yourself the much required ERP solutions. 

How Agam Technologies uses CRM to gather leads from Social Media platforms for you!

/0 Comments/in /by

The use of Social Media for lead generation has become increasingly popular. However, it can sometimes become a tough nut to crack.

Imagine the Marketing department of your company is diligently creating and publishing Tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and more – all carefully crafted to make the most out of each medium of communication; meanwhile, your potential customers are on Instagram and Google having conversations about your organization. But you are not able to answer them; the main reason is too many social media sites to manage. Gradually, the potential customers will walk away as their questions are not getting answered and lead generation becomes difficult. That’s the worst mistake a company can make in the era of digitization.

How to bridge this gap? The answer is by using CRM.

What is CRM?

CRM is a customer relationship management platform that integrates social media and gives you access to the level of insights required for lead generation, plus the ability to use social tools for communicating internally. With the help of tools, interactive dashboards, and metrics, you can monitor, track and benchmark your social media communications. It even helps to understand the way you think about your customers and your relationship with them.

CRM also helps in enhancing lead generation by making it easy for your business to communicate with potential customers across various social media platforms. Do keep in mind that leads exist on various platforms, and managing them on different apps is like an invitation to chaos. It brings all leads to one platform, where you can collect actionable insight and offer a seamless multi-channel experience.

Why is integration to Social Media important for a CRM?

The first reason is; nowadays, people like to understand more about the products and services they use and the companies they purchase their stuff from. In a recent study by Forrester, it has been noted that apart from checking out Websites, potential customers also prefer to look into their Social Media handles to check the company’s authenticity.

The second reason is the impact of Social Media. We all know that Social Media is alive with prospects that can be converted into leads and later into customers. You might be using various lead generation tools to penetrate that particular platform. For example, Google has Google Analytics, Facebook has Facebook Business Manager, and LinkedIn has LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Yet, it can be very inconvenient to analyze lead generation through Social Media separately on each platform.

As a solution to this, social media integration with CRM brings the data of all leads from these platforms on a single dashboard to reduce the hassle and improve productivity. So, if you have given proper CTAs such as links in posts or bio, swipe-up, etc. CRM integrates them with the SM platforms and serves you all the leads at one place for your convenience. 

Perks of Social Media Integration:

  • Provides greater exposure in the places where your audiences spend their time.
  • Helps to increase engagement and maintain deeper relationships with customers.
  • Higher search rankings and increased web traffic.
  • Aids to identify high-quality inbound leads that turn into revenue faster.
  • Ensures to keep an eye on the efficiency of the marketing campaigns.
  • Possible to target a specific segment of customers through report analysis.

Takeaway message:

To recapitulate, using the right CRM tool helps you identify, attract, track, nurture, and convert your leads to improve your business profits. But it can be daunting to find the right CRM tool for your marketing and sales needs if you’re new to CRM tools.

Fortunately, Agam Technologies works alongside you to help you find the right tools and strategies to improve your lead generation efforts and grow your business. Agam CRM has Facebook integration for lead generation, Instagram Integration, Google Integration, IVR Integration, Website Integration, Chatbot Integration, and Web Whatsapp Integration.

Contact us at sales@agamedu.com to get yourself the much required ERP solutions. 

7 Tips For Choosing The Perfect CRM For Your Admission Needs in 2021

/0 Comments/in /by

7 Tips For Choosing The Perfect CRM For Your Admission Needs in 2021

For those of us who are still trying to grapple with the enormity of a CRM system’s power and reach in securing admissions in today’s digitalised era, it would be unnerving, to say the least, to navigate through the plethora of Customer Relationship Management tools available online, in an effort to choose one that’s perfect for your institute. And with the onset of the admission season, it becomes even more imperative for institutes now to streamline their communication process among the counsellors and recruitment team, in order to gain the maximum ROI on admissions. Here, we offer you 7 wonderful tips that’s guaranteed to make your search for the ideal CRM system easier – well in time before the admission buzz kicks off for 2021!

