Decoding CRM Report

Being in the Real estate industry for the past few years, I have often experienced that during the month end, the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) team will be under tremendous pressure to achieve their target collections and submit their reports to the upper management. 

Gradually, when I started analysing and decoding the reasons of the stress faced by the CRM team every month, I found some interesting facts which are rarely scrutinized by the upper management other than few companies or are barely looked into these facts to take necessary steps instead only pressurizing the team on achieving their monthly targets. Undoubtedly, best results are performed under pressure but we also need to look into the critical bottleneck areas to improve the overall performance and support the team.

Many companies follow a standard format of monthly reporting of CRM reports either in excel or through a software.

After spending a lot of time with the CRM team and the upper management, I found a gap in understanding the analytics of the report.

Analysis has always been a vital part in understanding the bottle necks and finding a solution accordingly. However, there are only few companies who analyse the reports and find the critical areas to take the necessary action. Basically, they are the ones who hit the bull’s eye.

Firstly, let me tell you on how to break the stone and understand the various bottlenecks i.e., break the total outstanding into two parts – collectable and uncollectable outstanding.

Now, you must be thinking what is uncollectable outstanding?

Uncollectable outstanding is the outstanding from customers pending due to various reasons which are beyond the control of the CRM team directly i.e., these amounts cannot be collected if those various issues are not resolved, like clarification requested by a customer on GST calculation which may be beyond the understanding of the CRM team and the same is pending with the accounts team, unresolved snags raised by the customers which may be pending with the projects team, disbursement from customers banker which may be pending with the finance team who will arrange an NOC from the lender of the project to whom the unit has been hypothecated, etc.

In the above cases, the CRM team can merely play a role to follow up with the individual departments to resolve the queries at the earliest instead resolving themselves because these issues are beyond their control.

Secondly, once you are through with the segregation of collectable and uncollectable outstanding, the HODs or the upper management should now analyse the turnaround time taken by the individual departments to close the queries raised by the CRM team.

Thirdly, after giving an opportunity of being heard to all the departments concerned including CRM team, a company should formalize an SOP for a standard turnaround time for all the departments concerned to the queries raised by the CRM team so the CRM can effectively communicate a due date to a customer which brings transparency and confidence in the mind of the customer.

Finally, decoding the outstanding numbers into various categories and analysing the bottleneck areas will help the organisation in understanding the actual reasons of delay in collection and will have a better insight to take the necessary action accordingly.

Total Outstanding - Uncollectable Outstanding = Collectable Outstanding

Uncollectable Outstanding = outstanding beyond the control of CRM

I hope this article will be helpful in decoding and analysing the CRM reports.

Please give your valuable feedback in the comments below.