  1. Identify your Institute’s Needs :- An ideal CRM tool is one that helps you engage with your customers in a timely and appropriate fashion, while encompassing key business processes such as admissions, communication and operations within its software. However, before implementing a CRM system within your institute, it is necessary to first establish the objectives of your organisation, so that you can choose an option that caters to your specific business needs. You need to choose a CRM system that offers customised solutions to the specific issues you are facing, rather than several generalised ones. You also need to keep in mind whether you require a CRM system only to enhance the institute’s communication channel with the existing student body, or to strategically increase your student count across your centres.
  2. Go with a User-Friendly CRM :- If you don’t pay attention to the specific features offered by the CRM system you purchase, your whole effort might turn out to be counter-productive. Check for a CRM technology that specifically answers your admission needs – is your institute only looking to marginally increase the existing student count, or are you looking to improve admission count across all your centres and batches? An ideal CRM tool should be capable of automating your recruitment process, and organising leads’ data in a convenient way that helps you manage communication with those leads, throughout their admission journey. Invest in one that is easy to use, as well as to train your staff on. Make sure it has easy-to-find tabs or icons, a fuss-free dashboard, as well as a search bar to help you locate different fields or tools.
  3. Choose a Reputed Vendor :- The reliability of the company offering you a CRM system is just as important as the tool’s quality. Your ideal CRM vendor should be able to provide you with optimal solutions that can augment your team’s student admission efforts, thus helping you streamline communications, organise data and create factual reports on the leads generated and subsequent follow ups. Look for vendors who can boast of a good market presence, and try to check with their existing clients whether they provide round the clock support and guidance, not only while implementing the software, but also in terms of providing necessary training, as well as in offering to resolve technical issues in the long run.
  4. Go for one that is Scalable :- It would be a good idea to check for reviews from other institutes on whether the CRM system you are planning to purchase was designed to scale or not. Find out how long have they been using the tool, and whether the vendor was able to adapt the technology in line with the exponential growth of their school/college. It is important to ensure that as more and more of your staff, students and/or branch members start accessing the purchased software, it should not crash, hang or in any way become unusable or redundant. Invest in a CRM that’s both dynamic and scalable – capable of meeting your growing business needs down the years.
  5. Always request for a Demo :- A demonstration of the CRM you intend to purchase will help resolve all the doubts clouding your mind – be it about the CRM’s features, reliability, or overall usefulness. The vendor may be able to allay your fears by lucidly explaining which functions specific to your institute could be customised before purchase, how easily can the staff be trained to use the tool, and how capable it would be in adapting to your institute and its environment. He may also be able to share the benefits of their years of industry experience with you, and guide you on how to use their CRM system to its fullest potential.
  6. Go for one that requires Low Maintenance :- A good quality CRM system is often the result of years of dedicated work by a team of seasoned professionals. They are capable of seamlessly integrating admission records, lead conversions, marketing strategies and inter departmental communication, all under a single streamlined tool. It is more likely to be consistent in its usability, adaptability and design, which not only increases your admission team’s productivity, but also makes it a cost-effective solution in the long run. Therefore, it’s imperative to choose a well-designed CRM software that not only has relevant features, but is less likely to develop bugs or glitches while in use, regardless of the number of years you need to utilise it.
  7. Check for a CRM with regular updates and upgrades :- A CRM system that has a demonstrated history of regular updates as well as upgrades happening is always recommended. Regular upgrades suggest that the tool has evolved according to market demands, and offer clear proof that the CRM provider conducts technical upgrades and compliance requirements much required for the education sector. Regular updates and upgrades also demonstrate the sincere intentions of the architects and developers involved, to keep improving upon the CRM system.

To sum it up, adopting a reputed and reliable CRM software need not necessarily be a cause for stress – rather, armed with these tips, you can be sure of making an informed decision – one that can not only aid your communication strategies, augment admission campaigns and improve your ROI and overall business profitability, but can also help your institute achieve a very high level of customer satisfaction!

HOW HAS CRM BEEN A GAME CHANGER FOR THE EDUCATION INDUSTRY

/0 Comments/in /by

— VANDANA DEVI SREEJITH

 

HOW HAS CRM BEEN A GAME CHANGER FOR THE EDUCATION INDUSTRY

Have you ever wondered what is it that motivates many of us to make a beeline for certain schools or colleges? How is it that these institutes manage to edge over their competitors in attracting a plethora of new admissions year after year?

The answer lies in three simple letters – CRM – an acronym for Customer Relationship Management. A revolutionary software that leverages the power of technology to manage your institute’s relationship with your existing and potential leads, thereby augmenting your marketing efforts and improving your centre’s competitive edge. CRM is a crucial strategic tool that helps you enrich the relationship of your institute with your potential leads, thus helping your school/college grow by leaps and bounds. In fact, Michael McCafferty, renowned American entrepreneur, also known as the Father of CRM, once remarked, “CRM is rather boring in itself. It’s the fortunes that you can build using CRM that makes it so interesting!”

So, how does CRM help institutes build up their business fortunes?

  1. By helping them establish and manage a positive relationship with their clientele

CRM is an amazingly powerful tool that helps institutes develop a strong relationship and personal bond with their prospective clientele. It offers detailed insights about their preferences, behaviours, as well as their financial status, and also offers an overview of these leads’ past academic performance. Institute counsellors, in particular, will find the lead history available on the CRM especially useful, as it will assist them in tailoring the course modules or fee payment structure in accordance with the prospective lead’s needs.

  1. By streamlining and stabilizing their existing relations with their lead body

CRM is a highly advantageous tool that helps institutes, especially colleges and coaching centres, to attract and retain their leads. Not only does this tool help improve existing institute-lead bond, but it also helps in strengthening relations with the centre’s alumni as well. Loyalty to your institute is guaranteed with the help of an advanced CRM software. If proactively used, the exhaustive lead data available at your fingertips on your chosen CRM platform can be used to enhance your leads’ experience.

  1. By letting them stay one step ahead of their competitors

As a strategic business tool, CRM helps supercharge the institute’s marketing efforts and advertising campaigns, thus empowering its counsellors to get better lead conversions and recruit more leads than its competitors. It helps simplify the entrepreneurial burden faced by institute heads by bringing together their administrative, recruiting, academic, counselling, marketing and financial responsibilities under a single roof. A smartly used CRM model also ensures positive lead outcome, increased donations and long-term institution success – both in terms of revenue as well as lead loyalty and goodwill.

  1. By helping them simplify and streamline all their processes and operational procedures

One reason why CRM has gained popularity in recent times is due to the fact that this multi-purpose tool can provide structure and organisation where you need it most. CRM ensures everything is in one place and easily accessible – be it institute data, staff information, teachers’ workflow, lead history, examination records, fee invoices or payment updates, thus ensuring that administrative tangles are kept to a minimum, benefitting the institute immensely in the long run.

  1. By positively impacting their lead recruitment efforts

An advanced CRM tool can help enhance all the efforts of an institute’s counsellors by providing intelligent dashboards that organise, update and filter prospective lead data real-time. The software can offer radical data analytics to institutes, helping them plan their course of action, track interested enquiries, optimise forthcoming lead data from various sources, and finally convert them with the assistance of information collected on the CRM database with regards to the leads’ course preferences and financial capabilities.

  1. By balancing out revenue versus operational costs

As a data sharing platform, CRM is crucial in understanding the underlying operational costs, whether visible or unseen, and analysing them in the context of revenue generated on an annual basis. This helps institute heads make informed decisions on various cost factors involved, re-think their advertising or marketing costs and streamline expenses in order to generate a decent year-end balance sheet.

  1. By assisting in organising data and providing them with a unified platform

Powered by the advances in technology and artificial intelligence, cutting edge CRM provides institutes with a superior dashboard designed to let them store large amounts of data in an organised manner, that’s not only convenient to view or monitor, but is absolutely easy to retrieve. The inbuilt features of a CRM tool ensure that the institute data has been stored securely, with next to no chances of getting lost, manipulated or misplaced.

  1. By scaling up their admission process to secure a stronger lead foothold

When it comes to securing admissions, an advanced CRM platform lets institutes stay ahead of the game by helping them impress prospective leads, allowing them to personalise each lead visit on campus, while still maintaining an efficient back end process, resulting in better on the spot conversions and immediate fee payments. It also helps augment efforts directed towards recruiting lead s on various networking channels, promotional mailers as well as social media. Also, through its connections with the institute’s alumni, a CRM software aids institutes in getting prospective and interested lead references, which leads to increased lead count every academic cycle.

  1. By helping them attract quality staff members

Any institute owner undoubtedly rates his/her staff and teachers as a prominent reason for the institute’s good reputation and success in the market. A CRM tool inevitably attracts high quality staff to the table due to the increased visibility it lends to the institute on every front, enhancing its workplace appeal.

  1. By reducing their lead attrition rate

By adopting a sophisticated CRM tool, institutes are better equipped to manage their existing leads throughout their course period, and are empowered to practice a more inclusive and solution-based approach towards their concerns. Utilising CRM in a proactive way enables institutes to identify risk prone leads and assist them in a timely manner, thus ensuring that the institution-lead bridge is fortified, resulting in leads completing their courses for the actual tenure.

  1. By being easily accessible on any device

Most of the software features offered by a CRM platform can easily be accessed by the institute’s members, not only on their work desktop, but also on their smartphones or tablets, thus helping the admin, faculty, sales and counselling team function at their peak any day of the year.

  1. By fostering improved communication within the institute

Any educational institution, big or small, stands to gain immensely from adopting CRM technology, as it not only provides detailed insight into leads’ progress and batch performance, but also nurtures a positive and open communication channel within itself, thereby facilitating better understanding between various branch members and the faculty. Different departments that tend to lie intertwined get a voice with the help of CRM, which increases rapport and team work among the admission, counselling and finance teams, as well as among leads, teachers and even the alumni. This eventually leads to a better run and efficiently managed institute, thus increasing its repute and loyalty among its patrons.

To sum it up, adopting a reputed and reliable CRM software is surely a profitable investment for any educational institute, as it not only increases the institute’s visibility among existing and prospective leads alike, but is also guaranteed to provide your institute complete academic and administrative success!